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IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2 - MAKING INVESTMENTS AS A FINANCIERBUYING SHARES IN OTHER COMPANIESBefore you start investing in other players' companies, you need to do a little research to find out which companies are going to be worth investing in. You can get a complete list of all the companies in the game with 'DI COMPANIES' - but beware, it is a long list! You can find out who owns shares in a company with the command 'DISPLAY SHARES name', where 'name' is either a company name or a player name. A company with a reputation for doing well is likely to have more shares owned by individuals than by the broker. You can inspect the books of other companies. 'DI ACCOUNTS name' - company or player name - will show you the accounts for the last five cycles. This will let you judge how well the company has been doing, and whether it is worth investing in. It'll also tell you the share price at the end of the most recent company cycle, so you know how much you would be spending if you buy any shares. If you keep an eye on the SpyNet Financial report, you will also see when dividends are paid out, which will also affect your decision on who deserves your investment. You should also talk to the CEOs about how they manage their companies. There's nothing like the personal touch to help you make a judgement on their success. Financier is the first rank where it pays to cooperate with other players and build up business relationships with other companies. You can invest in any company, although the most obvious investment to make is in a company owned by a Manufacturer. If you invest in an Industrialists' company, you may find the returns are not so great because they are under no pressure to pay off the shareholders, although as they prepare to promote to Manufacturer that starts to become an issue so the divvies may start flowing. You can invest in a company owned by a fellow Financier, but they too are not subject to dissatisfaction so may not pay out dividends as often as you would like. When you have decided that you want to invest in a particular company, use the command 'BUY amount SHARES companyname', where 'amount' is the number of shares you want to buy. You can only buy 100 in any transaction, although there's nothing to stop you making more than one purchase. You can't own more than 1,000 shares in a company, and the broker will always hang onto 1000 shares, so you can't invest in a company once that limit has been reached. The price you pay for the shares is determined by - as you can probably work out - the share price, as shown on the company accounts. You will also pay the broker's fee of 1% (or 250 groats). The act of you buying shares in a company is going to increase the share price, which will go some way towards keeping the other shareholders happy, thus staving off disaffection. The other main method that CEOs use to keep the shareholders from rioting is to pay them dividends - and that means your company gets the money. The more shares you own, the more money you will get when the divvy is paid out. Should you find yourself disappointed with a company's performance, you can sell some or all of your shareholding, with 'SELL amount SHARES companyname' where 'amount' is the number you want to sell - 100 at a time. Once again, you will pay the broker a fee for the transaction. Selling shares in a company will make the share price go down, so it is a courtesy to warn the CEO that you intend to offload your investment. There is a limit of 35,000 on the total number of shares you can own in other companies. Should any of the companies in which you have invested split their shares and bring your total portfolio above this limit, you won't be able to buy any more shares without first offloading some of the ones you already own. Your goal as a Financier is to make money - a lot of money. You are going to need a seriously large heap of groats to finance your move to the next rank, which is going to involve buying a planet and paying to have it terraformed and linked to the rest of the Solar System. The Idiot's Guide - online index |