Wall Street Raider

[ScottHall]

Are there any other fans of this game on the boards? I love to crack this thing out every few months and conquer the world. There are tricks to get mega rich but it's semi-realistic if you don't take advantage of the game breakers. There's dumb shit like discount retailers having 30% operating margins at times, but I find the strategy element pretty compelling personally.

 

There aren't too many games catering to our interests, so I like to note them whenever I find them.

 

http://www.roninsoft.com/updates.htm

[DooDiligence]

Are you playing Raider or Speculator?

 

Raider looks more interesting to me if it would school me on capital allocation (have to look in depth later - blocked up right now...)

[CorpRaider]

Yeah, I used to whoop Mr. Icahn's butt on this regularly back in maybe the 90's or early aughts.  Biotech or athleisure consolidation was usually my game.  Pretty sure I took nike over with new balance once or twice.

 

 

[ScottHall]

Are you playing Raider or Speculator?

 

Raider looks more interesting to me if it would school me on capital allocation (have to look in depth later - blocked up right now...)

 

Raider, never played Speculator.

 

Yeah, I used to whoop Mr. Icahn's butt on this regularly back in maybe the 90's or early aughts.  Biotech or athleisure consolidation was usually my game.  Pretty sure I took nike over with new balance once or twice.

 

That's pretty cool. I think it's a pretty small group of people who play these games, so it's cool to see someone else who was into it.

 

My favorite strategy is usually distressed equities early, then forming a bank when I get enough capital, sell off all consumer & mortgage loans and bonds, then selectively put all of the bank's capital into hand-picked distressed business loans. Once I get too big to scale that, I go for whatever loans have the lowest credit rating to serve my capital base. I've figured this mechanic so well that I never lose money on any of my loans, ever, and earn higher interest rates than what's available on any other loan type and in assets with zero mark-to-market fluctuation on my balance sheet.

[doughishere]

Great game, Scott. Thanks!

 

Excerpt from the players guide:

 

(4) TAX STRATEGIES. In Wall $treet Raider, as in the real world, income taxes can take nearly half, or in some cases even more than half, of a company's profits. Thus, if you can reduce the taxes you or your companies pay, that can greatly increase your after-tax profits and your personal net worth.

 

For corporations, note that a company that has a large amount of tax loss carryovers (from losses it incurred in prior years) can be an excellent company to use to make profitable investments, either in business assets or in stocks of other companies. For example, if you own Company A, which has large tax loss carryovers, you might have it merge with profitable company B, or buy up at least 80% of the stock of Company B, which will become a subsidiary that can report its taxes on a "consolidated" basis with A.

 

For example, assume Company A has tax loss carryovers of $1 billion ($1000 million), and the tax rate is 50%. If Company A earns zero on its assets other than its holdings of Company B, and Company B earns $300 million in the next quarter, Company B would "pay" Company A $150 million (its share of any taxes Company A might owe), but Company A would pay no taxes on its consolidated tax return, because of its large loss carryover. So Company A's loss carryovers would entirely shelter the earnings of its 80% or greater subsidiary, Company B.

 

Link to the online tutorial: http://www.roninsoft.com/tutorial.htm

 

 

Demo/Download Page: http://www.roninsoft.com/download.htm

 

 

Attached is a screenshot. Warren and I are going to need to have a little discussion later.

 

 

Edit: Video list of some gameplay.

[doughishere]

Market crashed 20%. Black January (2017).  Berkshire Stock fell to 1/3 its high price (about 70% bv). High was way more than book value. I wanted to short the stock (using options) but the Feds disallowed shorting to "Stabilize Markets." So in Feb. I bought a 4% stake (at about 70% bv).

 

Year later, stock doubled and Berkshire got bought out. I voted against, the business was turning(stock portfolio of  Geico, Coke, Gillette and BNI held up well) plus it was not accretive the other company was levered up, and some how it passed.  :(

 

Took the proceeds(sold the 4% which became about a 2% stake and paid taxes of about $15m) started my own holding company. 100% owned by me. Put the minimum in to incorporate, they took 10% of the top then contributed capital to the biz for the remainder of my net worth. Named it Weyland Industries (Ticker: WI).

 

One attachment is the main screen and a visualization of the company I just created. The other is a screenshot of Berkshire Hathaway's Stock and Bond Portfolio screen from the game.

 

Edit: Ohh one thing i wanted to clarify...the Berkshire Hathaway(A) in "this" post had a much different "profile" than the Berkshire Hathaway(B) in the above post. The game upon restart "loads" different metrics(portfolio values, earnings metric, ....yaddda). So I was lucky that this game had a stock market with super high valuations and that it crashed right soon after i started. Being in January 2017 was just the month the game started.

 

Each new game is essentially "unique" upon startup. But borrows heavily from the "real world"(ie...Berkshire Hathaway owns KO stock).