sugarvalves [1963573] —
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Torn's investment community was shaken like a child in the hands of a British nanny this weekend, as shares in several popular companies both rose and fell to hit record highs and lows.
Shares in Yazoo, Torn City Investment Banking, Symbiotic Ltd, Home Retail Group, Feathery Hotels Group and Syscore MFG have plummeted to three-year lows in recent weeks. Conversely, the stock prices of Empty Lunchbox Building Traders, Torn City Motors, Torn City Clothing, the International School TC and this very newspaper rose to three-year highs. In a thread started by TCT reporter Nova, our city's authorities were accused of driving these changes by tampering with the prices of certain desirable stocks.
As you can see from the above graph, the Torn City Stock Exchange has been on the rise for the past few months. Yet according to some, this trend does not tell the whole tale. It cannot be doubted that the stocks listed earlier have experienced significant movements. But is there any substance to the accusation that the markets are being targeted for devaluation and inflation? And if so, how, why and by whom is this economic puppetry being conducted?
To begin with, I spoke to Chedburn about the current situation as well as asking for a response to the allegations by Nova. From his lair six-hundred metres beneath the City Dump, he told me that changes have indeed been made to the stock market - just not recently.
"No changes were made manually...stocks go up and down... That's what they do. I'm not saying manual changes don't happen, they have done in the past. Like tweaking a stock's parameters to keep them under control."
"There are many triggers / random reasons for stocks to fall...they're unintuitive. If they weren't they could be manipulated...There's no specific design to reduce a stock which is popular...There's a chance of more shares being added once everyone's bought up all the available shares"
Chedburn confirmed to me that if changes, even small ones, were to be made to the stock market system then an announcement would be forthcoming. In his forum response to Nova, our glorious, subterranean leader also pointed out that while plans are afoot to change the stock market, it hasn't been touched for "quite some time" - a trait it shares with HH_DUDE's karma score.
Chedburn also explained his belief that the stock market should not be there to "print money", and that investing in the markets was always going to be"something of a gamble". Based on these quotes, it is fair to assume that while the TCSE is intended to simulate real-life markets, it does so as much as firing a rocket into a Level 100 player's stomach mimics the real world consequences of such an act.
Certain tweaks and alterations make the stock market suitable for Torn City life. Without them, our great city may be subjected to runaway inflation or the unassailable accumulation of wealth by already minted individuals like that rich bastard Hell_Fire.
Pictured: A drop that caused sales of tiny violins to increase by 500%
However, Penicillin also made the point that a lack of confidence in the stock market could lead to inflation regardless since the market serves to tie up trillions of dollars in cash which would otherwise be permanently on hand. It is therefore crucial for the people to retain their trust of the TCSE, and for that reason, we shall further investigate the claims made by Torn citizens regarding this apparent manipulation of the Torn markets.
I contacted Nova to find out what he made of Chedburn's response to his forum post, and like anyone who has spent a night of passion with Sharpmid, he wasn't entirely satisfied.
"So firstly, I know in Chedburn's response to the thread he referenced Yazoo (YAZ) having lows and highs and being as low as $2. Personally, I don't look at the entire graphs when I assess stocks, since all of them use to be around the $1-$10 mark 5 years ago, therefore I feel it is a much better indicator to use the last 3 Years as a reference for stocks."
"Now, in my opinion and others, all the stocks that are having or have had 3 year lows in the last few weeks are the more 'mainstream' stocks, and for example in FHG there haven't been shares available for weeks. Now due to the way in which the stock market is set out in Torn, unlikely a real life stock market, we have no data to interpret which could be used to predict share prices."
"We simply have to make assumptions based off the historical data of the stock, since there is no other information available to us."
Nova went on to use TCB as an example, noting how its typical price of $600-$750 dropped to a three-year low recently, leading to mass investment due to its historical value. This stock then dropped further to $400, at which point the system dumped millions of shares onto the market. This meant that those who bought shares at $400 were then happy to sell them on for profit, whereas those who bought at $500 found them hard to sell since many were on the market already, and the stock would drop again before they were able to sell.
This may seem like a simple case of buyer's remorse due to poor timing, bad luck or terrible judgment. But Nova insists there is more to it than that.
"We've seen examples in the past of stocks crashing and people losing a lot of money. However, for this to be happening simultaneously on multiple stocks in a small space of time, it really feels like someone is tampering with them manually. Especially, with on YAZ when Hell_Fire was approaching a networth of 2 Trillion, then all of a sudden it crashes and he loses 400 Billion."
"Seems like Chedburn is in some way tampering with them, it's just a theory which I can't prove, but it seems awfully odd how all these stocks are behaving so erratically all of a sudden."
A dangerous accusation indeed. Nova feels that the stocks which were boosted were done so to mask the mass nerfing of other stocks, as this would have the result of making the TCSE seem relatively stable while simultaneously removing large amounts of money from the Torn economy. It may be that the latter is true, as a system which prevents inflation is desirable, but the suggestion that manual tweaking has been performed to reduce Hell_Fire's networth has yet to be proven.
This is not to deny that there is some correlation between the recent rise and fall of stock prices, though, since the juxtaposed graphs of the shares under suspicion seem to prove that these trends are indeed related.
POPULAR STOCKS
FORMERLY CRAP STOCKS
As you can see, there is a slight convergence in the first graph and a more obvious one in the second. Where the conspiracy theory falls down is in its accusation that these activities were actioned, rather than automatically taking place due to a previously designed system. I seriously doubt that the authorities believed nobody would notice such tampering, and I have even less faith in the idea that anyone could be fooled by the TCSE remaining stable as a whole to mask it. The problem is, these huge changes all happening at once are simply unexplainable, and many people have lost money as a result.
But who has actually lost money here? Pencillin noted that while some people are complaining the system is not easy to predict - he feels it "sucks hairy a*s" - he also described the old stock system as being better and fun to play. Translation: It was easier to earn money from stocks back in the day. And as Chedburn said, the stock system is not there to print money for the rich.
I had a conversation with Hildegarde on this matter, and he disagrees with the notion that the market should prevent the wealthy from earning more from their vast hoards of cash.
"The problem is, they don't 'earn more', they earn the same % as the rest do. In that case, a person who has 1b earning 50m is right, but a person who has 1.5trillions earning 75b is wrong."
"Even tho they do the same thing and are the same thing %-wise and the person who has 1.5b trillions has earned those trough close to 15 years of gaming, while the guy with 1b made it in an afternoon with a bunch of DPs?"
I responded by saying that it would not be wise to allow the gap between the rich and the poor to grow exponentially, which it would if a real-life stock system were in place. In the real world, there are mitigating factors such as taxes, monopoly laws and occasional sex scandals to stop the rich getting too rich and in turn prevent society from attaining Torn-esque levels of wealth inequality.
Some may say these factors are not tough enough, and as an ardent socialist I must agree, but in Torn such wealth inhibitors do not exist at all. Because of this, the stock market system has to be somewhat unintuitive, and how well you do should come down to a mixture of skill and luck.
Pictured: The future of the economy, unless you vote Sanders / Corbyn / Chedburn
If the stock market is not real, predictable and manipulable some will complain that they can't make any money. If it is, then others will complain they can never hope to catch those who arrived in Torn years before them. It is a simple choice between the rich getting richer, or Torn having an authentic stock market.
But whichever system we end up with, it would be unfair for clandestine activities to affect the markets to the degree to which has been accused. According to Nova, Hildegarde believes he can pinpoint the moment the stock market was tampered with to a 95% accuracy. Hildegarde is currently too busy to elaborate on this in the form of an article, but he says he will try to publish his findings within a couple of months.
I eagerly await this report, since Hildegarde is adamant that the stocks were directly faffed with by an individual, citing the fact that if the system was simulated, the data from the past three years should be relevant in determining what will happen next week. Because of this, he says "stocks are currently A f***ing gamble.", and in this respect he is in agreement with Chedburn, despite disagreeing on whether this is a good or bad thing. But it is a very different situation to have a system which is unpredictable versus a system made unpredictable by the actions of a human being.
Pictured: It's like free will vs God, except more important.
Hildegarde doesn't feel there's a difference here, but I do. Even a so-called unpredictable system has limitations, and therefore can be prepared for if not entirely predicted. If a human person is playing with stocks on a whim, this is much harder - although not impossible - to predict. Chedburn has been open about the fact that the stock market has been manually altered in the past, so we must trust him when he says that this is not the case with the recent fluctuations.
We must also trust Chedburn and the committee to guide the new stock system in the right direction. In the forum post by Nova which began this investigation, Vernunzio asked Chedburn to "choose one thing or another", requesting that if Stocks 2.0 was to mimic real life then he should "smooth out the peaks and valleys, make it so there are always shares available, and make it so we can always sell instantly." He also asked for nudes, but this comment was later deleted.
Chedburn replied that this was his objective - stock improvement, not nudity - as well as being able "to achieve 100% liquidity without destroying the economy." This was deemed possible, but not without several months of research and testing.
"The end goal with the new system is something that would never need any kind of future work. We can test it for 10 years into the future."
So in future, we may get a stock market that finds the sweet spot between real life and Torn, between predictability and resistance to manipulation, and which allows both rich and poor to earn and fail fairly without causing an imbalance in our in-game economy. In the meantime, those with investments in the TCSE must do their best to protect themselves from losses caused by the deliberately unintuitive elements of our stock market system.
One way you can do this is to diversify, and if you're looking to add some new stocks to your portfolio, why not take a look at our three-year rundown of the TCSE 30 coming this Thursday to help you gamble your fortune away on the stock market.
Shares in Yazoo, Torn City Investment Banking, Symbiotic Ltd, Home Retail Group, Feathery Hotels Group and Syscore MFG have plummeted to three-year lows in recent weeks. Conversely, the stock prices of Empty Lunchbox Building Traders, Torn City Motors, Torn City Clothing, the International School TC and this very newspaper rose to three-year highs. In a thread started by TCT reporter Nova, our city's authorities were accused of driving these changes by tampering with the prices of certain desirable stocks.
As you can see from the above graph, the Torn City Stock Exchange has been on the rise for the past few months. Yet according to some, this trend does not tell the whole tale. It cannot be doubted that the stocks listed earlier have experienced significant movements. But is there any substance to the accusation that the markets are being targeted for devaluation and inflation? And if so, how, why and by whom is this economic puppetry being conducted?
To begin with, I spoke to Chedburn about the current situation as well as asking for a response to the allegations by Nova. From his lair six-hundred metres beneath the City Dump, he told me that changes have indeed been made to the stock market - just not recently.
"No changes were made manually...stocks go up and down... That's what they do. I'm not saying manual changes don't happen, they have done in the past. Like tweaking a stock's parameters to keep them under control."
"There are many triggers / random reasons for stocks to fall...they're unintuitive. If they weren't they could be manipulated...There's no specific design to reduce a stock which is popular...There's a chance of more shares being added once everyone's bought up all the available shares"
Chedburn confirmed to me that if changes, even small ones, were to be made to the stock market system then an announcement would be forthcoming. In his forum response to Nova, our glorious, subterranean leader also pointed out that while plans are afoot to change the stock market, it hasn't been touched for "quite some time" - a trait it shares with HH_DUDE's karma score.
Chedburn also explained his belief that the stock market should not be there to "print money", and that investing in the markets was always going to be"something of a gamble". Based on these quotes, it is fair to assume that while the TCSE is intended to simulate real-life markets, it does so as much as firing a rocket into a Level 100 player's stomach mimics the real world consequences of such an act.
Certain tweaks and alterations make the stock market suitable for Torn City life. Without them, our great city may be subjected to runaway inflation or the unassailable accumulation of wealth by already minted individuals like that rich bastard Hell_Fire.
Pictured: A drop that caused sales of tiny violins to increase by 500%
However, Penicillin also made the point that a lack of confidence in the stock market could lead to inflation regardless since the market serves to tie up trillions of dollars in cash which would otherwise be permanently on hand. It is therefore crucial for the people to retain their trust of the TCSE, and for that reason, we shall further investigate the claims made by Torn citizens regarding this apparent manipulation of the Torn markets.
I contacted Nova to find out what he made of Chedburn's response to his forum post, and like anyone who has spent a night of passion with Sharpmid, he wasn't entirely satisfied.
"So firstly, I know in Chedburn's response to the thread he referenced Yazoo (YAZ) having lows and highs and being as low as $2. Personally, I don't look at the entire graphs when I assess stocks, since all of them use to be around the $1-$10 mark 5 years ago, therefore I feel it is a much better indicator to use the last 3 Years as a reference for stocks."
"Now, in my opinion and others, all the stocks that are having or have had 3 year lows in the last few weeks are the more 'mainstream' stocks, and for example in FHG there haven't been shares available for weeks. Now due to the way in which the stock market is set out in Torn, unlikely a real life stock market, we have no data to interpret which could be used to predict share prices."
"We simply have to make assumptions based off the historical data of the stock, since there is no other information available to us."
Nova went on to use TCB as an example, noting how its typical price of $600-$750 dropped to a three-year low recently, leading to mass investment due to its historical value. This stock then dropped further to $400, at which point the system dumped millions of shares onto the market. This meant that those who bought shares at $400 were then happy to sell them on for profit, whereas those who bought at $500 found them hard to sell since many were on the market already, and the stock would drop again before they were able to sell.
This may seem like a simple case of buyer's remorse due to poor timing, bad luck or terrible judgment. But Nova insists there is more to it than that.
"We've seen examples in the past of stocks crashing and people losing a lot of money. However, for this to be happening simultaneously on multiple stocks in a small space of time, it really feels like someone is tampering with them manually. Especially, with on YAZ when Hell_Fire was approaching a networth of 2 Trillion, then all of a sudden it crashes and he loses 400 Billion."
"Seems like Chedburn is in some way tampering with them, it's just a theory which I can't prove, but it seems awfully odd how all these stocks are behaving so erratically all of a sudden."
A dangerous accusation indeed. Nova feels that the stocks which were boosted were done so to mask the mass nerfing of other stocks, as this would have the result of making the TCSE seem relatively stable while simultaneously removing large amounts of money from the Torn economy. It may be that the latter is true, as a system which prevents inflation is desirable, but the suggestion that manual tweaking has been performed to reduce Hell_Fire's networth has yet to be proven.
This is not to deny that there is some correlation between the recent rise and fall of stock prices, though, since the juxtaposed graphs of the shares under suspicion seem to prove that these trends are indeed related.
POPULAR STOCKS
FORMERLY CRAP STOCKS
As you can see, there is a slight convergence in the first graph and a more obvious one in the second. Where the conspiracy theory falls down is in its accusation that these activities were actioned, rather than automatically taking place due to a previously designed system. I seriously doubt that the authorities believed nobody would notice such tampering, and I have even less faith in the idea that anyone could be fooled by the TCSE remaining stable as a whole to mask it. The problem is, these huge changes all happening at once are simply unexplainable, and many people have lost money as a result.
But who has actually lost money here? Pencillin noted that while some people are complaining the system is not easy to predict - he feels it "sucks hairy a*s" - he also described the old stock system as being better and fun to play. Translation: It was easier to earn money from stocks back in the day. And as Chedburn said, the stock system is not there to print money for the rich.
I had a conversation with Hildegarde on this matter, and he disagrees with the notion that the market should prevent the wealthy from earning more from their vast hoards of cash.
"The problem is, they don't 'earn more', they earn the same % as the rest do. In that case, a person who has 1b earning 50m is right, but a person who has 1.5trillions earning 75b is wrong."
"Even tho they do the same thing and are the same thing %-wise and the person who has 1.5b trillions has earned those trough close to 15 years of gaming, while the guy with 1b made it in an afternoon with a bunch of DPs?"
I responded by saying that it would not be wise to allow the gap between the rich and the poor to grow exponentially, which it would if a real-life stock system were in place. In the real world, there are mitigating factors such as taxes, monopoly laws and occasional sex scandals to stop the rich getting too rich and in turn prevent society from attaining Torn-esque levels of wealth inequality.
Some may say these factors are not tough enough, and as an ardent socialist I must agree, but in Torn such wealth inhibitors do not exist at all. Because of this, the stock market system has to be somewhat unintuitive, and how well you do should come down to a mixture of skill and luck.
Pictured: The future of the economy, unless you vote Sanders / Corbyn / Chedburn
If the stock market is not real, predictable and manipulable some will complain that they can't make any money. If it is, then others will complain they can never hope to catch those who arrived in Torn years before them. It is a simple choice between the rich getting richer, or Torn having an authentic stock market.
But whichever system we end up with, it would be unfair for clandestine activities to affect the markets to the degree to which has been accused. According to Nova, Hildegarde believes he can pinpoint the moment the stock market was tampered with to a 95% accuracy. Hildegarde is currently too busy to elaborate on this in the form of an article, but he says he will try to publish his findings within a couple of months.
I eagerly await this report, since Hildegarde is adamant that the stocks were directly faffed with by an individual, citing the fact that if the system was simulated, the data from the past three years should be relevant in determining what will happen next week. Because of this, he says "stocks are currently A f***ing gamble.", and in this respect he is in agreement with Chedburn, despite disagreeing on whether this is a good or bad thing. But it is a very different situation to have a system which is unpredictable versus a system made unpredictable by the actions of a human being.
Pictured: It's like free will vs God, except more important.
Hildegarde doesn't feel there's a difference here, but I do. Even a so-called unpredictable system has limitations, and therefore can be prepared for if not entirely predicted. If a human person is playing with stocks on a whim, this is much harder - although not impossible - to predict. Chedburn has been open about the fact that the stock market has been manually altered in the past, so we must trust him when he says that this is not the case with the recent fluctuations.
We must also trust Chedburn and the committee to guide the new stock system in the right direction. In the forum post by Nova which began this investigation, Vernunzio asked Chedburn to "choose one thing or another", requesting that if Stocks 2.0 was to mimic real life then he should "smooth out the peaks and valleys, make it so there are always shares available, and make it so we can always sell instantly." He also asked for nudes, but this comment was later deleted.
Chedburn replied that this was his objective - stock improvement, not nudity - as well as being able "to achieve 100% liquidity without destroying the economy." This was deemed possible, but not without several months of research and testing.
"The end goal with the new system is something that would never need any kind of future work. We can test it for 10 years into the future."
So in future, we may get a stock market that finds the sweet spot between real life and Torn, between predictability and resistance to manipulation, and which allows both rich and poor to earn and fail fairly without causing an imbalance in our in-game economy. In the meantime, those with investments in the TCSE must do their best to protect themselves from losses caused by the deliberately unintuitive elements of our stock market system.
One way you can do this is to diversify, and if you're looking to add some new stocks to your portfolio, why not take a look at our three-year rundown of the TCSE 30 coming this Thursday to help you gamble your fortune away on the stock market.
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