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The Trading Game
- tristanj 11y agoI prefer this version of the game. It's set to historical stocks from the early 1990s to today. http://chartgame.com/ http://chartgame.com/
- washedup 11y agothis is fun, but it gives you clues on where it will go next as the frame shifts before big movements.
- stkni 11y agoMeh, but the scale change is too quick to see if it's going higher or lower (at least to me) so I don't think it gives that much of an advantage. Even trying to use that information I can't seem to get much better than the 50th percentile, on average. Which is pretty much what I had before I read your comment.
- erikb 11y agoAfter about 30% of one round you can see from the previous trades if you are more on the low or more on the high side though. And the moment you see (or rather "feel") the scale change you can make a decision. I couldn't pinpoint it as well as the comment above yours but I also feel the interface helped a lot in making good decisions.
- byron_fast 11y agoWow. Imagine your livelihood depends on that game; your salary, your bonus, your standing. You can research the movements and HFT the micro-movements, but you're still playing that game.
- tikhonj 11y agoAnd then imagine the same thing but you're not playing the game. That's what happens when you have massive exposure (ie work at a company) without doing anything to manage it. Diversification is good.
- yummyfajitas 11y agoThat's not really true. If the company goes bust, it doesn't affect your net worth at all. All that happens is one revenue stream dies, and you are free to replace that revenue stream. Your total portfolio doesn't go down at all. For most changes in share price you are completely insulated.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoFrom what I understand about HFT, if you know what you're doing you basically can't lose. To understand how, you need to understand 'put options', which is a financial product available on the derivatives market. A put option is a deal to sell company stock at a pre-agreed price. Worth noting that you don't need company stock before the put option deal is reached. So let's say the stock price of Company X is currently valued at $50, and you arrange a put option to sell stock at $50. If the stock price goes down, let's say to $25, you buy stock at $25 and sell it at $50, so you've made a profit (from what I understand, you don't even need to buy the stock in this case, the put option broker will just pay you the difference to simplify the process). But what if the stock price rises? Let's say the stock price rises to $75. You can't buy stock and use your put option without losing money, and from what I understand you pay interest to the put option broker for the length of time you have it, so holding onto the put option causes you to lose money. But there's a 'get out of jail free' option. When you arrange the put option you also buy stock. If the stock price goes down, you buy more stock and sell at the pre-agreed put option price. If the stock price goes up, the stock you hold is worth more and you can use this to clear the put option without losing money. From what I understand, this is one example of 'hedging' against stock price changes, there are probably others. HFT is well suited to this kind of deal, as you can react quickly to market changes, minimising any risks resulting from delays. So although people see the stock market as gambling, you can game the system to move the odds in your favour. The end result is huge volumes of money invested into non-productive uses of money (and because of the ways banks create money, and the ways the financial markets are regulated, the restrictions on this speculation is basically non-existent). EDIT: I've got a downvote on this already. If anything I've said is untrue, then call me out on it.
- increment_i 11y agoPretty cool! Not something I thought would work so snappy on a mobile browser. I made a killing on Enron!
- byron_fast 11y agoNot sure if the game lets you be reported to the SEC. Maybe you're a member of congress?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThat should be a feature in Starfighter. 'tptacek?
- tptacek 11y agoLet me see how easy it is to implement in AVR assembly.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoYou could add a special opcode for that, something like SCCB (Short-sell and Call CES if Borrow). See also: http://ruthless.zathras.de/fun/top-secret/NewOpCodes.txt http://ruthless.zathras.de/fun/top-secret/NewOpCodes.txt.
- patio11 11y agoIf you play through the trading levels of Stockfighter, you'll become... intimately acquainted with the Committee for Exchange Security (CES), the in-universe SEC expy.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoCan't wait to get through the experience!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rgawdzik 11y agoWhere's the short option?
- vvoyer 11y agoSo nicely done, would love to see the code on github thought
- haser_au 11y agoIt's just Javascript. You should just download it to run locally.
- bby 11y agoI beat 99% of people trading $PG, ranking #21. Wicked hella good! The Trading Game:
- z3t4 11y agoThis is a cool game! But does it represent the real world? It seems to be a game of reflexes. Or does ranking in the top 100 means I actually can predict the future?
- princeb 11y ago> does it represent the real world When you are done with the game the stock ticker appears in the top left of the chart - that was the real world price you were trading.
- Buge 11y agoThey might be specifically picking stocks that have done well. In that case, you would on average make more money in this game than you would in real life.
- benwr 11y agoI think they chose well-known corporations; Enron was one.
- tylerpachal 11y agoI had Coke and Netflix.
- MasterScrat 11y agoI am not sure they are taking into account realistic transaction fees.
- z3t4 11y agoIt would be interesting to add standard fee's to the game.
- z3t4 11y agoIn that case, the stock market seems like easy money, especially if it's about reflexes as you can have a computer do the work and trade in hundred of stocks simultaneously.
- ousta 11y agoI struggle to see if the game includes all the taxes and the cost of transactions? this is somewhat important on small gains
- jj89 11y agoI got lucky - first try #9 on GOOGL, outperforming 99,4% of all players http://imgur.com/yWohi4J http://imgur.com/yWohi4J and #8 outperforming 99.6% a few tries later http://imgur.com/75raZvr http://imgur.com/75raZvr - returns 6462% on a stock that lost 75.3% over that period
- adidar83 11y agoNice. I made $83,664 (9658%) trading $MCZ, beating the stock! And beating the market! I beat 100% of people trading $MCZ, ranking #3. http://i.imgur.com/dTaCufc.png http://i.imgur.com/dTaCufc.png
- lgomezma 11y agoJust buy at the start and hold until the end, you will outperform the market and most of the people.
- Tepix 11y agoIt's always a different stock. If you do this with Enron, you will lose 100%.
- seansmccullough 11y agoI sold it in December 2000 in the game - 1650% return.
- lgomezma 11y agoOf course I'm taking on an average behaviour
- seansmccullough 11y agoYa buy and hold is the way to go in real life.
- draugadrotten 11y agoJust like in real life.
- eddd 11y agoIn short term trading your profit/loss will be probably random. Saying that some day trades make money is like saying that some people might flip a coin and hit heads 20 times in a row. For a big enough group of people it will happen. Unless you are high frequency trader - then you make money every single day.
- gnaritas 11y ago> Unless you are high frequency trader - then you make money every single day. Only if you're the fastest HFT that day, Dodd Frank and the sub penny rule devastated HFT trading by now allowing them to bid better, so whoever is first in line wins.
- area51 11y agoThe game definitely leaks information, I got better at every try -- this was the 4th attempt: Your returns were 329.0%, against the stock’s 139.7% and the S&P’s 14.7%. You outperformed 100.0% of players, ranking #1.
- KMag 11y agoYea, the re-scaling algorithm is a future leak. I wonder how the developers didn't notice.
- tophtucker 11y agoDid notice, didn't know what to do about it. I think it's the main problem with the game. There are plenty of options that don't leak and maybe I was just too enamored of the visceral feel of the y-domain following simplified+smoothed price line. Scale is also sensitive to variance over time, also smoothed, also leaks. -the developer
- LordKano 11y agoYeah, there is a bit of a leak but relying on that will not benefit you when you get Enron.
- function_seven 11y ago+1 for Enron. I was getting really excited as I saw it scale out and out and out. I knew there was going to be a huge jump and I was going to make a massive return. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to be more reflexive. I think I barely managed to recoup my initial investment.
- chii 11y ago> Your returns were 5257.4%, against the stock’s -75.3% and the S&P’s 57.1%. You outperformed 99.2% of players, ranking #14. interesting, but ulitmately, just a game about fast reflexes...
- 11y ago
- djhn 11y agoIt's a shame I don't get 2000% returns in the real market. But I also don't invest 100% of my portfolio on every trade. I guess that's where I've been going wrong?..
- blux 11y agoThe shifting of the scale on the axes gives you insider information...got to $1B after a few tries :)
- leni536 11y agoYeah, their movement smoothing filter seems to be not causal.
- mollmerx 11y agoInsider information is known but non-public. I think it's more appropriate to describe this as forward-looking. I.e. we are getting an insight into things that haven't even happened yet!
- tophtucker 11y agoI like "insider information" as a lazy excuse for the hinting/info-leakage problem. :) It's a metaphor!! -the developer
- tux3 11y agoFun game, but real life trading is probably not that easy! "Your returns were 2950.1%, against the stock’s -75.3% and the S&P’s 57.1%. You outperformed 97.1% of players, ranking #48."
- lawlessone 11y agoI did ok in this game, i tried one of those plus500 demo accounts before and got slaughtered.
- yitchelle 11y agoThis goes the show how much of a gamble it is when investing by charts.
- drstrangevibes 11y agothey should do a version where HFT frontrun your orders so that you pretty much always lose.
- Mikeb85 11y agoPlayed through all the stocks, got up to 96,000.00$. Pretty fun, especially some of the stocks which tank (too bad there's no short option). Works surprisingly well on mobile too.
- Mikeb85 11y agoWell definitely gets easier. Got up to 10+ million starting from 500, and then used that to get to 16 billion... One more round and I'm richer than Bill Gates lol... And made it past a trillion...
- qrybam 11y agoThat was fun - almost $32,000,000 from the first run. Made a killing on DELL (260.9% vs -61.1%). If you keep playing, it's the same stocks again and again - would be even more fun if there was some pseudo real time/more recent charts too.
- doc_holliday 11y agoIn the real world you wouldn't always buy / sell at the price you hit, someone could front run or by the time your sell hits the market there could be lack of buyers and the price will have tanked. So this makes it seem easy, when the trade differ in real life from what might look available one minute.
- blazespin 11y agoStopped playing after 170B. Too bad they don't mix up the charts, kinda fun. I couldn't quite figure out the scale shifting helping, seem more like a momentum thing.
- cryoshon 11y agoThis game is really easy, so it can't be realistic. I think that a lot of the challenge is removed by the fast speed that the game makes the years go by. It removes the challenge of waiting with what you have for a better opportunity; I'm not sure if institutional investors would ever hold positions for years on end.
- patio11 11y agoI'm not sure if institutional investors would ever hold positions for years on end. This is extraordinarily common, particularly for institutional investors who are not attempting to generate alpha.
- Smushman 11y agoI think the main point being made by the author is that without the waiting, day after day, combined with the external confirmation bias of hearing how other stocks are outperforming yours (you thought you did great on your trade, until you hear Google could have made you multiples more); you are missing a ton of the statistical noise that screws up your trading. Don't throw out the entire argument with nitpicking on a minor misunderstanding re: institutional trading. The main thrust of his argument is clearly valid.
- ludbb 11y agoIt's a game, no real money involved. Could try finding some source on this, but the challenge can only be measured when you're not using play money.
- razster 11y agoIf you try ThinkorSwim from TDAmeritrade, you can use paper money - I find the mini S&P to be a great start. Day traders are nuts though.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ISL 11y agoThe game should really be named 'The Momentum Trading Game'. Without even knowing the company's price-to-book and p/e ratios, let alone what the company is, its past history, the market it's in, and who runs it, it's just chasing the dance of a number. Doing nothing, I tend to beat about 20% of the traders. Without the future leak, it'd surely be better than that. Edit: Just got Enron. Did nothing. Beat half the players.
- Smushman 11y agoInformation leak #1: Scale Changes - noticed this but could not put my finger on defining it clearly. #2: Date - along the bottom edge the date progresses. Knowing generally that the market did well during certain multi-year ranges was an absolute edge. Too bad the real world doesn't come with this kind of information.
- tophtucker 11y agoHi I made the game. Really glad you brought up #1 — I think it's the main problem with the game. The y-domain follows a simplified and smoothed version of the price line, which, yes, leaks information about the future. Not sure what to do about it. Because viscerally I like the movement. #2, yes, that too. We talked about that issue but maybe not enough. I wonder if you even need to know what the timescale is. Stock movements are pretty fractal and scale-invariant, after all, right? Kinda? Hm.
- Smushman 11y agoI like the date information as it gives a very much needed perspective! But, knowing the year itself may not be. Could you drop the year indicator?
- arca_vorago 11y agoAlong these lines, can anyone recommend a good tool to test real strategies against the real stock market, taxes, fees, etc included? Not looking for free necessarily, just something that I could actually learn and test against real world data with the same variety of options, futures, paper, forex, etc. Also, I remember working on a Bloomberg machine at one point, and the license was something like 200k a year, and I was told most of that wasn't for the machine but for the level of data access. At what point does the data become free?
- mathgenius 11y agoHave a look at quantopian.
- arca_vorago 11y agoWow, thanks for the suggestion, that is extremely interesting how they are doing things. Crowd source hedge fund where you can work on your own algo's... Now the only problem is my curiosity is piqued and I feel like I'm about to waste way too much time learning about this stuff.
- joeyspn 11y ago1. Click at the start 2. HODL til' the end of time 3. Profit
- stupandaus 11y agoI made $1.6148008835081285e+21 LOL The right axis scaling leaks a lot of future info...
- dennisgorelik 11y agoIs this game designed by Bloomberg to lure amateur day traders into their system? The games is designed in such a way that it is so easy to make big virtual $$$$$$$. Next step - actual trading account and $$$$$ losses (while Bloomberg collects commission fees).
- collinmanderson 11y agoI got #2 on AAPL on the first try. I ignored the scale and just bought based on dates: Bought asap, sold in late 1999, bought in late 2001, sold mid 2007, bought early 2009, sold May 2015, bought mid-August 2015.