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Wall Street Raider Updates Information
Wall Street 7 released a few weeks ago, apparently.
Quote:
7.0 -- Released: November 1, 2013 (Major release)
We have continued to add more and more highly detailed commentary on industry and economic conditions and trend analysis, for many common or unusual situations, displayed in the sidebar on the Entity Info and General Research pop-up menus, as the "DAILY MARKET COMMENTARY."
In fact, most of the huge number of hours, on weekdays, holidays, nights, and weekends, that went into doing this new release, were spent on devising and refining these new textual commentaries, to ensure their accuracy and relevance to the facts at hand, as well as their realism. Our goal has been to not only make the "DAILY MARKET COMMENTARY" useful and realistic, but to make it read much like a column you might see in a financial daily like the Wall Street Journal, Investors' Business Daily, or the Financial Times.
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. In previous versions of W$R, the only type of settlement of expiring futures was 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!)
New features have been added that let players or companies post offers to sell a certain amount of stock, and in the case of industrial companies, offer to sell business assets, and also to buy such offered stocks (at 95% of current market value) or business assets (at 95% of seller's cost, per balance sheet), which other players or companies are willing to sell. 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." Menu. 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). In addition, by buying business assets offered for sale by another company (at a 5% discount), your company can avoid the somewhat common situation of having to pay a significant premium ("goodwill") when buying assets from another company, if using the "Buy Corporate Assets" button on the Buy/Sell Transactions Menu.
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. If you own 10% of XYZ Co. and post an offer to sell all 10%, but then sell 6% of XYZ, the program will automatically reduce your offer to 4%. 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.) may accept the offer, EXCEPT the issuing company, which can only buy back its stock in a "greenmail" buyback tender offer (at a significant premium over the market price).
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. offers to sell $300 million of assets, and a buyer comes along and accepts the offer, but only for $100 million of the assets, the offer remains, but is reduced to $200 million of assets. 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?" button is added to the General Research Menu. 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.
A new button has been added to the Buy/Sell transactions menu. 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. However, the "Commodity Trading Desk" menu that pops up when you click on either of the above buttons also has a toggle button, which lets you toggle between trading futures and physical commodities, without having to exit the "trading desk" back to the Buy/Sell menu or main screen.
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.
Small (under 5% of a company's stock) LBO or greenmail stock buybacks are no longer allowed, unless the LBO buyback offer your company makes is for all of the company's remaining publicly-traded stock, or if the greenmail buyback offer is for all the shares held by the selling shareholder.
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. Nice trick! 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.
This release is file-compatible with saved game files from prior versions 6.0 to 6.70, but not with versions prior to v. 6.0. (Note that files saved with a newer version 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 turns, you must both be using the same registered version of Wall Street Raider.)
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Last edited by Young Drachma : 01-13-2014 at 12:12 PM.
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