Neopets/Stock market

Contrary to popular belief, the stock market is very easy, and it should be a snap to get started with them. Just remember a few very simple rules, and the stock market can make you very rich.

The first site you should familiarize yourself with is Neodaq.com. This site contains a wealth of information that you will learn to utlilize later on, but for now, we'll just focus on the stock graphs and reportcards.

The stockmarket is located at http://www.neopets.com/stockmarket.phtml. You can get to it by clicking Nigel the chia on the main page, or by clicking his picture in the game room.

What are stocks?
In real life, stocks are shares in a company. You're using some of your own money to invest in a company. In the real stock market, there are a multitude of variables that must be take into consideration. Luckily, this is simplified tremendously in NeoPets. In the neopets stock market, if you buy anything at a low price, you pretty much can't lose.

However, some stocks are better to invest in than others.

Which stocks should I buy
You should only buy stocks that are worth 15-17. Newbies at the stock market often feel that they should invest in stocks that are priced extremely high. Doing so is a very bad idea, and is more likely to make you lose money than gain it.

Why? Well, if you buy a stock that is worth 130, it isn't likely to go much higher. And even if it does, it will only go up by a few points. There is also a risk that the stock will crash back to under 20, which most stocks often do.

If you buy a stock at 15-17, it will eventually go up. If you buy at this price, it not only minimizes the risk you must take, but maximizes profits. The only way a stock priced this low would not go up is if it goes bankrupt.

Decoding the pages
Lets go through this step-by-step, and find out what all those ambiguous acronyms mean.

A handy link is http://www.neopets.com/stockmarket.phtml?type=list&bargain=true. This will list all stocks that are under 20 NP per share. Here are the columns you should see:
 * 1) Logo: The company's logo. We don't care about this.
 * 2) Ticker: This identifies the company.
 * 3) Volume: The number of shares that were bought/sold today. A high volume indicates that the stock has high activity.  If a stock that is 15-17 has high volume, it probably indicates that a lot of other neopians are investing in it.  While investing based on volume will usually get you a good deal, you're relying on other people to make the decision for you.  Besides, only you can decide the perfect balance between the time it takes for your investment to appreciate and the total profits that you make.
 * 4) Open: The price that the stock opened at. This doesn't really matter too much, but it's can be nice to know what the price was at the beginning of the day so you know whether you should wait a few hours for it to go down or not.
 * 5) Curr: The current price of the stock. This is the most important one.
 * 6) Change: How much the stock went up/down today. If it's in the red, it means that the price has dropped since the beginning of the day.  If it's green, then the stock has gone up.  If it's black, it has stayed the same.  This may indicate that a stock is on the rise, although it may also indicate small, random fluctuations.

Your first stock
You're going to need at least 15,000 NP. If you don't have this much to invest, then you can do with less, but remember that you won't be making as much and you won't be taking full advantage of the stock market's opportunities.

Since you can only buy stocks that are 15 or higher, scroll down until the 6th column reads 15. Now go to neodaq.com and look at the charts for each one. What's the highest that this stock has gone to? How often does it go up? What's the average price this stock is at? The stock reportcard may help you answer some of these questions, and it gives a nice A, B, C rating.

When you've made your decision, click on the ticker. Buying 1000 shares per day is the best choice if you really want to make NP. If you invest too little, then you might not end up making too much of a profit.