Playing & Trading Strategy

So first you have to know what this site is all about: Its players predicting how well upcoming movies will do at the box office.

Every movie that is being made right now, as well as movies that aren't being made right now but may be in the future have a moviestock. For movies that aren't out yet, these stocks will go up and down in price depending on several things: breaking news about the film, gut instinct by hsx players if the movie will be a hit, and sometimes just random price changes. The goal is to buy stocks that will/are going up and sell them before they drop. You can also short a stock; that means if a stock is going down and you short it, the more it goes down, the more money you make. In this case, you want to get out of a stock you shorted before it goes back up; you do this by "cover"ing it.

So how do you know what and when to buy. You can check the movies board. Look for posts that have specific news about films. Chances are if its good news, the price will go up; bad news, prices drop. You can check the Moviestocks page listed under On the Exchange in the green menu bar. See the chart that says Todays Top price movers? Those are the stocks that are moving the most. Chances are if you buy a stock that is green and going up, it will continue going up most of the day, and for stocks going down, you may want to get rid of them if you have them bought, and/or short them as they go down. Be careful, stock prices can change at a moments notice! The idea is to get in, make a few bucks and get out before the price flips. Also look at the calender for new films that IPO. If the IPO sounds like a good idea to you, it probably will to other players as well, so buying is probably a good idea. The price of an IPO will generally go up for a day, maybe two, before dropping. So buy some shares, let it go up for a while, then sell once you have made enough money to both get you some profit and to cover the cost of commission (its 1% buying and another 1% for selling) Now some IPO's will drop right away. Why? Maybe its such a no name film, other players have no faith it will be a hit. These can be hard to judge, and may just take you some time to get the hang of what movies work and what dont.

So how many to buy? well the more sure thing it seems, the more shares I'd buy. You dont really have enough money to do max (which is 50000 shares) You may want to buy 1000 to start just to see how things go.

Now films that open in theaters is a different type of play. Once a movie opens in wide release (meaning it made it to at least 650 theaters throughout America and Canada), it becomes a game of deciding first, how much it will make opening weekend, and then, how much it will make through its first 4 weekends of release. On Fridays at 10am pacific, the new movies opening that day are "halted" for the weekend, meaning they cant be played until sunday afternoon. So here is how you play them. During the week prior to opening day, check to see how the film may do. Players on the movies board will have lots of opinions of course, but check with your friends/family too. Are they excited for the weeks new films? You then have to figure how many millions the film will make in its opening weekend. Lets say you decide MOVIE1 will do $10 million. Check its stock price. Say its priced at $20 a share. This is tricky! It doesnt mean players think it will do $20M. This is where ou have to figure in the "adjust multiplier" The multiplier is hsx's way of figuring how a movies opening weekend will compare to its full 4 weekend total. The multiplier for a non holiday weekend is 2.7. So that stock price of $20.00, means players think it will make only about $7.4M in its opening weekend. (20.00 div by 2.7 times 1million, becuase in hsx every $1 equates to $1M of box office) Now lets forget the multiplier for a sec. Since you think the movie will do $10M, but overall hsx has it at $7.4M, you would want to buy the stock before it halts on friday (as many shares as you can/want). Then wait for the weekend estimates to come in sunday afternoon. hsx will take the estimated weekend box office, and multiply it by 2.7. This becomes the stocks new price. So lets say MOVIE1 does open to $10M. The stock "adjusts" up to $27.00 a share (2.7 times 10M div by 1M) Thus if you had bought shares at $20, they are now worth $27 each, a nice profit of $7 a share (well before commission anyways) Once the stock has adjusted to its new price, you can either sell the shares or keep them and hope the films stock price goes up. Because now, the stock price becomes more closely tied to how it does over the next 3 weeks. So will the price go up or down? The multiplier of 2.7 comes into play. Hsx expects MOVIE1 that opened to $10Million to eventually make $27Million before it delists (cashes out) after its 4th weekend. (Historically, films almost always make about 2.7 times the opening weekend, thats why they use 2.7) Now family films will usually do better and horror films worse (so if MOVIE1 is a family film it may make $30M or so, meaning your stock will go up a few more dollars, so keeping the stock may be a good idea. if its a horror film or a flop, it may only make it to $20M, so probably good to sell (and then you can short it if you want) When the film cashes out, you are not charged commission, all that money just goes back into your cash total. One problem with this is that in the time bewtween opening weekend and the time it cashes out, the price may go up and down wildly. You may not want to hold the stock at all if you are nervous about it.

So thats the basics of movies. there are starbonds and other things to buy, but i suggest just trying some movies until you learn the game.

a few tips:

1.dont buy a stock just because you think its cool. remembers its how it does at the theaters that counts. (i remember buying shares of a harrison ford/john woo movie, but it never got made so the price dropped to nothing and i lost a lot!)

2. try to play early and late in the day. if you can get a stock in the morning, chances are it will move a lot. and at night, is when the movie sites like variety publish the latest news.

3. if you click 'radar' it will buy you one share of that stock. then you can see how movies go up and down.

4. do the classic cash, learn and earn,etc everyday!

5. dont be afraid to try things you can always reset if you lose too much money

6. read all the players board and ask if you need soemthing. generally, most players can be helpful (and not take this long to explain things!)