Business Rules and Regulations
- Players may only own one business at a time.
Exceptions are granted for players that gained multiple businesses before this rule went into effect.
- While you own a business, you will automatically invest $9 each month in the company though you may choose to invest more or less in a given month. If you lack the needed funds, you will invest whatever you have. This is considered after all of your other transactions.
- You will start out with 50% shares in the company. If at any point, you do not have the majority shares (or at least tied) in the company, you will lose control of it and the current majority holder will gain control.
- You may buy additional unbought shares of your company at its current market price. You may buy other player's shares in the company if the other party is willing. You may sell your shares at any time, but keep in mind the above point.
- Every stock has a risk value. This value is dictated by how much you invest in the company each month. By default, it will be at 40% risk if you do the default investment. Higher risk means your stock is more likely to decrease in value. Every additional $3 you invest in the company each month decreases the risk by 4%. Please avoid investing in non-multiples of $3. If you invest nothing in one month, the risk jumps up to 70%. Regardless of how much you invest, your stock will always have a minimum of 4% risk.
- Dividends are a bit complicated. An example is the best way to explain. Suppose your stock has a current value of $100, a total of 20 shares, and a dividends percentage rate of 7%. Then the amount of dividends paid per share equals (1 / 20) * 0.07 * $100 = $0.35 per share. In other words, 5% of the stock's value is split evenly among all the shares. You can set the dividend percentage rate to whatever you like keeping in mind that you will pay out of pocket. Dividends are typically awarded every six months, but you can pay more often if you like.
- You have two options for releasing new shares. You can either pay for half the value of the new shares or you can take a value hit to add new shares at a reduced cost. In either case, you will gain half the shares released to ensure you hold a majority. If you do the second option, the new value per share is given by (old shares * value) / new shares. You still have to pay for the shares you automatically gain regardless of which option you take.
- Whenever another player buys one of your company's shares from the market, you gain 33% of the proceeds. This does not apply if stocks are traded between players.
- Businesses are subject to a 5% tax once a year. The tax is based on the stock's current value.
- You will receive income from your business every three months. The maximum profit each quarter is equal to (Current Stock Value / 5) * (Your Shares Owned / Total Shares Available) * (Total Sold Shares / Total Shares Available). The actual number is a random number from $0.10 to the maximum value. (Total Sold Shares includes both shares you own and that others own; i.e.: it's the number of shares not available on the market.) This is calculated at the end of each month after the price update.
- Please ask me before doing anything else with your business that is not spelled out here.
- Creating a business requires PM'ing me the following information:
1) What is the name of the stock? You should also specify a color if [color=Stock Name]Stock Name[/color] doesn't render properly.
2) How many shares do you wish to initially release and at what starting value? Please keep in mind as stated above, you need half the total value in liquid cash as you will start out with a majority share.
3) Is the stock competing with any other stocks. For a competing stock, the stock does better when the competitor(s) falls in value and does worse when the competitor(s) rise in value. Please note that competition is both symmetric and transitive.
4) What is the dividends percentage rate for your stock (as described in the above rules and regulations)? Remember: You will pay dividends out of pocket every six months (months 3 and 9).
5) Are there any other special characteristics you would like to implement for your stock? I do not guarantee that I will implement all your suggestions for this question, but I will at least consider them (and let you know which aspects I do implement). An example of something that fits here is Pink doing better when more people invest in the stock.
