WALL STREET RAIDER UPDATE DETAILS Click on your browser's "refresh" button if you have visited this page before UPDATE NOTICE: Below are details on upgrades, updates, bug fixes, and other improvements in the Windows version of Wall Street Raider. Click here to see an image of the revised main screen of Wall Street Raider for Versions 6.

DOC formats HTML for hypertext viewing. DOC for easy printing, if you wish to print out a hard copy. The file you will download will be the "Full Package" version, 8. Note that the shareware version, limits games to 2 years in length. The registered version allows games of up to 35 years length.

To order the registered version 8. Check below, to determine if an update has been issued since the version you currently have. As you can see, Wall Street Raider is a "work in progress," and has constantly been improved and made more realistic and usable over the years.

The quest for perfection continues NEW STOCK TRADING GAME! We have recently released Speculator: As such, we think you will find it a lot more challenging than Wall Street Raider, as you have to be a nimble trader in stocks, bonds including convertiblesoptions and futures. For details, or to try a free shareware version, CLICK HERE.

WINDOWS VERSION RELEASES THROUGH May 1, v. An ETF that holds less than 15 different stocks may, on occasion, sell put options short, which may result in a stock in its industry sector being "put" to it. ETF's that own the maximum of 15 stocks will often sell off the smallest such position and seek to invest excess cash in a larger company. Thus, ETF's trade stocks fairly often. One ETF, the Basic Commodities Fund, not only invests in stocks in basic materials companies such as paper, chemicals, metals, and building materialsbut also trades in all of the various types of commodity futures.

In each game, one ETF will also engage in regularly selling "covered call" options against its stock holdings, as a hedging technique and to earn additional income.

No player or company can control an ETF. If it has net capital loss carryovers at the time it is disqualified, the capital losses are converted into net operating losses for tax purposes, however.

ETF shares can be bought and sold by players or their controlled companies just like corporate stocks. The database search screen has been modified.

Now, instead of searching for companies whose earnings increased compared to the previous year, same quarter by a specified percentage in the most recent quarter, you can search for companies whose PROJECTED earnings for the next quarter exceed the same quarter in the prior year by the percentage you specify.

This applies to the U. Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Oil Windfall Profits Tax, Personal Holding Company Tax, and Corporate Shares Tax. But companies must still pay income tax on their taxable profits.

We made several modifications to the algorithms for computing "contango" and "backwardation" for commodity futures pricing, to make futures pricing more realistic, with generally greater differences from the current "spot" price of the commodity.

Increased time span for futures, so you can now buy or sell commodities for 60 months out into the future, versus 36 months in prior versions.

October 21, Minor release and bug-fix; free upgrade if you have purchased v. In this new version, if your company that is initiating the swap is itself a securities broker, bank, or insurance company, you get a better deal -- the "haircut" you would otherwise have to take is cut in half as a professional courtesy.

Fixed obscure bug that could pop up on rare occasions, where two companies could both have the same stock symbol "STO". DAT file by changing the stock symbol for Stone Container from "STO" to "STON". October 1, Major release A new type of derivatives trading has been added in this release. Players or companies may now enter into interest rate "swaps" with unrelated companies usually with "sharks" like brokerage housesusually on initially unfavorable terms.

Swap agreements can be in effect for up to 5 years and can be based on the Prime Rate charged by banks, or the yield to maturity of either the long-term or short-term government bonds. Players or companies can take huge risks with these swaps, on principal amounts of times net worth or, if less,million orbillion in some currencies. Any player or company with a "B" or better credit rating can get in on this action, for better or worse.

In such contractual swaps, the "long" party agrees to receive from the "short" party a fixed rate of interest each quarter during an agreed term the present rate for the type of contract chosen, or a rate near that and agrees in exchange to pay the "short" party whatever rate is in effect at the end of each quarter during the contract term.

At the end of each calendar quarter, the swap agreement results in one of the two parties making a payment to the other for the difference in the agreed fixed rate and the actual current rate at that date. Thus, if you are the "long" party on a Prime Rate contract, you are betting that the Prime Rate will go down, so you are locking in the current high interest rate.

The counterparty is taking your bet, and will profit if the Prime Rate goes up, rather than down, while the swap remains in effect. Doing these swaps is not for the faint of heart, since the "professionals" you will have to deal with on the other side of each transactions are usually brokerage houses, banks, or insurers, and they will only deal with you on their terms -- which routinely favor them.

Instead, they might offer to do the swap at Take it or leave it. Doing swaps with these cutthroat financial types is a bit like trying to win at the craps tables at Las Vegas -- possible, but the odds are stacked against you. They are not in business to lose money to amateurs like you.

As in the real world, these dangerous derivatives do not show up on the balance sheets of companies or players, but can have devastating or wonderful effects, due to the huge leverage implied. In the real world, some major banks have TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars of such "bets" outstanding.

No money changes hands at the time you enter into a swap, and the swap contracts are not given any value in computing your net worth. Otherwise, the only other way to get out of a swap is for one party to go bankrupt! If you liquidate a subsidiary into its parent corporation in a tax-free liquidation, the parent assumes the subsidiary's position in any swap contracts the subsidiary was a party to.

In a taxable liquidation, the company being liquidated has to pay the termination fee to get out of any swap agreements, before it can wind up and liquidate. As revised, any taxable income or loss of the subsidiary is passed up to the parent company on a consolidated tax return basis, for the final short tax period of the subsidiary.

Thus, for example, if the liquidating company has to sell off stocks or other assets at a large loss in order to liquidate, that tax loss will now "flow" up to the parent company, which will transfer cash to the sub an instant before the liquidation distribution is made, to compensate the sub for the tax benefit of the tax loss that the parent will use to shelter its income from tax.

The new button replaces the "Database Search" button, which has been moved back to the "General" research menu, where it was in some older versions.

The "Recall DB Search List" button remains on the main screen, so you can still instantly recall your latest Database Search to see if any additional companies currently meet your search parameters. The "Personal Holding Company Tax" that is sometimes imposed when you are playing at Difficulty Level 4 has been modified. When it applies, it is now based on the company's total assets, less any Business Assets and Working Capital. In prior versions, it applied to the company's net worth, less the amount of its Business Assets and Working Capital, if any.

Because of major changes in real world currency values, such as the decline of the value of the U. December 9, Minor release When you the player are the CEO of a company, your personal Financial Profile now shows the year in which you first were elected CEO and president of that company. This is important in determining the amount of the bonus you will receive each year, if the company has achieved good earnings growth each year for the past several years.

Your bonus compensation formula only gives you credit for those increasing earnings for the years in which you were the CEO. Where a player has made a prepayment of estimated income taxes and a "Wealth Tax" on billionaires applies, the player's projected Wealth Tax calculation now adds the prepaid tax to the player's wealth, since any income tax refund at year end will be received before the Wealth Tax is computed.

This release is file-compatible with saved game files from prior versions 6. November 17, Minor release Revisions have been made to commodity trading, imposing limits on contract size and the amount of any commodity a player or company can be net long or net short. In the prior release, a player who accumulated a large net worth could easily enter into commodity contracts for, say, crude oil, in amounts that exceeded all the known oil reserves on the planet many times over.

Since that was unrealistic, the new version imposes some limits, to 10, contracts per trade for any commodity other than oil, orcontracts for oil. You can do multiple trades for up to 5 times those amounts in total, net long or net short in any particular commodity. In this revised version, a commodity transaction may only be entered into if a "counterparty" can be found that is able to take the other side of the trade.

For example, if you wish to buy 10, gold contracts, the program will try to find a company not controlled by any human player that is able to sell 10, gold contracts short. If no short seller can be found that is able to sell more than 6, contracts short, you will only be able to buy 6, contracts although this limitation will rarely, if ever, occur. When a player who has open commodity positions receives a margin call, the program asks the player if it is the player's turn if he or she wishes to first liquidate commodity positions, before selling off any stocks.

In the prior version, if the player answered "YES," all such positions were immediately liquidated.

In this release, the player is allowed to choose which position or positions to liquidate, wholly or in part. Streaming quotes were not updated very frequently in prior versions if the stock ticker was set to run at a low speed. That has been remedied, so that the frequency of updating stock quotes on your streaming quotes list will be reasonably similar at all ticker speeds. Several minor bug fixes, grammatical corrections, and numerous minor improvements and tweaking of algorithms are also included in this update, including a potential serious bug that could cause a player to go bankrupt when getting margin calls, even if he or she still owned commodities or had a balance in a commodities margin account, where the program asked the player if he or she wanted to liquidate commodity positions before selling off stocks, and the player answered "NO.

This release is file-compatible with saved game files from prior versions 3. September 1, Major release Commodity futures trading has been added to this new major release of Wall Street Raider.

Players and all companies except banks and insurance companies may now engage in buying or shorting commodities futures contracts on five commodities: This means that if you guess right on the direction of a commodity, you can make a huge profit in a short period of time.

On the other hand, if the price moves against you even briefly, it can trigger massive margin calls and you or your company can be wiped out in a heartbeat. Commodity futures contracts are traded from 1 to 36 months out on each of the five commodities. Futures prices usually are higher than the "spot" price of a commodity, reflecting to some extent the time value of money tied up in such contracts.

This condition is called "contango. Corporations with commodity futures positions must close all such positions if their credit rating falls to "CCC" or worse. Prior versions already showed the spot crude oil price. The "Entity Info" pop-up menu now has an additional button, the "List Commodities" button, that lists all futures contracts held or sold short by the current Active Entity. Clicking on the line item for any such contract allows you to instantly close out some or all of that position if you control the entity.

Click on it to view a trading menu on which you first select a commodity to trade, then decide whether to buy it, sell it short, or buy back cover some or all of an existing short position in the selected commodity or sell all or part of an existing long position in that commodity. For corporations, they are generally treated as "extraordinary" gains or losses, and do not affect operating income. However, companies in certain industries can hedge certain commodities that are closely related to their business, and the gains or losses for them are treated as part of operating income, thus affecting reported operating earnings per share.

For example, oil and oil service firms that hedge by buying and selling crude oil futures treat gains or losses as operating income, and likewise for Agribusiness companies that hedge by trading wheat or corn, or Precious Metals companies that trade gold or silver.

Companies for which certain commodities are a key cost input may also hedge and treat the gains or losses as operating income -- for example, Packaged Foods companies that trade wheat or corn futures and Utilities or transportation companies Rail, Airline, Shipping, Trucking, Air Freight Couriers that trade crude futures, since fuel is a major cost input for companies in those industries.

Estimated income tax calculations are changed in this release. In prior versions, estimated taxes for players were calculated by extrapolating the tax accrued so far each year out to the end of the year. In this version, if the tax accrued so far includes capital gains, the estimated tax for the whole year is calculated by extrapolating only the "ordinary" taxable income earned thus far and adding to that the tax on net capital gains that have been recorded so far during the year.

Thus, it is now no longer assumed that any more capital gains will be recognized during the rest of the year when projecting the total income tax liability that may be owed for the year. This release is not file-compatible with saved game files from prior versions, due to the fact that the amount and types of data related to new and enhanced features has greatly changed the size and content of the saved data files.

Note that files saved with a newer version also cannot be used in an older version, so if you are playing with another person and by e-mailing the saved data file back and forth after you each take your turn, you must both be using the same registered version of Wall Street Raider. However files from versions 6. June 25, Minor release Rules have been changed for exercise of put or call options. In prior versions, an option could not be exercised if doing so would give a player or company control of the company whose stock was obtained by exercising the option.

In the new version, you are prohibited from gaining control via an option exercise only if gaining control of the target company would cause you to violate antitrust rules about dominating too large a share of any industry group. Clicking on the "GO" button on the main screen now has an added function, besides making a company whose stock symbol you have entered next to it become the "active entity.

If the stock and news tickers were running, but had paused when you opened any such child dialog boxes, the tickers will resume movement when the dialog boxes are closed. When a company earnings report pops up while the ticker is running, that company's stock symbol is now temporarily placed in the stock symbol box next to the "GO" button, so that you can simply click on the "GO" button to select that company as the new "Active Entity," in case you want to do research regarding that company, or perhaps have it do a transaction, if you control it.

If you don't click on the "GO" button, the Active Entity will remain unchanged from what it was before the earnings report popped up, and its name and stock symbol will automatically re-appear once you close the earnings report screen. But note that files saved with a newer version cannot be used in an older version, so if you are playing with another person and e-mailing the saved data file back and forth after you each take your turn, you must both be using the same registered version of Wall Street Raider.

October 1, Minor release A new button function "Prepay Income Tax" has been added to the "Misc. Players can use this function to add to the estimated income tax paid for the current year. This feature lets you prepay your expected taxes NOW, so you won't forget and invest all your cash in assets that you might be forced to sell at year-end, if you owe a significant amount of taxes at that time.

July 1, Minor release In this version, if an anti-trust lawsuit is initiated against a defendant company, the company incurs an immediate charge an accrual to the current quarter's earnings for the estimated after-tax costs of legal fees to defend against the suit, and that amount is added to its Reserve for Contingencies. Later, when the antitrust suit is litigated, the pre-tax cost of the actual legal fees the company pays at that time will also be charged to income, but will be offset by a credit to income equal to the after-tax cost of such legal fee expenses, by withdrawing that amount from the contingency reserve, to the extent the reserve is still large enough to cover such costs.

Thus, the legal fees expense will be recognized in the quarter when the lawsuit is initiated, not when the case is litigated unless the reserve has been eliminated for other reasons first, such as to manipulate earnings. Any taxes on capital for the upcoming quarter are now shown as a liability on a company's balance sheet, as a separate line item just below the "Accrued Income Tax Payable" line item.

The main screen now shows, at all times, the date of the next earnings report release for the current "active entity" if it is a corporation. The "Database Search" screen now includes an item for selecting stocks based on Analyst's Rating, which can be used to only select stocks with a "Strong Buy" rating, or any of the other 4 rating categories: May 1, Minor release The automatic addition of stocks to the Streaming Stock Quotes List can now be turned off, if desired, using a toggle item on the "Settings" pulldown menu.

A new "Clear" button has been added to the Streaming Stock Quotes List section on the main screen. Click on it to clear the entire streaming quotes list, if you decide you want to start a new list from scratch. A new "Fill" button has been added to the Streaming Stock Quotes List section on the main screen. Click on it and any stocks you own or are short will be added to the list, if the list is not full. In addition, if there are still any open slots, any other companies you control will then be added to the list, The six types of new taxes on capital that were added by Version 5.

Thus, when playing at the highest difficulty levels, you will now be given a chance to choose whether or not any of those taxes might be applied, in case you think that dealing with a number of punitive new taxes on capital and wealth is a bit "too realistic" for you. The bonus compensation formula for CEO's has been completely revised and made more complicated. This feature was added so that you can't take control of a company with a history of earnings increases, make yourself its CEO, and begin collecting huge bonuses based on what the company did before you arrived.

When changing the name of a company when doing a startup or otherwisethe old, discarded name would previously appear on the streaming stock quotes list for a while, until the stock ticker ran for few moments and replaced it with the new name when updating the list. Now the new name replaces the old one on the list immediately.

Also, when doing a startup of a new company, the company could sometimes be confronted almost immediately with an "ethical choice scenario," unless Cheat Mode was turned off.

Now, in the registered version only, a startup won't be offered such an ethical choice dilemma until it has been in existence more than 2 years, which is a bit more realistic for most scenarios.

The algorithms for adjusting the terms of options contracts have been improved to better reflect transactions such as spin-offs, extraordinary dividends, stock offerings, mergers, and stock buy-backs, to prevent "unfair" losses or windfall gains on options held or shorted on companies doing such transactions.

But note that files saved with a newer version cannot be used in an older version, so if you are playing with another person and e-mailing the saved data file back and forth after you each take your turn, you must both be using the same version of Wall Street Raider.

April 1, Major release Options trading has now been extended to all corporations. All corporations except banks and insurance companies are now allowed to buy put and call options, sell "covered calls" against stocks they own, or sell naked puts or calls.

They may purchase puts or calls if they have the cash to do so, but may only sell "naked" puts or calls if they meet certain creditworthiness requirements, including a minimum "BBB" credit rating. Banks and insurance companies are only allowed to sell "covered calls" against stocks they own, or buy puts to hedge such stock positions or do some combination of the two.

They may not speculate by buying calls or selling "naked" puts or calls. However, they may buy back calls they have sold short or may sell puts they have bought as hedges. While corporations other than banks and insurance companies can usually speculate by selling "naked" puts calls short, there are limits based on the seller's financial strength.

In this new version, buying or selling options may sometimes be limited, since the Options Exchange now must lay off the risk for each new option you create, by finding a corporation that is able to take the other side of the contract.

If your transaction is too large, or if you have created too many large options contracts, you may not always be able to find a counterparty, at some point. Six additional buttons have been added to the main screen "Quick Search Functions" area, so it is no longer necessary to open up a menu to bring up a Research Report, Earnings Report, Financial Profile, Shareholder List, Portfolio List, or Options Portfolio List.

One mouse click now brings up any of those items. Three buttons that were formerly on the main screen Market Share, Most Cash, and Largest Tax Losses have been moved to the General Research menu. A new button has been added to the General Research Menu, the "Largest Market Cap" button.

This list also shows each company's credit rating and who, if anyone, controls it. If there are any open slots on the Streaming Quotes List which displays streaming quotes for up to 15 stocksa stock will now be added to the list automatically if it is selected as the "Active Entity" unless you have recently deleted it from the list.

In the previous release, a feature was added that allowed a player to manipulate the earnings of a company of which he or she was the C. Buttons for these functions have been added to the "Other Trans. The prior restriction, allowing such transactions only for a company of which you were the C.

In prior versions, you could use the "Spread Rumors" feature to bring down the stock price of a competitor's company, just before a game ends, so that there is no time for the opponent to sue you for slander and possibly win a judgment against you.

In this version, you can no longer use the "Spread Rumors" feature in the last year of a game. These new taxes on capital, which can pop up at any time and can sometimes get repealed are as follows: This tax is paid by the company on its net worth if any reduced by the amount of its business assets. Banks and insurers are exempted.

Tax rates and details for all these new taxes, and whether or not currently imposed, can quickly be found by clicking on the "Economic Statistics" button on the General Research menu. Each tax is paid quarterly except the "billionaire's" wealth tax, which is paid at the end of each year. Of course, not all of these taxes will be imposed in any one game usuallyand the tax rates are often rather low, but they will be imposed often enough to keep things interesting, if you are in danger of becoming too filthy rich Players who like for their controlled companies to have high stock prices a la Berkshire-Hathaway will no longer have the stock price automatically split at prices above 1, Instead, splits won't be mandatory unless the stock price rises toor above.

The Chapter 11 Bankruptcy reorganization provisions have been modified so that companies emerging from bankruptcy will now usually have at least a "CC" credit rating, meaning larger writedowns for shareholders and creditors, but the bankrupted company will now have a somewhat stronger balance sheet and a better chance of avoiding another bankruptcy proceeding. When trying to change banks, if you have a very large account balance cash to transfer to the new bank, it will not accept such a transfer of "hot money," which might have caused its stock to soar -- but only until you moved the money to yet another bank.

Sound of another large loophole clanging shut Players cannot sell "unvested" executive stock options, but the options "vest" and can be sold when the player is in dire circumstances and receives a margin call. In prior versions, a player could create a margin call situation in order to be able to sell the options, but now all bonds and stocks must be sold first when a player receives margin calls or has a negative cash balance that can't be canceled by borrowing. Another, small, loophole closed.

December 1, Major release By popular demand, a print feature has been added to various research screens, enabling users to print out a financial statement, earnings report, company research report, portfolio listing, industry summary, etc. Dialog boxes whose contents are printable will appear with a "PRINT" button on the bottom of the dialog box, enabling one-click printing. Some copyrighted material, such as various cheat scenarios, still may not be printed.

As the CEO of a company, you can now "manage" earnings to some extentby underreporting profits, burying the difference in a "Reserve for Contingencies," for possible future expenses, such as litigation, product liability, environmental liability, and the like. Companies not controlled by a player will also routinely add to their Reserve for Contingencies, but only when they are expecting a profit, not a loss.

Once a significant amount of reserves have been set aside over a number of quarters or years, you may then want to draw on that account to manipulate earnings UPWARD.

Additions or withdrawals from the reserve have no tax effect, since additions were not deductible. Banks are treated somewhat differently, since they are much more closely regulated and scrutinized by the government. Instead of creating a Reserve for Contingencies for a bank, you simply add additional amounts to its Bad Debt Reserve, reducing the need for future additions, but you aren't allowed to make discretionary reductions of this reserve which is only reduced according to a formula applicable to all banks, based on the size and quality of its loan portfolio, or when bad debts are charged off against the reserve.

Two new buttons have been added to the "Other Transactions Menu" for decreasing earnings adding amounts to the reserve or increasing earnings taking amounts back out of the reserve. On or both of these buttons appear if you are CEO of the current "Active Entity" and also control it. Where a proposed merger is announced regarding a targeted company that you control, you are now as an "insider" prohibited from trading in options on that company while the merger is pending, except to close out any existing long or short options positions on the company.

But you can still buy more of its stock, in the hope of a quick profit when the merger goes through, though you will have to make a "tender offer" at well above the current market price, which may not be worthwhile. Or, you may sell your stock if you have doubts about the merger. Where a holding company you control is about to try to merge with a target company and you or your company buy up call options on the target company in the hope of making a quick profit on the run-up in its stock when the merger is consummated, you or your company will now be forced to close the option positions, based on the target's pre-offer stock price -- thus closing a big loophole and preventing a conflict of interest insider trading.

The "My News" button functions have been enhanced. In the new version, this feature will not only collect and display any recent news items regarding you, companies you control, or stocks you own directly or are shortbut now will also look for news items on any stocks on which you or any company you control has an options position or owns any stock in. October 1, Minor release A player or company owning a put or call option that is "in-the-money" may now exercise the option prior to its expiration date, by using the "Exercise Call Option" or "Exercise Put Option" buttons that have been added to the Other Transactions Menu.

Such early exercises are subject to the same limitations as exercise at expiration, such as not being able to acquire control of a company by an option exercise, having sufficient funds to exercise a call option, not buying up the last "public" shares of a company, and not being able to exercise an "unvested" executive stock option. When an unrelated company offers to merge with a company in which you or your controlled companies own stock, you will now be given a notice of the offer, including the identity of the offering company and the offer price per share which will be paid in the form of the offeror's stock at its value on the date the merger is consummated.

The notice also specifies the date about one month ahead on which you will have to vote your shares for or against the merger proposal. That will give you a month of game time to do some research on the acquiring company and decide how you wish to vote. Research Reports now show more detail on pending antitrust lawsuits by or against the company, including the amount of damages being sued for. The amounts won't show up if you load a game file from a prior version, for antitrust suits that had been filed while playing the older version.

A company profile financial statement now includes an additional footnote if there are antitrust lawsuits pending against the company, indicating its maximum exposure. We've plugged a loophole in the prior version, which allowed a company to make an extraordinary dividend distribution without an immediate large downward adjustment to its stock price, and plugged a similar loophole regarding a spin-off of stock of a subsidiary.

A bug in the tax calculation for exercise of shorted call options has been corrected. This release is file-compatible with saved game files from versions 3. July 1, Major release Changes have been made regarding "executive stock options" for company C.

In the new release, such options are still granted to a C. Also, instead of having the company buy publicly-traded options on its stock and grant them to the C.

Executive options are restricted, and cannot be sold for one year after the date granted. However, after that date, the player may sell the option back to the employer company without a commissionat its current fair market value.

Whatever the company pays the player to cancel the option is an expense to the company at that time. In the shareware version, the options remain restricted until the date of expiration, at which time they will be exercised or bought back by the company for their cash value, if any.

Earnings projections for a company now take into account the value of any executive options that will be expiring before the end of the quarterly reporting period, assuming the current intrinsic value of the option, the excess of the current stock price over the strike price of the option if anywill become an expense at expiration if the stock price does not change.

Under the revised rules, if you are C. Thus if you take over another player's company, XYZ Corp. The program will now warn you with an announcement if you, or a company you control, have option positions long or short that are due to expire in mid-month in the following month. The announcements are made just before the end of each month of play. Companies are now able to issue new stock for cashat current market value, to the player who controls the company or to another company other than a bank that is also controlled by the player.

This provides a means of injecting equity capital into a company that is on the verge of bankrupcty, to help stave off the bankruptcy. Use the "Private Stock Offering" button on the Financing Menu to either do such a transaction, or, as in prior versions, to issue stock to an unrelated "white knight" company as the investor.

Companies with ongoing exposure to asbestos or "SuperFund" environmental lawsuits are no longer able to float new bond issues or to do public stock offerings but may still do private stock offerings or mergers. Adjustments are now made in stock price history for stock chart purposes to accurately reflect stock issuances and stock buybacks by a company that increased or decreased its outstanding stock by such transactions.

This is useful to watch, when, for example, you are awaiting a company's next quarterly earnings report the date of which release is shown in a company's Financial Profile.

Thus, an insurance company can only sell "covered" calls or buy back such calls it has sold short. Whether options bought or sold by such corporations can be exercised will depend on the exercise or not setting for the controlling player.

If no player still controls a corporation that has long or short positions in call options at the time the options expire, the options will be settled for cash value if anyrather than being exercised. Executive stock options are now granted to the CEO of a corporation. Once you've taken control of a corporation and had yourself elected as its CEO, you not only receive cash salary and bonuses from the company, but now you will also receive a grant of stock options call options on the company's stock at the beginning of each quarter.

Best of all, the granting of the option is not taxable to you, the employee, and if you sell the option later, the amount you receive is taxable at the favorable capital gains tax rate. However, there is a catch: The options you receive are restricted and can't voluntarily be sold during the year they are received. In the shareware version, they are restricted until the date of expiration, at which time they will be exercised or sold for cash value, if any.

There is another major catch, or trade-off, too: The value of the options when granted is a compensation expense for the company, which can put a major dent in the company's earnings, which may cause the stock to fall and your options to eventually become worthless, unless the company does very well over the following two years.

Thus you will have some tough decisions to make, whether to elect yourself as CEO of a company you control, or to instead forego receiving any salary, bonuses or executive stock options from the company. This makes it easier for your bank to buy more or larger loans. The program now gives you a warning when an "ethical scenario" memo is about to be presented, so you won't accidentally hit the "Enter" key and unintentionally accept the offered scam transaction.

The program also gives a player notice in most instances when he or she has lost control of a company whose stock he or she directly holds. The computer player "Wally Raider" will now try to change its bank lender to a bank it controls, if possible, or else to a large neutral bank, if its loan is held by a hostile bank one that is controlled by a human player.

Click on it when a company name or symbol appears there, and doing so will instantly select that company as the "active entity. Currency conversion rates have been updated to reflect more recent values, in light of the sharp drop in the value of the U.

November 3, Minor release Plugged options trading loophole, where player who acts quickly at start of game to buy call options on various stocks could often reap enormous instant profits by the time the stock price "normalizes" at at a more realistic level.

In revised version, options trading is suspended for the first "month" of play in a newly started game. Stock charts are now available from the beginning of the game, rather than having to wait until 3 months of stock price history has been built up. The program now creates 2 months of "pre-game" stock history for each company, except for a "startup" company that you start up during the game, which still must wait 3 months before charts become available.

Rare but potentially significant bug was fixed, which probably has existed since we began tying the amount of a bank's CD customer deposits to cash balances of its customers players and corporations that borrow from that particular bank. Companies hit by huge losses, resulting in large bank overdrafts could wipe out their bank, if unable to raise enough cash from sales of assets to cover the cash deficit, a result which should not have occurred.

Now, if a customer corporation has an "overdraft" the negative balance does not reduce the bank's cash balance. Of course, the bank would also have a loss on any loan it had made to XYZ, if any, as well.

September 1, Major release Newly released Wall Street Raider v. Each stock chart shows up to 60 months of recent stock price activity for a company in the simulationshowing the high, low, and last price of its stock for each month in the period covered, which can give you a good sense of how a company is prospering or notat a glance. To view a stock chart for the currently selected "Active Entity" if the selected entity is a corporation, rather than the individual playeryou simply click on this new button.

In addition, a new menu item, "Stock Chart Size" has been added to this menu, allowing you to toggle back and forth between large- or small-sized stock charts, whichever you prefer to view, when using the new stock charting feature. This item is "grayed out" on the Settings Menu in the "shareware" version.

Wall Street Raider Updates Information

Now that the software keeps track of each company's stock price history for the most recent 5 years, a new line item has been added to the Financial Profile for a company, in the "Stock and Earnings Data" section of the Profile, showing the week high and low prices for the company's stock adjusted for any stock splits or other equity changes. That made it easy to pocket a quick profit on the short sale of the stock.

That is no longer possible, as you may no longer maintain a short position in stock of a company you control, due to the obvious conflict of interest as an "insider. A new "global warming" news scenario pop-up has been added, and various fictional company names have been replaced by names of hot new real-world companies, such as Chipotle Mexican Grill in the restaurant industry.

A number of refinements have been made to the bankruptcy procedures, so that banks that fail and are resuscitated by a government injection of funds now receive enough such funds to make the revived bank relatively healthy, rather than barely alive as before. Also, when a corporation goes bankrupt, while owing bank loans, the bank will now usually receive a significant percentage of the stock in the reorganized company, in exchange for the loan write-off.

In prior versions, the bank only received stock in the bankrupt company when the old shareholders lost all of their stock in the reorganization. That is no longer a prerequisite. Minor bug fixes, to the pull-down menu items for several types of settings, such as "Suppress pop-ups," which did not always correctly show the current setting, and also to prevent pop-up announcements or earnings reports regarding stocks controlled by the Computer player, when it is taking its turn.

The new version is compatible with saved game data files from Versions 3. However, game data files saved with this new version will take quite a bit longer to save or retrieveas they are about 10 times as large as the data files from 4. February 15, Major release Stock options puts and calls may now be made exercisable at expiration date by the player who owns options or has sold them short. Only options that are "in-the-money" at expiration date will be exercised.

Long call options will only be exercised to the extent there is "public" stock available for you to acquire. The same is true if you are short put options. This is to prevent you from using a back-door scheme to get control of companies in order to evade anti-trust law restrictions on acquisitions. Long calls or short puts will also not be exercised if you don't have the buying power to acquire the underlying stock, or if you already have 15 stocks in your individual stock portfolio the limitand can't add another.

Shorted call options will only be exercised to the the extent you are long the stock, which will be called away. No short position in the stock will be created. The same is is true if you have a long position in puts. Any short calls or long puts that are in-the-money and that exceed the amount of stock you own will be "settled" at their intrinsic value.

Options trading features are enabled only in the registered versions of Wall Street Raider, not in the shareware version.

More company name items have been made "clickable" in the Personal Financial Profile and corporate Financial Profile screens, where company names or stock symbols appear. Clicking on any such name or symbol will change the Active Entity to that corporation.

How nice of your stockbrokers In the Industry Summary screens, we have inserted markers by the price-to-net worth number for some companies, as was added in Industry Projections screen in the prior release: Now you will be able to see, at a glance, who controls which holding companies, banks and insurers for which there are no Industry Projection screens.

To prevent players from making insider profits by buying large numbers of call options on stock of a company or selling puts short on itand then forgiving an advance to the company in order to boost its net worth and stock price, such conflicts of interest now prohibit you from doing a forgiveness of an advance if you are long call options or short put options on the company's stock.

To prevent players from building up long chains of controlled companies, all highly leveraged so that most or all will go bankrupt eventually, and profiting by selling the stocks short or by buying puts or selling calls short on such stocks, an obvious conflict of interest, the simulation now will generally prohibit short-selling of the stock or call options or of buying put options on a stock you control. These restrictions do not apply if you don't control the company whose stock you are shorting or are selling "naked" calls short against or buying puts on.

Instead, in that case it is treated as just a contribution to capital, which increases the player's tax basis in his or her stock in the company. The Computer player has a few new refinements, including the ability to pay off a "frozen" loan and change its bank lender to a friendly controlled bank.

Various minor refinements to options trading; Financial Profile display improvements, including display of the "call price" for redemption of a company's bonds and whether or not they are currently callable.

New "Quote of the Day" feature added except in the shareware version. Each time you start Wall Street Raider, a "quote of the day" will be flashed on the screen, from a collection of "in-your-face" and wryly cynical observations by everyone from Aesop in B.

Compatible with saved game data files from Versions 3. October 11, Major release Not compatible with saved game files from prior versions earlier than 3. Now includes trading of put and call options on any "publicly-traded" stocks, for periods of one to 24 months.

NOT ENABLED in shareware version of Wall Street Raider. Players can buy options, sell covered calls or covered puts, or sell "naked" puts or calls. With the leverage afforded by options, you can increase your profits massively if your bet on a big move in a stock's price turns out to be correct -- or lose your entire investment in an option purchase if you're wrong! We also changed the name of the "Options Menu" at the top of the main screen to the "Game Options Menu," so no one will be confused, thinking there is something on that menu that pertains to put and call options -- there isn't.

Items on that menu deal with choices you make such as turning off Cheat Mode, setting the Ticker Speed from 1 toetc. We've plugged a tax loophole with regard to short-selling. In the prior version 3. Since, as a short seller, you would have to pay out the amount of the "short dividend" on the shorted stock, you were allowed to deduct that expense.

Then, because the large dividend would greatly reduce the stock's price, you could cover your short position and reap a capital gain. Thus, even if you just broke even, you would have a large "ordinary" tax deduction, reducing your regular high tax rate taxable income, while generating an almost automatic capital gain, taxable at a much lower tax rate than ordinary income.

In this new version, any such "short dividends" you must pay on a short position when the stock pays a dividend are now treated as capital losses, which will offset your capital gain if you cover your short for a profit after the dividend is paid out and reduces the stock's value.

In the Industry Projection screens, we have inserted markers by the market share number for some companies: In addition, if you click on the "Financial Profile" for a corporation, it will tell you the current game date, and also the date on which that company will next report earnings. December 21, Major release Not compatible with saved game files from prior versions, due to addition of new data arrays.

We think you will enjoy being a "bear" and taking advantage of weak and sick companies, by selling their stocks short, to drive their prices down even further. In this new release of Wall Street Raider, a short margin account is created for each player when the player sells any stocks short, with the proceeds of the short sale deposited in this restricted account. This account is regularly "marked to market" -- cash must be transferred to the short account when the shorted stock goes up, or is transferred from the short margin account to the player's unrestricted cash account bank account when the shorted stock or stocks decline in value.

Which will tend to drive the stock price up further, sad to say, if you are still short the stock. This means that if you are short a stock, and some company or other player buys up most of the publicly-owned shares, reducing the "float," you can be "squeezed" and forced to cover some or all of your short position.

Not a nice thing to do to a friend or spouse. The short sale feature, as implemented, allows players to pursue new strategies, including doing a "short squeeze" to ruin a competing player who has a large short position in a stock.

Another way of squeezing a short seller is to acquire the shorted company in a merger. We've added some new "scenarios," including a major new "Peak Oil" scenario that can create some very harsh conditions -- unless, of course, you're long on oil and gas stocks, and a few other types of stocks that benefit from the chaos!

Or if you've sold short auto companies, airlines, or the like, which are devastated by the energy crisis. The Peak Oil scenario will tend to pop up in about half the games you play, but will not pop up in the first 2 years of play.

Sorry, "shareware" version players! Some times the crisis will be over almost before it's started, perhaps just after you've bet the ranch on oil or oil service stocks We've corrected a couple of minor potential bugs that could cause sudden enrichment or bankruptcy of a newly-formed bank in certain circumstances, where the selected currency was the Icelandic Kronur, Indian Rupee, Japanese Yen, or Korean Won.

Finally, we've added F1 key functionality to access "HELP" files at any time when the main screen is visible, plus many small improvements in the user interface and in various algorithms too many to count. May 10, Minor release Compatible with saved game files from prior versions 3. Added new search criterion to DataBase Search screen, which allows you to exclude from the list of companies that meet your search criteria any company that has no publicly traded shares of stock that you might purchase.

But you can leave this box unchecked if you want such non-public stocks to be displayed, such as where such a company's parent company is controlled by you, so that you could buy its stock from the parent company.

Checking this "Don't Show Nonpublic Companies" box has no effect if you are searching for bonds to buy, and have checked the "Has Bonds Issued and Outstanding" box -- since the fact that a company has no stock which you can buy is irrelevant if you are buying its bonds.

January 11, Minor release Compatible with saved game files from prior version 3. Changed rules, to allow more ruthless tactics by a player who controls a bank. A bank can now buy up loans of an opposing player if the game is played at Difficulty Level 3, the highest.

Or it can buy up loans of a company controlled by a player, at Difficulty Levels 2 or 3. However, as before, it cannot buy loans that are currently held by a bank that is controlled by another player. These rule changes will allow for considerably more vicious and cutthroat tactics, and makes control of a bank and getting your loans from your controlled bank even more important than before.

Various minor bug fixes and minor new features, such as a warning, when you are about to advance money to a company you control that has a credit rating of less than "BB," that you will not be able to recall the advances until the company's credit rating improves. January 5, Major release Not compatible with saved game files from earlier versions prior to version 3.

Seriously revised user interface. The main screen has been greatly increased in size, to make room for listing up to 15 stocks in a "streaming quotes" section, and for a number of new controls that have been added, as discussed below. As stock prices change, the new prices of the stocks on the list are updated, and are shown in blue if no changein green if up or in red if down.

Also, you can quickly select any company whose stock is on the streaming quotes list by simply clicking on a "Select" button at the top of the list, and then double-clicking on the company name, from a pick list that will be displayed.

Doing so selects that company as the "active entity. Click on it to see all recent news items on any stock you own directly, or that you control indirectly, or any news items that mention you. In the past, it was often annoying, when pulling up research information on a company you own, and one that it is about to buy or sell, to have to enter the stock symbol or pull up a list of companies to select the other, when going back and forth between the two companies.

Now, the program keeps track of the current "active entity" and the previously selected "active entity. In addition, the program now "remembers" each player's last selected "active entity" and second to last selected active entity, so when your turn ends, and it later becomes your turn again, to use the above example, those two entities are again reflected immediately on the screen, with ABC as the "active entity" and XYZ shown on the "Select XYZ" button.

A number of new button controls have been added to main screen, both to improve ease of use of the program, and to add new search features that users have requested. These eight buttons are as follows: Two new buttons in the "Transactions" section of the main screen: A "Buy Stock" button and a "Sell Stock" button. Six new buttons have been added in a "Search Functions" section of the main screen: One is simply a direct link to the DataBase Search feature, which can now be accessed without first going through the General Research Menu.

A second "Recall" button instantly calls up an updated list eurex futures trading hours companies from the database, using the most recent set of search parameters you have selected, saving you from opening the General Research Menu, clicking on "DataBase Search" and then clicking on "Display Results.

In addition, a "My Corps" button has been added in this section, which works in a manner similar to the "My Corps" buttons on the various menus, but which can now be accessed directly from the main screen, with a single mouse click. Earnings reports for any company a player controls now pop up automatically the moment they are released, during that player's turn. Also, the most recently selected "active entity" before the currently selected "active entity" will also automatically have its earnings report pop up when released -- as well as that for the currently selected "active entity.

New item added to "Options" Menu -- "Suppress Roaring twenties stock market bubble Reports" item.

Toggle this item "ON" if you control a large number of companies and are annoyed by the too-frequent pop-up earnings announcements, each time one of your controlled companies issues its latest quarterly earnings report.

When this attila the stockbroker option is turned "ON," no such reports will pop up, except for the company that is the currently selected "active entity" if any. Clicking on this item will turn the suppression feature "ON" if it is currently "OFF," or "OFF" if it is currently "ON. However, the penalty is not imposed if the player who controls the corporation that is making the prepayment also controls the lending bank.

The penalty also applies when a company issues corporate bonds, and elects to apply some or all of the bond issuance proceeds to pay down bank debt. It also applies javascript forex real time data provider a company goes through a taxable liquidation and pays off its bank loan as part of the liquidation process.

The prepayment penalty does not apply to loan repayments made by the players themselves, only to corporate borrowers. Spreading false rumors using the Spread Rumors button asia trading development joint-stock company atd still an effective if dirty tactic.

However, overuse of this tactic, or engaging in too many scurrilous activities, may subject you, the player, to individual liability if the company you targeted sues you for slander or libel. Thus, you will need to use that tactic sparingly, in this and future versions of the program. Finally, in addition to numerous small internal program enhancements, the main screen listing of indices, crude oil prices, prime rate, etc.

November 1, Major release Saved games from versions earlier than v. Modified percentage of business assets of an industrial company that must be committed to working capital. Business assets are items such as plant and equipment, airplanes operated by an airline, etc.

Altered "Change Bank" feature in several ways. You no longer need to pay off a loan in full before you can change your bank lender -- if the new bank you choose has enough cash to buy your loan from your current lender, and if the current lender is not controlled by an opposing player who is presumed NOT to want to sell your loan.

Also, if you have a "sick" company with a large loan it will probably default on, you cannot have it change its bank to a bank controlled by another player, "sticking" that player's bank with the bad loan, unless the loan balance is fairly small.

Several things were done to plug loopholes in the logic for insurance companies, to make it harder to become an "instant trillionaire" by manipulating and creating gigantic insurance companies. Changed the way dividends are set. Rather than pay out a percentage of the prior year's net income, the dividend for a company is now set as a fixed dollar amount per share, even if that means that the dividend exceeds the company's earnings.

You can now set the amount, such as 1. Uncontrolled companies will periodically raise or lower their dividends, based on various factors, such as yield, earnings trends, credit rating, industry and company growth rates, and other complex factors. A company with a "D" credit rating will cease paying any dividends almost immediately. In the new version, any time a company you control releases a new quarterly earnings report, the earnings report screen will immediately pop up.

If you control a large number of companies, and the frequent pop-ups become annoying to you, you can stop them by turning on the "Suppress Popups" feature in the "Options" menu. August 1, Not compatible with saved game files from earlier versions prior to 2. By popular demand, the new version adds a "spin-offs" feature to the Financing Submenu. Using this button function, any corporation you own may be able to "spin off" stock it holds in another corporation to its shareholders.

You can, if you choose, do a taxable spin-off, though this will usually prove to be costly. However, other government agencies might block the spin-off if it would have too serious an effect on the distributing corporation's creditworthiness, even if you have gotten a favorable advance tax ruling from the tax authorities.

The "indexing" begins after the year Two new currency choices have been added, the Egyptian Pound and the Icelandic Krone, bringing the total number of currencies for which the game can be configured to The sound of another tax loophole closing Changes have been made so that now when you buy stock from a related entity such as a company you controland the seller best way fund forex account a loss on the sale, the loss will be disallowed for tax purposes and not reported as a loss for financial reporting purposessince you were essentially selling the stock to yourself.

In such cases, however, the higher "tax basis" of the purchased shares carries over to the buying entity, so that the disallowed loss is added to the cost of the shares purchased, for the buyer.

To recognize a loss on stock, it must be sold at a loss to "the public" or to an unrelated buyer or must become worthless in bankruptcy. May 19, Minor release Saved game files are compatible only with v. Bug fix for some copies of v. Expanded possible types of assets you can contribute to a wholly-owned bank or insurance company. April 17, Minor release: Saved game files are compatible only with v. Modified so that the stock market index and individual stock prices react more gradually to changing economic conditions.

A new "Resign As CEO" button has been added to the Management Menu, and appears when the "active entity" is the player. This allows you to resign your position as CEO of any company, which will save the company from having to pay you a salary.

Since the salary payment will reduce a company's earnings, taking a salary from a company you own may cause a decrease in the value of the company's stock, so you may decide you prefer to stop serving as CEO, and give up your salary, rather than depress the price of the company's stock. An "auto save" option has been added to the Options Menu. Turning this feature on will cause the most current game data to be saved at the end of each quarter of play, automatically.

This will come in handy in the event of a power failure or a dumb move on your partas you can always reload the game and continue play as of the end of the most recent quarter. A corporation's tax net operating loss can still be carried forward indefinitely, for use in offsetting taxable income in subsequent years.

This will put a premium on finding ways to quickly use up such tax loss carryovers before they expire shrink. Instituted quarterly estimated tax payments for players, instead of paying an entire year's taxes at the end of each year. Any remaining balance is paid at the end of the year; or, if the estimates result in an overpayment of the actual tax for the year, the overpayment is refunded at year-end.

All calculations and tax payments are done automatically for each player. A modification has been added so that once there is only one "surviving" human player left in a game, that player's turn never ends, until the game ends. The "End Turn" button is grayed out for the remainder of the game, also.

March 1, Major release Game data files saved by prior versions of Wall Street Raider are not compatible with or usable by this version of the binary stock system. Players may now make interest-bearing advances loans to any companies they control.

The advances are "demand loans," which means the player can demand full repayment at any time usually. However, the advances are subordinated to any bank loans or bond indebtedness owed by the company, so you may not be able to call in an advance if the corporation would have a credit rating of less than "BB" after the repayment is made. Thus, you may find in some cases that you cannot call in the loan advanceuntil the borrower's credit rating improves adequately. If the borrower goes bankrupt, bank loans and bond holders receive repayment first, before or with a higher priority than, holders of demand loans advances.

The borrowing company must pay the player interest, at the current Prime Rate charged by banks, at the time each interest payment is to be made. If the borrower's credit rating falls to "D," then the interest will accrue -- that is, be added to the loan amount -- forex open positions than be paid in cash.

Two new buttons, "Advance to Corp. Stock market symbol x3 new command button, "List Advances," has been added to the Entity Research Menu when the "active entity" is you, the player. Clicking on it will cause a display of all companies to which you have made advances, the amount of each such advance loanand the borrowing company's credit rating. Bank deposits and cash balances now reflect all changes in cash balances of the bank's corporate customers, or in cash balances of players who are customers of that bank.

Players and corporations are required to deposit their cash, as CD's, in the bank from which they borrow, as a condition of taking out a loan. When you click the "My Corps. Click or double-click on any company name to select it as the "active entity.

The "extraordinary dividend" rules have been changed relaxed somewhat, so that banks or insurers with "A" or better credit ratings will now sometimes be allowed to make relatively small payouts of such macd trading strategy dividends.

New feature added when doing "capital contributions": New disaster scenarios added. December 5, Major release Game data files saved by prior versions of Wall Street Raider are not compatible with or usable by this version indicator forex the program. While "cheat scenarios" normally only pop up once work at home radiology transcription jobs per scenario during any one game, the "strike scenario" by angry union employees may now pop up more than once, if you do numerous restructurings.

Junk bond pricing has been refined, so that a minor change guaranteed trading signals net worth that changes a bond's rating from "D" to "C" or from "C" to "D" will no longer have a major effect on the price of the bonds. As revised, the worse a "D"-rated company's finances grow, the lower its bonds will trade, on a gradual basis, until it becomes clear that the company is almost certain to have to shed part of its debts in a bankruptcy reorganization.

Previously, a slight decrease in assets that caused net worth to fall below zero and the credit rating to fall from "C" to "D" resulted in a cliff-like drop in the bond price. Asset purchase routines have been modified in a number of ways: A holding company may now enter an industry by purchasing "new" assets, and not only by purchasing assets from another company in that industry.

On the other hand, if buying very UNprofitable assets say from a poorly-managed company in a depressed industrythe buyer may be able to buy capital assets at a considerable discount.

The "discount" is treated as "negative goodwill" and is recognized immediately as income extraordinary income by the buyer. The seller will recognize a gain or loss on the sale, based on the sale price less a sales commission paid by the seller.

This will reduce the seller's gain, or increase its loss, on the sale of assets. The "Sell Business Assets" feature has been refined to make it possible to sometimes sell business assets at a net gain, although it will still be hard to do so if playing at Difficulty Level 3.

October 10, Major release Not file-compatible with data files saved by any previous versions, since the program now stores a lot of "tax basis" data for stock holdings of corporations. THE TAX MAN COMETH!! Sorry folks, but no more tax-free capital gains for corporations, starting with this version. Your "tax-free" days are over, starting with Version 2. However, we do still give you one break the U. IRS doesn't allow -- you can deduct losses on such stock sales fully unlike the real world IRS rules, that allow NO deduction at all for corporate capital losses, except to the extent of offsetting capital gains -- if there are any.

For financial reporting purposes, now that the program keeps track of the cost or other, adjusted, tax basis of stocks owned by corporations, and computes a gain or loss upon mt4 template binary options or worthlessness of the stock, the gains or losses are all treated as "extraordinary items," which are included in TOTAL earnings, but do not enter into the calculation of the more significant figure, "operating earnings.

The new help files give examples of when and how all or part of an "Excess Loss Account" may be triggered into taxable income for the parent company. Triggering an ELA recapture will not show up in your company's earnings report, but will affect its cash balance when it pays out the recapture tax. Notice that an ELA will be triggered as income to the parent even when the sub goes bankrupt, and its stock becomes worthless -- so that if there is an ELA negative tax basisa parent company will actually recognize taxable INCOME, rather than a loss, if the sub bellies up.

In effect, the parent has to pay up for having taken stock broker career singapore tax benefits or write-offs than it had invested in the sub, by recapturing the "excess losses.

Any other transaction, including an otherwise tax-free exchange in a merger, where the sub being acquired had an Excess Loss Account negative tax basis with respect to its stock in the hands of its former parent company, will trigger the recapture tax.

As suggested by users, the "startup" segment, when you start up a new corporation, now will display a default name and stock symbol for the company, but will also ask you at the time if you wish to change either its name or stock symbol. This version adds the ability of a bank you control to sell off individual business loans, or portions of its consumer loan or mortgage loan portfolio. Your bank can now sell mortgage or consumer loans at face value.

Corporate or player loans can be sold at prices that depend mainly on the borrower's credit rating, but not exceeding percent of face value. And no other bank will buy certain "bad credit" D-rated loans from your bank, which may soon become worthless.

As requested by a number of users, we have added a "Stock Split" button, to allow you to split a stock increase the number of shares by a multiple of more than 1, up to 10which decreases the price per share.

It has no more effect than cutting a pizza into 8 slices, rather than 4, but many people think stock splits are significant.

We also have added a "Reverse Split" button, also to the "MISC. A reverse split is the opposite, or mirror image, of a regular stock split. If you don't like to see your company's stock trading at 2. An additional limit has been placed on the ability of a bank to call in corporate loans. You can now choose from a list of your bank's loans, by clicking on the name of the borrower and either freezing or unfreezing lending to that particular borrower.

Once a loan is frozen, the notation "Froz. The "Call in Bank Loan" function has been modified in several ways. Additional limits have been placed on the ability to call a company's loan -- you can no longer do so if the company already has a negative cash balance and has sold all its liquid assets stocks and bonds.

In prior versions, it was sometimes impossible to sell off stock of a wholly-owned company. But you won't have that chance if you wait until you receive a margin call from your bank -- you have to sell stock immediately, at whatever price you can get for it.

August 6, Major release Not file-compatible with data files from any previous versions, due to some major changes in the way game data is stored in the new version. New Korean Peninsula disaster scenario, and Japanese disaster scenario added. This also will help healthy banks maintain their liquidity, and make it less likely that they will be forced to sell off bonds or loans to raise cash, since they will now be able to attract more deposits.

Added a further refinement to the way earnings are reported: Larger amounts of extraordinary items continue to be reported as a separate item, apart from "operating earnings," as before. The program now scans through the list of "busted" holding companies those not controlled by any player, and with no assets remaining other than cash and occasionally liquidates some of them, in taxable liquidations.

In prior versions, no such "taxable" liquidations occurred except those that were initiated by a human player. When you sell stocks or bonds, the program now tells you the amount of the taxable gain or loss on the sale, as well as your percentage gain or loss on the investment where the seller is you, the individual, rather than a corporation. When you need to borrow to complete various transactions, the program tells you how much you need to borrow, and how that will change your or your company's credit rating and debt-to-equity ratios, and asks if you want to go through with the transaction.

However, your company no longer will incur the full costs if the merger is aborted, for any other reasons. All merger costs are paid by the company that proposed the merger. Banks, when buying loans, now have a choice of picking corporate loans you wish to buy from a list of all bank loans that are offered for sale.

Also not shown are loans that are available for purchase, but which are too large for your bank to buy with its current cash balance. More disclosures added, when an uncontrolled company offers to merge with a company you own stock in, and you are asked to vote on the merger: July 9, Minor release Added new protections for the "Computer" player, to reduce its exposure to anti-trust suits, by divesting itself of some of its companies in industries dominated by companies controlled by the Computer player, in order to reduce its dominance.

Added new rare economic scenarios, that can appear if certain unusual econonic situations occur. June 30, Major release New version is compatible with versions 2. While the main screen user interface looks the same as version 2. Some you will like, others you may hate, if they plug up your favorite "loophole" for making instant megabucks. Financial reporting has been significantly modified -- reported earnings on which stock pricing is partly based now reflect a "provision for income taxes," rather than actual tax paid, as in real-world financial accounting for tax expense.

In addition, "extraordinary" or "non-recurring" income or loss items, net of tax effect, are not included in earnings -- stock prices, to the extent based on earnings, are now based on a company's "operating earnings" although earnings reports also will separately show the "extraordinary" items, and the total earnings if extraordinary items are added in.

These changes will make it more difficult to manipulate a company's stock price by incurring one-time gains or losses such as restructuring expenses, or gains or losses when a company buys back its own bonds below or above par, or when it wins an antitrust lawsuit. The "computer" player has been completely revamped, and made more active, smarter, and considerably more vicious.

The "Database Search" function has been improved, thanks to a user suggestion, by no longer listing and displaying a particular corporate bond issuer, if there are none of that company's bonds in "public" hands that you can buy. Now, if you receive a margin call, and will have to sell stock s to raise cash, you are given a choice of selecting which stock to sell, or else letting the bank decide on which ones will be sold, randomly.

This courtesy is extended only if the margin call comes when it is your turn -- otherwise, if it is another player's turn at the time, the bank will sell your stocks features of a put option contract on october gold futures you, without bothering to ask which ones are to be sold.

A new feature has been added, where companies with poor credit ratings D, C, or CC may uk trading holidays 2012 seek to make money fishing runescape p2p their balance sheets and avoid filing bankruptcy, by attempting to swap 2 new bonds for each 3 old bonds or 1 for 2, in some casesoffering a higher interest rate, in order to reduce the amount of outstanding debt.

Where you the player or a company you control own some of the company's bonds, you will be asked if you want to accept the tender offer of the reduced amount of new bonds.

Refusing will cause the tender offer to be canceled. As you might guess, the higher the premium you offer, the more likely the public and corporate shareholders will vote to approve the merger, unless your company is nearly bankrupt, or is a minnow trying to merge with a whale. More banking loopholes have been closed, making it tough to almost instantly create a gigantic bank that borrows gazillions in cheap interbank loans and uses the cash to buy up gazillions of corporate and other loans and bonds, with no limit.

In this new version, a bank that has a negative cash balance can only borrow up to million in whatever currency as interbank loans to cover its deficit cash balance, generally. If it still has a negative cash balance, it will next automatically sell most of its government bonds, and, if necessary, some of its mortgages and consumer loans.

If it still has a cash deficit, it will then be forced to float an issue of bonds to shore up its capital, if that is possible unless you control the bank.

If, after all that, it still has a cash deficit, the bank will then be forced to sell off randomly selected business loans, one at a time, to other banks, if it can find buyers. In short, you will no longer be able to instantly grow a bank to a vast size by simply borrowing infinite amounts as interbank loans.

It's getting tougher and tougher to make an easy buck Plugged another major loophole: Gains or losses on bond buy-backs by corporations are now treated as "extraordinary" income or loss, rather than operating income items. Thus, manipulating the market price of a company's bonds can still be profitable, but will no longer affect "operating income" and will not have nearly as much effect on the stock price of the company that earns the gain.

Added new "Suppress Popups" item to "Options Menu. Does not suppress major news announcements, such as bank failures, economic news, or a new earnings release for the current "active entity. April 28, Minor release New version is file compatible with version 2. HTML files for strategy manual in "full package" version have been replaced with new. CHM type searchable files.

Minor bug fix, regarding treatment of interbank loans, when one bank is liquidated into another. March 6, Major release Note: New version is NOT file-compatible with data files of games saved by prior versions, due to the expansion of the simulation and of its database that must be saved to disk when saving a game in mid-stream. This new version closes a lot of those "loopholes. Earnings projections are now available for the coming quarter for all corporations but are not always accurate, as in the real world, especially for complex companies with many subsidiary holdings.

Projections are updated 2 or 3 times each quarter, or after major corporate transactions, disasters, and after each quarterly earnings release. Bank lending practices have been curbed. A loan that comes to exceed those two limits will be frozen, and a bank will begin calling terrorist invest in stock market pdf part of its largest such loan, as required by government "bank examiners.

Otherwise for large corporationsyou may need to rely more on bond market financing, instead of bank loans. The size capitalization of banks at the start of the game has been considerably enlarged, to more closely reflect real world market conditions. As requested by users, the Database Search DB Search routine has been beefed up to provide detailed info on corporate bond issues, to make it easier to do bond research.

Bond issues displayed by the search screen now show issuer's name, date due, interest rate coupon rateyield to maturity, credit rating, the total size of each bond issue, and the amount of each issue that is available for purchase from the "public" bondholders i. Numerous new product liability scenarios have been added, for companies in 16 industry groups.

New feature attempts to "read your mind" and anticipate what company's stock or bonds you intend to buy, or which company you intend to take over in a merger, file suit against, buy assets from, or so on. The program will "guess" the identity of the targeted company based on whichever company you have just finished researching and will insert its stock symbol in the input area of the stock selection dialog, so that you only have to click on "OK" if the program has "guessed" your intentions correctly.

When a new bank is created, it automatically tries to buy loans from other banks with a good portion of its injected capital.

The seller will get the bad loan off its books, but will incur a charge to its bad debt reserve. Added new "ethical choice" scenarios that may pop up if you are playing with "Cheat Mode" on when you stock broker salary wall street to do certain transactions, such as mergers or restructurings.

January 12, Major release File-compatible with games saved from versions 1. New button command, "Tax Basis Info," has been added to the "ENTITY INFO" submenu. Appears when the current "active entity" is you, the player. Click on it to see the tax basis cost, with certain adjustments of all the stocks and bonds you own directly. The "Sell Stock" feature has been modified so that if you the player are the seller, the list of your stocks that will be displayed for you to select from when you click on the "Sell Stock" button will show the cost "tax basis" of each stock in your portfolio.

Stock pricing for bank stocks forex trading school in pakistan been modified to make it more difficult to drastically manipulate the stock price of a controlled bank. Banks with credit ratings of BB or worse now pay more than the LIBOR rate on interbank borrowings, up to 3. Added feature to "Startup" function, to immediately split the stock price to less than Rules changed for non-taxable liquidations: If the parent company is a bank or insurance company, and the subsidiary to be liquidated owns stock of the parent company, it will be required to divest sell the parent company stock before the liquidation can go forward.

December 26, Minor release File-compatible with games saved from versions 1. Registered version now captures name of licensed owner, and registration number, storing platforma forex plus500 opinie for you for future reference, when you request updates during the 12 months after purchase. New disaster scenario added: December 18, Minor release File-compatible with games saved from versions 1.

Now, such a change of business will cause the parent company to lose its tax loss carryovers, due to the "change of business. November 26, VERY major release File-compatible with games saved from versions 1. Major overhaul of the main screen's user interface. Greatly sped up operation of the program, by combining all the main elements of the program into a single program file. Previous versions required a second or so to load the "Transactions Menu" program, with large amounts of data written back and forth to disk, which slowed performance on computers with older, slower hard disks.

EXE file now, with no delays on accessing or returning from doing transactions, a major improvement. Added a new research feature, a diagram screen for any selected player or company, which shows in graphic format all the stocks owned by the player or company, and, for companies, all of its shareholders, with the percentage ownership of each holding or holder.

You can quickly skim through a chain of ownership just by clicking on any companies shown on the diagram screen. New popup menus are available, for General Research functions and Entity Research about the currently selected active entityas well as for various groupings of transactions -- Trading, Management, Financing, and Other.

Each contains text displays with useful information, such as earnings trends for the active entity if it is a corporation, or estimated income tax information for the player. The General Research popup menu contains a text box with a discussion of "Industry Outlook" trends for the currently selected industry, as well as a discussion of the general economic trend and central bank monetary policy. Added occasional "Advisory" suggestions in the text boxes that appear on each of the pop-up transactions menus, such as warnings when bonds held are in default, or when a stock holding is near bankruptcy.

Updated currency conversion rate of Euro to 1: New "ethics" scenario added for Biotech Industry. And limit purchases to the amount of existing government debt available. Bank or insurance company that is bankrupted by asbestos litigation is now usually freed of any further asbestos liability after the bankruptcy. Made changes in announced GDP economic growth rate less frequent, announced only once a month, usually.

Modified company "Research Reports" by adding a disclosure where the company's union employees are currently on strike. Now, instead of accepting the 3 size categories, you are able to enter a minimum and a maximum size of capitalization. Made major changes in the corporate "Liquidation" feature of the program, including: If it can't be liquidated into a parent company that owns all of its stock a nontaxable liquidationyou will be asked if you want to do a taxable liquidation. Or, you can choose to do a taxable liquidation, by clicking on "Taxable Liquidation," rather than "Tax-Free Liquidation.

But tax loss carryovers, if any, of the holding company will be lost on the liquidation. In a "taxable" liquidation, the industrial or holding company must sell off any stocks or capital assets it owns, and pay off any bonds it has issued, before the liquidation can be completed, reducing all its assets to cash, which is then used to pay off any bank loans or accrued income taxes, before the cash is distributed to all its stockholders in proportion to their ownership percentage.

Any tax loss carryovers of the company that is liquidated will be lost. In addition, any individual shareholders players will recognize a capital gain or loss when they receive cash for their stock, so it is a taxable event for them. Details of this and all prior releases are available upon request. You must have a web browser installed, and the registered version of Wall Street Raider software, to view the electronic book, which consists of HTML and graphics image files.

May 1, Major Upgrade This version has added a useful new class of investments or financing: Players, banks and insurance companies can now invest in these equity- like bonds, which offer fixed income and more safety than the underlying stock, but which will participate in any significant gains in the stock, with less downside risk.

These securities add a powerful new tool, usable in many creative ways, to your arsenal of investment strategies. As a financing tool, players who control a company can still have the company issue "straight" non-convertible bondsbut may now choose instead to issue convertible bonds, at significantly lower interest rates than straight bonds, due to the "equity kicker.

Convertible bonds will now allow for new takeover strategies, such as, for instance, taking a large position in the convertible bonds issued by a company that seems to be firmly controlled by another player, which may give you enough stock to take control when the bonds mature or are called early, if they are converted to stock.

Which won't occur, if the stock is below the bonds' conversion price when the bonds mature or are called. Taking a user's suggestion, we have added a feature that lets you choose to be alerted when a particular stock's price rises above or falls below a level that you specify. The alert will remain in effect for a full year of game play, or until the objective is reached and you are notified by a pop-up message.

A new "Stock Price Alert" item has been added to the MISC. Simply click on that button and enter your specified target price for the stock that is the current "active entity," and you will receive a pop-up notification if the stock reaches the price target you set in the next "year" of play. Currency exchange rates fluctuate rapidly, as world economic changes occur. As a result, the "default" exchange rates relative to the U.

Accordingly, in this version, if you to start at novice binary options a new game in a non-U. We have updated the default currency exchange rates for all 22 non-U. This release has a singular focus on creating MORE REALISM.

Although previous versions imposed some size limitations on commodity futures, options, and interest rate swaps, those limits were unrealistically large. In addition, we have made the size of individual futures contracts the same as the contracts actually traded on major U. This may still seem like an unrealistically large amount of exposure, but in the real world, some megabanks like J.

The above changes should make it more difficult to quickly become a quadrillionaire, adding a large dose of realism to the simulation. You may actually have to successfully trade stocks or grow companies now, in order to amass a great fortune. Thus, we have added, in the "All-Industries" projections of growth rates and profitability, a column which indicates whether each industry's trend is in the direction of improvement or worsening profitability, or if the rates of return are stable at the current projected levels of growth in supply and demand.

Interest rates paid by banks, while fluctuating, were the same for all banks in prior versions. This version recognizes that having deposits in banks with lower credit ratings involves a greater risk of default, so the CD rates paid by banks now reflect the greater risk by offering a higher interest rate.

Banks rated AAA, AA, or A now pay the lowest rate on CDs, BBB, BB, and B-rated banks pay a slightly higher rate. Banks rated CCC, CC, or C are in a yet higher risk category, and pay an even higher interest rate, and the highest CD interest rates are paid by D-rated banks, which could fail at any moment, causing depositors to possibly lose part or all of their deposits.

We have put some limits on the "Add Cash" cheat function. These get reported as "bugs," but only because such large amounts totally disrupt the economic model, like throwing a monkey wrench into a delicate machine, just as such an addition to the real world money supply overnight would also create global financial havoc. In previous versions, in some bankruptcy reorganizations, the program modified, rather than totally eliminating, option positions on the stock of the bankrupt company, adjusting the number of options and the strike price, which sometimes yielded unreasonable results.

Puts are settled based on a stock price of zero, resulting in a gain for holders of the puts and a loss for anyone who had shorted the puts. The "Streaming Stock Quotes" feature on the main screen has been improved by modifying the way the "Fill" button works. As before, when you click on the "Fill" button, the Streaming Stock Quotes list will list all the stocks you directly own or are shortthen all companies you control up to the limit of 15 stocks. This release is file-compatible with files saved by earlier Versions 6.

When loading a file from prior versions, v. June 1, We didn't like the changes we made, to increase commodity price volatility in Versions 7. We should have done more testing of those two recent releases. This is a free upgrade for registered users of versions 7. In addition, once you reach a very high net worth level and are able to do very large commodity futures trades, your counterparties will now begin to wise up, and not be quite so stupid as to take the other side of your commodity trades on your terms.

As you get richer, the counterparties will become smarter and warier of dealing with a slick speculator like you, with a reputation for winning every futures trade. So, in the crude oil example above, a potential counterparty may make you a counter offer take it or leave it! You may still want to do the trade on their terms, but you will have an immediate unrealized loss that could cause margin calls, and even if oil does go up as you expected, it will have to go up a lot and sooner before you profit on that trade.

In short, as with tender offers for stocks, and when doing interest rate swaps when interest rates are at extreme levels, you're now going to have to do large futures transactions by paying over the current market or shorting at well below market when market prices are abnormally high or low, so that trading futures, at least in gigabuck quantities, may no longer mean easy profits. Small futures trades of contracts or less or crude contracts can still be done in all cases at the market price, as can larger trades when a commodity price is at or near a "normal" level, in which case your odds of winning would likely be more likenot Also, you can still simply buy and store the physical commodity stock broker salary wall street facing such counter offers, but with the reduced volatility we've tried to build in for commodity prices, you may have to wait a long time before the physical commodity you bought cheap goes up very much, all the while paying storage and insurance costs.

Your counterparties for futures trades are no longer going to be patsies who take on the losing end of your trades and regularly go broke as a result, although you still won't be getting counter offers from them in the early stages of the game, when you are trading futures in smaller quanties and aren't yet anywhere close to being a notorious trillionaire.

That's a bit unrealistic, so the stock pricing algorithm now treats any annual profit that's more than a certain percent of the company's net worth as partly temporary and ignores the "excess" in the current pricing. So the stock will still go up talking forex headlines lot when there is a big windfall, but not quite so much as before. This means the benefits of manipulating a stock's price by manipulating the timing of big earnings swings are now a bit less.

Just email the author at the address at the bottom of this page for a download link. April find forex broker list, This release is just a very minor tweak to prevent an undesired consequence of having counterparties for options trades, for players who have built up many trillions or quadrillions in net worth, and who are able to do massive stock and stock index manipulation.

They were finding that the very large option positions they created, which were virtually "sure things" as they manipulated stock prices upwards by hundreds or thousands of percentages, were quickly bankrupting most of the counterparties. In some cases we've seen, there were only about companies left standing in the simulation after all the wipeouts.

Unless you are one of the rare players who gets up to the levels of multiple trillions or quadrillions of net worth, you won't notice this minor change in the program's selection and monitoring of options counterparties. January 27, This version makes a minor change in the AutoPilot feature regarding commodity hedging. To prevent this from happening, Release 7. Thus, if you want a company to hedge or speculate in commodities, or close an existing position, you must now actively initiate the transaction.

Any "bad trades" will now be because you guessed wrong about the direction of a commodity price, and not because the program did so. Just email the author at the address at the bottom of this page.

If you prefer the way hedging operated in v. September 15, An automatic "sweep" setting has been added to the items on the "Settings" Menu. Turning this setting "ON" will cause any cash in your bank account to regularly be "swept" to pay down any bank loan you owe. As a result, any sales proceeds, dividends, interest, salary or other cash you receive will almost immediately be put to work reducing your bank debt, thus helping to reduce your interest expenses.

However, if you have no line of credit, you may want to turn the "sweep" setting off, in order to keep some cash in your account to pay expenses that you incur.

Otherwise, if your bank balance is zero and you are unable to borrow, you would be forced to sell off assets when you have to pay an expense, such as taxes or interest. The "sweep" function is similar to the way most margin accounts with stockbrokers work, in the real world, where any cash credited to your account is quickly applied to pay down your margin debt, if any.

The "easy pickings" from shorting or buying puts on stocks of companies that are about to go bankrupt will no longer be available, generally. In this new version, you cannot trade options on a company that is under bankruptcy court protection that is, has a "D" credit ratingexcept to close an existing position. Also, in some cases, where a company is almost certain to be liquidated or reorganized in bankruptcy, you will not be able to borrow any of its stock to sell short.

The portfolio information for individual players now includes a projection of a player's annual cash flow, from salary, dividends, bond interest, and interest earned on bank account balances, less loan interest expense and, if any, income tax on the net amount. This projection gives players a quick "heads up" as to whether they will be running a cash flow deficit in the next 12 months of play.

It doesn't try to "guesstimate" speculative or unknown amounts, like the proceeds from sales of assets you will dispose of or expenditures to buy assets, or any profits or losses you might generate from interest rate swaps, options, or futures. Nor does the projection take into account any additional taxes you may incur on sales of assets that result in taxable gains.

The Industry Summary listing beyer livestock auction clovis nm Exchange-Traded Funds ETFs now ranks all the ETFs by their share price performance in the partial vesting stock option ifrs 12 months, and shows the percentage gain or loss over that period.

This feature goes into effect after the first year of game play. During the first year, ETFs are ranked by their dividend yield, as in previous versions. The "Buy," "Strong Buy," "Sell," or "Strong Sell" button that appears on the Research Report for a company is now clickable, to either buy or sell the stock of that company or, if you don't own the stock, to sell it short. If the button says "Hold," clicking on it has no effect. In the past, it was often easy to shrug off occasional anti-trust lawsuits from other companies when you were able to monopolize most of a large number of industries.

This version adds real teeth to the private anti-trust suits, making them much more frequent and for vastly larger damage sums, even for small companies with bad credit that could hardly pay legal fees to sue your Behemoth Industrial Co. Costs of trading shares of ETF's Exchange-Traded Funds have been reduced. Likewise, when you sold your shares, you had to sell them at well below market if selling a significant percent.

Earnings ratio in previous versions was computed based on the previous year's income. That could often become misleading by the middle or latter part of a year, so we have changed the calculation to base the P: E on any earnings for the current year, plus an appropriate part of the prior year's average quarterly results.

Thus, the displayed P: E ratios for companies are now more realistic and much more responsive to recent changes in a company's fortunes, which means stock prices are likely to change direction more swiftly and unpredictably. The stock pricing algorithm now gives more weight to projected earnings, as well, further adding to increased volatility and quicker reaction to changing circumstances for a company.

In prior versions, we felt that bank stocks tended to sell at high multiples of net worth like 10 or 12 and often traded at 30 to 35 P: E ratios, also too high. We have tinkered with the pricing of bank stocks, where the banks are not highly leveraged with reasonably good credit ratingsso they now tend to trade at much more reasonable multiples of net worth and earnings, except for very small banks, which may be able to grow earnings very rapidly and achieve a fairly high P: The limitations on the "notional amount" of interest rate swaps you or your companies may enter into have been changed.

In earlier versions, the limit per contract wasmillion dollars, Euros, etc. Now the single contract limit is the lesser ofmillion billion or times net worth, with an overall net long or net short position limit of x net worth for players, or to x net worth for a corporation, depending on the Difficulty Level at which you are playing times the Difficulty Level, times net worth, but not more than times net worth.

In previous versions, a player or his companies could "load up" hundreds of swaps counterparties with what was likely to be the losing side of swaps contracts. Often, this would result in bankrupting hundreds of companies that really could not afford to take such gambles, causing some very unrealistic changes in the simulation. Now, only companies that are large enough to take on such risks will be available counterparties, so if you are trying to do hundreds of interest rate swaps, you may not be able to find as many counterparties.

The ones you do find may still be damaged badly by the swaps if interest rates go in the direction you expected -- profitable for you, disastrous for the counterpartiesbut now the swaps will not generally bankrupt the counterparties. Also, when interest rates are very high or very low, the counteroffers you will receive when you make an offer to enter into a swap are less attractive than in previous versions. This relelase fixes a bug in recent editions, where a bank is liquidated into another bank or an insurance company is liquidated into another insurance company.

In either case, subprime mortgages owned by the sub were not being transferred in such nontaxable liquidations. However, many of the changes in this version, designed to keep things more realistic, should make it much harder for players to ever generate wealth in such fantastic amounts.

We have emailed a notice with the download URL to everyone who purchased 7. These "bugs" were not in versions prior to Version 7. In response to requests from numerous users, we have now made it possible in Version 7.

In the new version, if you choose to have computer players, you first choose the total number of players 2 to 5and then specify how many HUMAN players there will be. The remaining players will all be computer players that compete against you -- and against each other. For example, if you choose to have 5 total players, with only one human player, you would be playing against four aggressive, cutthroat computer players. In the new version, a successful computer player will not only try to squash you harrassing lawsuits, freezing or calling in your loans, etc.

Now you will have more than one vicious competitor to deal with! Although you may be playing against as many as four computer players, it still only takes about a second or less for all of them to take their turns, after you finish your turn, so the game is not slowed down by the additional computer players.

Since we have often noted in long games that a very successful computer player may sometimes accumulate control of several hundred companies, we have placed some limits on the number of companies each computer player can control, after which it will usually not attempt to acquire control of any more companies. The more computer players there are, the lower this limit is set at, for obvious reasons. However, we won't tell you what these limits are, as they are somewhat flexible.

These limits do not apply to HUMAN players. The Wall Street Raider Tutorial that we began including with Version 7.

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The author of the tutorial says he will eventually do about 50 "episodes," playing one year game to its conclusion, at a very deliberate speed, explaining his strategy or tactics with each action he takes. Each episode is about an hour in length. In previous releases 7. However, it was an all-or-none setting for your companies. In this version, the item works the same way, as a "global" setting, so that when you turn AutoPilot ON, it sets an "ON" variable for each company you control except the one you are CEO ofand likewise if you set the AutoPilot global setting to "OFF" it turns the AutoPilot setting for each of your companies to "OFF.

Thus, you may use the global setting on the "Game Options" menu to turn AutoPilot "ON" for all your companies, but may then decide to turn the setting for a particular company to "OFF" by using the "Toggle AutoPilot OFF" button that will appear on the Management Menu. Note that when you become CEO of a company, its AutoPilot status is automatically turned "OFF. But if you later cease to be the CEO, its status will become the same as your global AutoPilot setting. Similarly, if you acquire control of a company, it automatically adopts the same AutoPilot status as your global AutoPilot setting.

Improvements have been made to the Interest Rate Swaps screens. Now, if a player or company is seeking to exceed allowable limits for net long or net short positions in interest rate swap derivatives, the program shows you how much more exposure you may take on.

Also, when viewing your or your company's list of swap contracts, the display now includes the estimated quarterly profit or loss on each active swap contract, plus the total estimated quarterly profit for all such active contracts.

In prior versions, the maximum size limit of a swap wasmillion of the selected currency. That limit is now increased tomillion of the currency. Also, limits have been set on total exposure of a player or company, in addition to the previous limit on the size of one individual swap contract.

A player's net long or net short swaps exposure in terms of notional value of contracts is now limited to times the player's net worth, since no counterparties will contract with you if your exposure becomes too large.

For all companies, the limit ranges from to times the company's net worth depending on the Difficulty Level of the current game, with more risk allowed at higher Difficulty Levels. The government anti-monopoly agencies have been made a little bit less efficient in this version. Now, these agencies will sometimes be a bit "lax" and let you proceed with your questionable acquisition.

Of course, after you have acquired control of most of an industry, you may still be sued by competitors -- or later, even by the government -- for antitrust violations. Therefore, such occasional opportunities may tempt you to try to monopolize an industry, which can sometimes be very profitable, or can turn out to be a major blunder. When doing tender offers to "the public" for stock of a company, you will now be advised by investment bankers as to what price in excess of market price you will need to offer in order to acquire all the shares you seek.

We have corrected a flaw in the Transaction Financing routine, when you are asked if you want to borrow to complete various transactions.

For a few types of transactions, the routine was sometimes underestimating the negative effect on your credit rating if you did the borrowing and made the planned expenditure. For example, before the correction, you might have been warned that going ahead with the transaction and financing would reduce your credit rating to "B," while the actual result might have been much worse, reducing your credit rating to "CCC," "CC," "C" or even to "D. November 15, Major release Subprime mortgages have been added as a new asset class, and can be purchased by banks or insurance companies.

The high yields are very tempting, but these are high-risk loans, which will tend to have high loss rates if the economy turns soft, and if sold when things are bad, will usually be sold at a loss. High reward, high risk. Earnings reports for companies now include a comparison of reported operating earnings to the most recent estimated earnings projection.

Stocks of companies that beat estimates tend to rise all other things being equalwhile those that fall short of projected earnings tend to fall. Now, if the company is losing money, or its most recent quarterly earnings per share were lower than the year before, you will not be granted any options for that quarter. If you or one of your controlled companies has commodity or stock index futures contracts expiring in the middle of the next month, you are now notified of the upcoming expiration s by a pop-up message just before the end of the preceding month.

The notice will also remind you as to whether your current setting for taking phyical delivery if long a commodity futures contract is "YES" or "NO. If "YES," you or your company will have to buy the agreed amount of the commodity at the contract price, and take physical delivery. This can be a very important reminder, if you have the "Take Delivery" setting on "YES" and don't have enough money or credit to make the purchase, causing a forced sell-off of assets.

Refinements have been made to the "AutoPilot" setting, so that when you have turned on AutoPilot, to let most of your companies manage themselves, they may attempt to buy or sell other companies, or list offers to sell stocks they own or issue new stock in public offerings, but will only do any such transaction if the company requests and obtains your permission to proceed, giving you a veto over any such proposed actions. Some users who like to invest in banks have been unhappy with the fact that banks automatically buy bonds when they have excess cash, and often are forced to sell the bonds at a loss when they need to raise cash.

This version prevents banks from automatically trading bonds, when you control the bank and actively manage it. If "AutoPilot" is turned on, and you are not the bank's CEO, however, it will continue to buy and sell bonds like banks that you do not control, as before. Naturally, you can still direct a bank you control whether not it is on AutoPilot to buy or sell a particular government or corporate bond, when you think it is wise to do so.

Banks will continue to buy or make or sell business loans, however, even regardless of the AutoPilot setting. The same treatment of bond trading now also applies to insurance companies a player controls, as well as to banks. It is now easier cheaper to start up a new company. When stock splits or reverse splits occur, including automatic rounding of total shares from odd numbers like June 8, Minor release This is a free upgrade for anyone who purchased v.

E-mail us at the link at the bottom of this page for a 7. This is a fairly minor upgrade, which mainly fixes a couple of minor "bugs" that were in 7. It also has some more "cheat scenarios" added, regarding "inside information" on upcoming earnings turnarounds or mergers, plus many minor improvements throughout the program. This version also has a number of cosmetic changes, such as better text formatting, where text messages often were raggedly formatted, when displayed by some monitors.

No two monitors are alike, it seems. In addition, a "Cheat" button, which was formerly accessed from the Misc. Menu, has now been moved to the main screen, allowing for direct one-click access to the "Cheat Menu" that we added in Version 7.

You will notice now, when one of your companies is the target of an antitrust lawsuit and you are presented with a choice of settling the case by paying a specified amount, or risking a trial, the program now offers you "advice from your attorneys" as to whether or not you should accept the settlement offer. New algorithms have been added to put to work excessive cash build-ups at companies not actively controlled by a player. If you have your companies on "AutoPilot," they will generally not buy stocks or initiate mergers, but if they have a significant cash build-up and good credit rating, they may initiate stock purchases, but will only make such a purchase after first stopping play to ask your permission.

Strategy improvements were made for the Computer Player, regarding advances demand loans to companies it controls, which will now occur in some cases, making the Computer Player a little smarter. Also, when the Computer Player has made advances to a company it controls and it later loses control, it will then attempt to call in part or all of the loan, subject to the same restrictions as when a human player tries to call in such an advance, where the borrower has a weak credit rating and has senior creditors such as a bank lender, bondholders, depositors in a bank, or the policyholders of an insurance company.

Those of you who already hate the computer player "Wally Raider" will now hate him even more, since he has gotten even smarter File-compatible with files saved by earlier Versions 6. April 1, Major release A new "Cheat Menu" has been added. When viewing the "MISC" Menu, click on the "Cheat Menu" item to see a pop-up menu with three "cheat" choices -- the previously existing option to add any amount of cash to your bank account is still available.

However, using it will disqualify the current game as your "personal best" score, for obvious reasons, but is still fun to use if you want to experiment with being ultra-rich or ultra-poor, since you can also use it to subtract cash from your account. The new "Cheat Menu" also contains two new cheat options, both of which allow you to obtain crucial "insider information.

The other gives you advance notice of a coming big change in a certain company's earnings, either up or down, so that you can either buy or short the stock before the change occurs. In both cases it is highly secret information that will be leaked to you, long before the Street knows about it. However, obtaining such lucrative "insider information" is, of course, highly illegal, not to mention unethical and immoral, and there is always an outside chance that your informant may be arrested and "rat you out," or your phone may be tapped by the authorities, in which case your wrongdoing would be discovered and you would face massive fines.

Even if you fall afoul of the law, you may make so much money trading off the insider tips that you can afford to pay the fine, like so many real corporate raiders and stock manipulators.

Companies you do not control are fairly "smart," and tend to react to such changes intelligently, as well as randomly doing mergers, liquidations, stock and bond purchases and sales, and trading futures or options, plus doing various other types of transactions.

This version now lets you turn on or off an "AutoPilot" setting. When this setting is turned on, you will be, in effect, delegating the management of the companies you control to the program, which will operate them for you as if they were uncontrolled companies.

Of course, if you turn AutoPilot off, you will be operating as in prior versions, making all major decisions for ALL of your controlled companies. Using the AutoPilot function when you control numerous companies relieves you of the difficulty of micro-managing all the management decisions for those companies, except major decisions like doing acquisitions, selling off subsidiaries, or engaging in merger activity. Notice that turning AutoPilot on does not mean you give up control over your companies.

Or, you may have your controlled company buy a particular stock you like, but if AutoPilot is on, the program may decide to sell that stock, if it decides there is a reason to do so. The default setting for AutoPilot in a new game is "off," since you usually will want to totally manage the first few companies that you control. Later, if you gain control of too many companies to micro-manage all of them, you may then want to turn AutoPilot "on. Additional conveniences have been built in.

Now, if you click on "List Portfolio" for a company and it has no stock or bond portfolio, a message will say so and ask if you want to instead see your individual portfolio.

Similarly, if you click on "Tax Basis Info" for a company that has no stock or bond portfolio, you will be asked if you want to see your portfolio tax basis information instead. In either case, if you also have no stocks or bonds, an error message will simply inform you that the company has no portfolio to display. Similar features were added in recent releases, where a company has no option positions, or no physical commodities, or no futures, when you click on the appropriate button to display one of those three categories of assets.

Players often like to do quick calculations in their heads, but that can often be difficult when computing per-share items, especially when the number of shares a company has outstanding is something like The program now does small automatic stock splits to "round" the number of shares off to a more manageable number, like million in the above example. Note that files saved with a newer version cannot be used in an older version, so if you are playing with another person by e-mailing the saved data file back and forth after you each take your turns, you must both be using the same registered version of Wall Street Raider.

Note also, that in recent releases, if a game saved by an older version like 6. Thus, you needed to start a new game, if you wanted ETF's to be available to invest in, if you were upgrading from v. However, in this version and later versions, if you load a saved file originally started in versions 6.

January 18, Minor release Version 7. Trading in physical commodities oil, gold, silver, wheat, and corn has been expanded. All corporations except for banks and insurance companies may now acquire and hold any of those commodities incurring storage and insurance costs while they are held. Some companies, if not controlled by a human player, will occasionally buy and store a commodity if its price gets ridiculously cheap, and may sell it if the price eventually rises to a very high level.

Of course, you can still trade futures on all of those commodities, too as well as Stock Index futures. Players or companies that sell commodity futures short can if the user turns on a "Make Physical Delivery" variable on the Settings Menu choose to have a physical commodity they own delivered when a short futures contract expires, in lieu of a cash settlement.

Similarly, if you turn on the "Take Physical Delivery" variable setting, you can buy a futures contract on oil, gold, silver, wheat, or corn, and you will take delivery of the physical commodity at the agreed contract price at expiration, instead of having a cash settlement. If you do this, be sure you have adequate cash or credit to make the purchase, or you will be in a forced liquidation mode! Companies that are having cash flow problems will often offer some of their stock holdings or business assets for sale in this way, instead of making forced sales that may be at "sacrifice" prices on the open market.

This is the first time that Wall Street Raider has made it possible for a player to buy stocks or other assets directly from another player or from a company controlled by another player, other than by tender offers in hostile mergers.

Two new buttons for posting items for sale have been added to the "MISC" Menu, and a new "For Sale" button has been added to the "OTHER TRANS. Click on that button to view all currently available offers and, if interested, act on one of them to buy stock without driving up the stock price or having to make a tender offer.

Or have one of your companies buy offered business assets from an existing company in its industry, rather than buying new assets which would increase industry supply and reduce industry profitability. Any offer made by you or a company you control can be terminated at any time, by simply clicking on it, from the list of offers, and answering "Yes" when asked if you want to cancel it. Some of the few restrictions on offers are that you or a company of yours can only have one offer to sell a particular stock at any one time, and you can't offer to sell more stock of a company than you actually own.

Similarly, a company can only list one offer at any one time to sell some of its business assets. If a new offer is posted, the old one is canceled. Once an offer to sell stock is posted, any company subject to the usual anti-monopoly rules, etc. If a buyer chooses to buy only part of an offering of stock or business assets, the rest of the offer remains in effect.

For example, if ABC Corp. All offers expire either at the end of the calendar quarter when listed, or, if the user chooses, at the end of the following quarter. Thus, an offer posted on July 25 will expire on either the following October 1 or on January 1 of the next year. The simulation has been modified so that uncontrolled by human players companies will now randomly list offers to sell stock or business assets when their credit is too bad to borrow and they are experiencing a cash crunch.

Other, stronger companies, with excess cash or good credit ratings will randomly buy some of the offered stocks or, if in the same industry, business assets, from the weaker companies, in a Darwinian fashion. Only the strong survive, in Wall Street Raider, as on Wall Street. The ability to "look under the hood," to peek at important corporate data has been added.

A "Who Owns What? It brings up a submenu that lets you see a list of all companies that have long or short stock index or commodity futures positions; companies that own physical commodities; entities that have entered into "long" positions on interest rate swap agreements and the identity of the "short" counter-party ; companies that have long or short put or call options positions; companies that own stock in other companies; and companies that are paid investment management fees by the Exchange-Traded Funds.

Each of those six listings also provides details as to amount, percentages held, or fixed interest rate for swaps, and also identifies the commodity, stock, option, or terms and types of interest rate swap, for each company with a position in any of the above-mentioned instruments. Clicking on any item will select the company in question as the new "active entity," if you wish to do more research on the company, or buy or sell short its stock.

It now has a "Trade Futures" button, which allows you to trade commodity or stock index futures, and a "Trade Commodities" button that allows you to buy or sell PHYSICAL commodities. Greenmail buybacks are now allowed unless the seller is a human player, or is a company controlled by a human player. Thus, a greenmail buyback is now allowed where the seller is the computer player, Wally Raider, or a company that is controlled by the computer player.

However, the premium you will need to offer in that case will be considerably higher, generally, than you would need to offer to a seller that is not controlled by any player. Therefore, you can now force the computer player to sell a stock it or a company it controls owns in a greenmail buyback, but only if you are willing to pay a very large "greenmail" premium for the stock. Similarly, In prior recent versions, you could make a tender offer for shares of a company held by another company, but not if the holder was controlled by another player, or if the holder was another player.

That rule remains in effect, generally, for a stock owned by another human player or if the stockholder is controlled by another human player. But in this new version, you can now make a tender offer at a very sustantial premium over the market price of the stock for shares owned by the computer player, or owned by a company that is controlled by the computer player, Wally Raider. We have closed a loophole, when a merger is pending, with an uncontrolled company offering to acquire a player's controlled company.

Previously, you could have your targeted company declare a large extraordinary dividend, reducing its value, while still receiving the same amount for its stock from the acquiring company in the merger. In this new version, however, any such sneaky action will cause the pending merger offer to be canceled. Similarly, a greenmail or LBO stock buyback by the targeted company, which would also reduce the company's net worth significantly, will also cause the pending merger offer to be withdrawn by the acquiring company.

July 1, Major release A very large amount of additional commentary has been added to the "Industry Outlook" and "Economy and Markets" sections of the sidebar on the Entity Info and General Research Menus.

Our goal, as we keep adding and refining this text is to make the commentary read somewhat more like a page from the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. In this release, we have responded to user suggestions by adding the ability to invest in physical commodities, which can be stored indefinitely, to wait for a good time to sell, instead of entering into commodity futures contracts.

Players with adequate buying power can buy unlimited amounts of crude oil, gold, silver, wheat and corn. However, the commodities must be purchased with cash, although players can borrow against the commodity holdings to the same extent as they can borrow against stocks or bonds. However, when buying a physical commodity, you will not be able to get the to-1 leverage you get when trading commodity FUTURES.

In addition, since wheat and corn are somewhat perishable commodities, your stored grains will be subject to a certain amount of "shrinkage," which will continue as long as you keep the grain, due to spoilage, etc.

Only players, not corporations, may buy physical commodities, for now, although future releases may allow such purchases by some types of corporations, as well. A new button, "Physical Commodities," has been added to the ENTITY RESEARCH Menu, but only appears when you, the player, are the "Active Entity. Clicking on any one of the listed positions will allow you to quickly sell all or part of that position. A procedure has been created to automatically transfer an interest rate swap agreement to the parent company, when a subsidiary is liquidated into the parent in a non-taxable liquidation.

The parent company is substituted for the subsidiary in all interest rate swap contracts to which the subsidiary was a party. In prior releases, due to an oversight, a swap agreement was simply canceled in a non-taxable liquidation.

Another loophole has been closed: Players were able to use this feature to manipulate earnings and cash, for example by having XCorp pay a large cancellation fee to YCorp, just before dumping the stock of XCorp. In this version, no cancellation fee is paid when a swap agreement is between two entities under control of the same player.

We modified the options exercise routine, so that when an insurance company "inherits" a short put option position when it liquidates a subsidiary, the put will be settled, not exercised against the insurer, at its expiration date assuming the put is "in-the-money" at expiration.

In the previous release, any time an investment advisor of an ETF was fired for poor performance, an insurer was selected to replace it. That has been changed so that, generally, an insurer will replace a broker as the advisor, and vice versa.

It was also possible in the previous release for the randomly selected new advisor to be an advisor that was just fired from the same or another ETF. That can no longer immediately occur. When an ETF's investment advisory company is to be rewarded for good performance, that is accomplished by the issuance of more stock by the ETF, so that the quantity of funds under management is increased, thus increasing the advisory fee paid to the advisor. In this release, the advisory fee rate is also increased by 0.

March 1, Major release Trading of stock index futures is now permitted, in the same way as commodity futures. Gains or losses are capital gains or losses for players, or "extraordinary" gains or losses for most companies, except those in the Securities Brokers industry, for whom their trading profits or losses on stock index futures trades are reported as part of ordinary operating income. Players and all companies except banks may buy or sell short stock index futures, if they have an adequate "BBB" credit rating.

To have an insurance company initiate a stock index futures trade, click on the "Stock Index" number shown on the lower left corner of the main Wall Street Raider screen, and a "TRADE" button will appear on the Stock Index chart. To close a futures position for an insurance company or any other entity you control, you can just click on the "List Commodities" button and then select the futures contract you want to sell or to buy it back, if it is a short position.

Charts now generally include a "TRADE" button when displaying a chart of interest rates, commodities, or of the Global Stock Index. One click on the "TRADE" button will take you to the "Commodity Trading Desk" menu if the chart is for a commodity or the stock index, allowing you to quickly buy or sell futures on that item or close existing futures contracts. In the case of the interest rate charts, clicking on the "TRADE" button will take you or your controlled company that is to do the transaction to the screen for creating or terminating interest rate swap derivative contracts, with the specific interest rate whose chart you were viewing, such as the Prime Rate, pre-selected for creating a swap agreement.

No "TRADE" buttons will appear on commodity charts if the entity that would be trading is a bank or insurance company that you control, since they are not allowed to gamble on commodities. A "TRADE" button also will not appear on the Stock Index chart if a bank you control would be trading the Stock Index futures.

However, the button will appear for any other company that is currently selected to do transactions, including an insurance company you control. Also, no "TRADE" button will appear for the GDP Growth Rate chart, since there are no GDP futures contracts to be traded in Wall Street Raider or the real world. In addition, no "TRADE" button will appear on a chart of your Net Worth when you click on the Net Worth item on "My Balance Sheet" on the main screen, for obvious reasons, since your net worth is also not something on which anyone trades futures contracts.

Stock charts will now generally have a "BUY" button, if the stock is the currently selected "Active Entity" and if it is NOT a company that you control. If you controlled it, the "BUY" button would cause the company to try to buy its own stock, which is not permitted, except as an LBO or Greenmail. A "BUY" button will also not appear on the chart if the entity that would be buying you or your controlled company already has positions in 15 stocks other than the Active Entity whose chart is shown.

This version has a number of new trend analysis algorithms, which we have put to good use throughout the program to provide players with more textual analyses of trends in stock, commodity, and index prices, and interest rates.

The trends are described in Research Reports and menu sidebar notes that accompany the Entity Info and General research menus. These trend analyses will tend to become more detailed and helpful, once you get at least a few years into a game, and will alert you to developing industry, commodity, or economic trends you may want to trade on, if you are a "momentum player" or against, if you are a "contrarian". Most of the many hours of programming, testing, tweaking and refining this release have been devoted to making the economic model more realistic and responsive to events, commodity prices, interest rates, and GDP growth rates, all of which interact with each other in many complex ways.

At the start of each game, or if continuing a saved game from recent prior versions 6. Each quarter, the management fee paid by the ETF is paid to its investment advisor a brokerage, or in some cases, an insurance company.

The player who controls a broker that has an advisory contract with an ETF can reset the default annual management fee, which can range anywhere from 0.

Naturally, a higher fee will tend to inhibit growth in the ETF's assets. If an investment advisor, such as a securities broker, goes bankrupt, or if the ETF goes bankrupt, the ETF's investment advisor will be fired and the ETF will select another securities broker or insurance company as its advisor.

If there is no broker with at least a BBB credit rating that does not already have an ETF client, when the advisor to an ETF has been fired, the ETF will select an insurance company as the new manager or advisor. An advisor may also be fired by an ETF in some instances where the ETF's stock has performed badly over a 5-year period. An ETF's performance is reviewed every two years, to determine if the advisor is to be fired or if additional capital is to be raised by a stock offering.

If an advisor is liquidated into a parent company in a tax-free liquidation, the advisory contract or contracts of the liquidated company will be transferred to the parent, but the contracts will be canceled in a taxable liquidation of an advisor and the ETF will find a new advisor.

In addition, since any gains or losses of brokers on stock index futures trades are treated as "hedging profits" and thus as reportable operating income, that affects a brokerage's price-earnings ratio and stock price, which will greatly add to the volatility of the brokerage stocks, as their earnings may fluctuate widely.

This release includes what might be called "mini-bubbles" in specific industries. From time to time during play, the stocks in a particular industry will become "hot," rising steadily, almost without regard to the companies' fundamentals in that industry.

This can go on for months of play, before ending rather suddenly. Unlike the multi-industry "bubbles" we have long had since early versions of Wall Street Raider -- "tech bubbles" and "biotech bubbles" -- which were always announced with some fanfare, if you paid attention to certain news announcements, these "mini" bubbles occur quietly, and you probably will never notice one, unless you happen to have stocks in a particular industry that keep going up to crazy levels, seemingly for no good reason.

And, like all bubbles, these mini-bubbles will end quickly and badly, with the stocks plummeting back to earth and into the pits. In previous versions, if you had options on a company that was acquiring another in a stock-for-stock merger, all your options were forcibly settled when the merger went through.

That has been changed, so that now your options are simply adjusted based on the terms of the merger, so their value will be essentially unchanged immediately after the merger. The only exception would be where the target company becomes the parent during the merger, because it owned stock of the acquiring company. Options on whichever company becomes the subsidiary will continue to be settled at the time of the merger, at their in-the-money value if anysince it will no longer be a publicly traded company.

We corrected a minor bug, where the Basic Commodity Fund ETF made a capital gain distribution but made no "regular" dividend payment, in which case a shareholder did not receive the capital gain dividend that should have been received, either. We also corrected another bug that, in rare situations, could allow a stock option or futures contract to continue in existence after it should have expired.

Now, when the old saved game file is loaded, the program creates an ETF industry 15 exchange-traded funds on the fly, except in the very rare instance where the game that was saved had already utilized all of those "shell" companies as holding companies, computer companies, etc.

We have added a choice of sorting method for the list of bank loans, either by credit rating or alphabetically by the name of the borrower, when your bank is selecting business loans to buy. Previously, the default and only sorting method was alphabetical.

We have spent hundreds of hours since the last release on December 1, tweaking a huge number of items in the program and writing thousands of lines of new code, to improve realism and functionality, but two very simple changes may have more of an impact on game play than any of the above changes: Companies may now borrow, on a bank line of credit, up to as much as 2 twice their adjusted net worth, rather than 1 times adjusted net worth in prior versions, if you are playing at Difficulty Levels 3 or 4.

This will sometimes allow for much more borrowing, and more booms and busts in various industries. The old 1 x adjusted net worth borrowing limit for corporations still applies if playing at Difficulty Level 1 or 2, however. Also, lines of credit for players are not affected by this change.

In this new version, the multiple times Adjusted Net Worth will range from a low of 1. The higher interest rates are, the tighter money will become, adding an additional element of realism, as lines of credit will shrink in concert with a higher Prime Rate, once the Prime Rate rises above 8. The new "default" line of credit multiple is 1. Thus, the availablility of credit is now partly a function of the banks' Prime Rate.

For example, if the Prime Rate is But if the Prime Rate falls to 4. Offsetting this increase in potential lines of credit, we have added a second wrinkle to the computation of a company's line of credit: Only an "AAA" company gets to borrow the full amounts described above. Thus, borrowing on its line of credit not only reduces a company's remaining line of credit by the amount borrowed, but also reduces the remaining line of credit further if the borrowing reduces the company's credit rating a notch or more.

Accordingly, if a company decides to borrow part, but not all, of its line of credit, it may find that doing so causes the bank to suddenly greatly reduce or perhaps completely cancel any remaining line of credit. This limitation does not affect the lines of credit for players. A new "Industry Strategy" button has been added to the General Research Menu, when the selected industry is an ETF.

Clicking on it brings up a list of all the ETF's, and a brief description of the sector it invests in or strategy it employs, such as trading commodity futures. This is the same information screen that previously was accessed by the "Industry Summary" button.

In the new release, the "Industry Summary" button now brings up the same type of summary information for each ETF in the industry as is shown for other industries, except that some data categories, like P: E multiple and Return on Equity, are not relevant for investment funds ETF's and are not shown. December 1, Major release In addition to stock charts, the simulation now provides charts of the Global Stock Index, the Prime Rate, the Long Government Bond and Short Government Bond interest rates, each of the five commodities spot pricesthe GDP growth rate, and of the net worth of each player.

These new charts are in response to numerous user requests, and will be useful as another research tool, if you like to play trends. Since we now have a considerable number of Wall Street Raider fans in Norway, we have added the Norwegian Krone as an additional currency in which you can configure the simulation.

Conversion rates for all 23 currencies in which the game can be played have also been updated again to reflect recent exchange rates.

These new incentives are in the form of tax credits: For example, if XYZ Corp. Better yet, a start-up company that buys 1, million of new business assets to get started will earn a 70 million investment tax credit, which may shelter it from taxes for a year or two after it becomes profitable.

The two tax credits are lumped together and reduce a company's taxes each quarter, dollar-for-dollar, to the extent it owes any income tax. If it has tax losses, or its income tax before credits is less than the tax credits, it only uses enough of the credits to eliminate the tax, if any.

Any unused credits are carried forward for future use, when the company becomes more profitable. A company that is incurring tax losses or is earning current profits but which still has tax loss carryovers may build up a considerable amount of these unused tax credits in some cases. In that case, the sub "sells" all its credits to the parent for cash, which reduces the sub's tax expense and increases its reported earnings by that amount which is offset by an equal negative adjustment to the parent's earnings, so the parent doesn't get a double benefit when it later uses the "upstreamed" tax credit to reduce ITS taxes and increase its net after-tax income.

Tax credits are not taken into account in computing a company's "tax provision" except to the extent the credits are currently used. Thus, they do not increase a company's reported earnings until used to offset actual tax liabilities of the company.

The consolidated earnings reported by the parent are not increased by the credits it bought from the subsidiary, unless the parent itself can use the tax credits to offset its consolidated taxable income. This is a bit different from real-world tax accounting for tax credits, but is a fairly simple approach and works well here.

If the sub's tax loss carryovers would have been lost when it is a holding companyits unused tax credits will also be lost when it liquidates.

In this new version, we have simplified and loosened these rules a bit. Another major loophole has been closed in this release, in the interests of somewhat greater realism. Previously, there were no limits on the number of put or call options you could buy or short on any one company, provided you didn't control the company if buying puts or shorting calls on itand if you had enough buying power -- or a good enough credit rating if shorting options.

That is no longer allowed. The commodity price trends algorithms have been significantly improved and made more realistic, in terms of news events, interest rate levels and trends, oil prices, and economic growth rates.

We have also tinkered a bit with interest rate differentials, making short-term bond yields somewhat more volatile than other interest rates, when rates are at extremes. A new scenario has been added that involves oil pipelines in the Persian Gulf region and another economic scenario, regarding a European debt crisis and civil chaos due to austerity measures, has been added. A new "ethical choice" scenario has been added for banks, with regard to the possibility of engaging in a sleazy marketing campaign targeting senile elderly banking customers.

July 1, Minor release A new "ethical scenario" has been added involving sale of untested vaccines to a Third World countryfor biotech or pharmaceutical companies that a player controls. A number of players of Wall Street Raider have requested that the program rules be modified so that they can buy out the stock of a corporate stockholder of XYZ Company when they do not control that stockholder, since the only way that was possible was either by a merger not always feasible or, if they already controlled XYZ Company, by having it do a "greenmail" buyback to buy out the unwanted stockholder.

That was often not possible where XYZ Company's credit was too poor to do the buyback. In this release, we have made it possible for a player or company to make a formal offer to buy out an unwanted corporate shareholder but not stock owned by another player or owned by a company controlled by another player.

Now, if you wish to buy out some or all of the stock of a shareholder of XYZ Company, you can select it as the seller, and can make a tender offer for some or all of its shares incurring legal fees when you do so. Sometimes the unwanted stockholder will accept your offer, sometimes not. The higher your bid, the better your chances of having your offer accepted. A bit of advice: The same procedure now also applies when doing a "greenmail" buyback of stock from an uncontrolled corporate stockholder of XYZ Company.

As before, you cannot do a greenmail buyback of stock from a shareholder you control conflict of interest! You can't make another player sell his or her stock, in short. Several refinements have been made to the algorithms that sometimes prevent you from buying stock in an industry that you would dominate or monopolize if you controlled that company. In prior versions, you would be blocked from buying ANY stock in such a company, even if your intended purchase would not give you control of it.

As revised, you are now allowed to buy stock in such a competitor, as long as the purchase does not give you control of it. Also, in some cases you may be warned that your companies will be saddled with antitrust lawsuits if you go ahead with a takeover, giving you a chance to cancel the acquisition, or go ahead and take the risk. In other cases, as before, a government antitrust agency will block your takeover.

This will save you from having to do additional research to determine if a particular company may be a target for antitrust lawsuits, if you invest in it or if you are looking for a company that is vulnerable on antitrust grounds, so that you can file suit against it.

In prior versions, if the program selected an antitrust "target" for a lawsuit, when 2 or more companies under common control dominated market share in an industry, it always targeted the company with the largest market share of the affiliated group of companies.

Now, the largest company by market share will usually be the target of such suits, but occasionally one of the related companies will instead be selected as the defendant. Various loopholes have been plugged. For example, a company may no longer buy back or call any of its bonds prior to maturity if it has a weak credit rating, if allowing it to do so would impair the assets available for the senior creditors, such as bank lenders or, in the case of banks or insurance companies, their depositors or insurance policyholders.

This makes it more difficult for a player to establish settings, just before selling a stock, that will cause earnings and the stock price to soon drop precipitously, after which a player could buy back control once the stock is depressed and then lower those settings again, to instantly improve its profitability.

That large loophole is now mostly closed. The algorithms that calibrate the effects of contango or backwardation on commodity futures prices have been tweaked in various ways to make their effects more realistic and to better take into account the influence of interest rates, spot price levels elevated or depressedand price trends in the commodity, when determining the degree of contango or backwardation.

The net effect is to generally create more volatility in the pricing of the longer-term futures contracts which may be created for terms as long as five years.

Fixed minor bug that sometimes displayed the wrong date for the next earnings release on the main screen for the current "Active Entity," an error that could occasionally occur when the end of a quarter coincided with the end of the player's turn. April 1, Minor release In this release, we have completely revised the options pricing algorithm, making it more realistic in general using present value concepts and comparisons to actual option price statistics for some of the most actively traded options in the real world.

The algorithm now also analyzes the last 24 months' stock price fluctuations for a company's stock, and adjusts the option time premium price upward for stocks with significantly above average "Beta" volatility or downward for less volatile stocks. Option pricing now also takes into account the general level of interest rates and dividends that are expected to be paid on the underlying stock during the term of the option, which will tend to increase the price of puts and decrease the price of calls if there is a significant dividend yield.

Option spreads the difference between the bid and ask prices for an option have been made more realistic. ETF's Exchange-Traded Fundswhich were introduced in the last release v. In this new version, one such ETF, the Financial Shares Fund, is now allowed to gamble on interest rate swaps.

Stock charts of ETF's are adjusted for prior periods to reflect capital gain distributions, reducing prior period prices per share by the amount of any capital gain. This makes ETF stock charts more accurately reflect the performance of the fund, where the ETF has regularly been distributing substantial capital gains dividends.

Numerous minor improvements have been made. For example, lists of owned or shorted options, commodity futures, or interest rate swap contracts are now sorted by expiration dates, showing the nearest expirations first. In addition, the "Analyst's ratings" of "Hold," "Sell," or "Strong Sell" are now usually accompanied by a target price, if significantly different from the current market price of the stock.

January 1, Major release We've added a new industry -- Exchange-Traded Funds ETF's.