Subject: acka-finance-digest V3 #48
From: [email-masked] (acka-finance-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-finance-digest       Tuesday, April 7 1998       Volume 03 : Number 048

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Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 02:16:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT Traub <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: stocks

I am also selling all 20 of my stocks.

- --JT

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 04:58:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Stocks

I buy 2 stocks.
Yours,
Slakko
portfolio manager
- -- 
Duncan C. "" Richer aka
Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College
Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc
Acka - President "Gumball" Web-Harfer RuneMaker ChessUmpire Map-Harfer

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 05:40:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Fin: Stock.

I sell any and all shares which I may own.

IB
geting a feel for the market

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 12:26:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

Say, why aren't stocks scarce?  Has this been discussed before?  Was it
avoided for tracking reasons?

I need a more interesting market to play with.

IB
dumb as a box of hammers

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 16:04:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

>Say, why aren't stocks scarce?  Has this been discussed before?  Was it
>avoided for tracking reasons?
>
>I need a more interesting market to play with.
	The original proposal caused the value of the market to go up while
you bought stocks, and down while you sold them (never to the buyer/sellers
advantage)  It was something that got trimmed when I simplified it.

- --
- -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 16:19:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Guy Fawkes <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.

Guy Fawkes

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:

> >Say, why aren't stocks scarce?  Has this been discussed before?  Was it
> >avoided for tracking reasons?
> >
> >I need a more interesting market to play with.
> 	The original proposal caused the value of the market to go up while
> you bought stocks, and down while you sold them (never to the buyer/sellers
> advantage)  It was something that got trimmed when I simplified it.
> 
> --
> -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran
> 
> 	<[email-masked]>
> 
> 	Success is the child of audacity.
> 		-Benjamin Disraeli
> 
> 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 16:29:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Guy Fawkes wrote:

> 
> If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
> the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
> charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
> day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.

I've got a related idea which might be interesting:

Minimal commission fees on sales made to and from the Reserve (deem the
reserve to always hold some large number of stocks, e.g. no matter what
other holdings are, the reserve always holds 1000 stocks, creation and
destruction occurring as necessary).  Set the commission at, say, 5%
rounded up to the nearest whole Ackadollar, payable both on purchase and
on sale.

Then there would be a disincentive for people to play the market on a
short term basis, as they lose 10% off each time they pull a buy-sell
cycle.  It also encourages player-to-player stock trading to cut down on
commission, thereby introducing more interactivity (rather than just
having people bet individually against the house).

Yours,
Slakko
- -- 
Duncan C. "" Richer aka
Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College
Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc
Acka - President "Gumball" Web-Harfer RuneMaker ChessUmpire Map-Harfer

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 16:30:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Guy Fawkes wrote:

> If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
> the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
> charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
> day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.

Perhaps some sort of sliding scale fee would be the thing here:  no fee
for the first N stocks sold that day, and increasing fees for each N
stocks after.  Might be more harfing than it is worth, and there is a
whole bunch of potential for huberting.  

> 
> Guy Fawkes
> 
> On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:
> 
> > >Say, why aren't stocks scarce?  Has this been discussed before?  Was it
> > >avoided for tracking reasons?
> > >
> > >I need a more interesting market to play with.
> > 	The original proposal caused the value of the market to go up while
> > you bought stocks, and down while you sold them (never to the buyer/sellers
> > advantage)  It was something that got trimmed when I simplified it.
> > 
> > --
> > -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran
> > 
> > 	<[email-masked]>
> > 
> > 	Success is the child of audacity.
> > 		-Benjamin Disraeli
> > 
> > 
> 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 17:03:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Duncan Richer wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Guy Fawkes wrote:
> 
> > 
> > If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
> > the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
> > charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
> > day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.
> 
> I've got a related idea which might be interesting:
> 
> Minimal commission fees on sales made to and from the Reserve (deem the
> reserve to always hold some large number of stocks, e.g. no matter what
> other holdings are, the reserve always holds 1000 stocks, creation and
> destruction occurring as necessary).  Set the commission at, say, 5%
> rounded up to the nearest whole Ackadollar, payable both on purchase and
> on sale.
> 
> Then there would be a disincentive for people to play the market on a
> short term basis, as they lose 10% off each time they pull a buy-sell
> cycle.  It also encourages player-to-player stock trading to cut down on
> commission, thereby introducing more interactivity (rather than just
> having people bet individually against the house).
> 

Some things which I think would make stock trading more interesting.

Make the stocks scarce.  I don't mean as scarce as the Purple Robe of
Justice, but at least put SOME limit on the number of stocks which exist.
Even if you think we'll never need that many.  I don't even mind if you
make it possible for the Chairman to issue more with a simple public
message.

Disincent trading back to the Treasury.  This could be as simple as the 5%
commision or sales tax which Slakko suggests.  I would suggest only doing
it on trades INTO the treasury, so as to keep as many as possible
circulating.  (For simplicity let's just make the BUY price of the
Treasury 5% lower than the SELL price of the Treasury.  e.g., if the
Treasury SELLs its holdings at 100 today, then the Treasury BUYs at 95.)
You can still make money if the prices go WAY up and there are no other
traders.

Provide some means of a "dividend".. something of intrinsic value which
makes owning stocks worthwhile. Since we are, in essence, trading in Acka
as a whole, maybe it should be based on the growth of the size of the
Treasury. 

A semi-plausible dividend scenario:

Dividends are to be paid to the shareholder of record every odd week
Monday. 

The Chairman sets the dividend ratio and issues any new shares every even
week Monday.

Take the current balance of the Treasury (A$10000) subtract the Treasury
balance after the last time dividends were paid (A$9000), multiply by the
dividend ratio (.75), divide by fully diluted shares (750) to get the
dividend per share.  In this case, A$1.  Yes, you need to worry about
rounding and such.

This gives the Chairman some ability to control the amount of currency in
the Treasury and flummox stock prices on the market.  If he creates 750
new shares(in our example) only A$.50 is paid per share.  If no one buys
them, he has effectively lowered the dividend ratio.  Maybe there should
be
an Assitant Chairman who controls one of the variables.  We could create a
fun little power struggle.

There's a lot more to a full analysis of this, obviously.. but it's just a
taste for what I would like to see happen.  But then, I'm dumb as a box of
hammers.

IB
I said it already.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 17:20:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

>> If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
>> the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
>> charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
>> day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.
	I don't love the queuing stuff, especially since the market now
changes throughout the day.

>Minimal commission fees on sales made to and from the Reserve (deem the
>reserve to always hold some large number of stocks, e.g. no matter what
>other holdings are, the reserve always holds 1000 stocks, creation and
>destruction occurring as necessary).  Set the commission at, say, 5%
>rounded up to the nearest whole Ackadollar, payable both on purchase and
>on sale.
>
>Then there would be a disincentive for people to play the market on a
>short term basis, as they lose 10% off each time they pull a buy-sell
>cycle.  It also encourages player-to-player stock trading to cut down on
>commission, thereby introducing more interactivity (rather than just
>having people bet individually against the house).
	I like this much better, especially since it encourages
inter-player trading.

- --
- -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 17:42:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

>Some things which I think would make stock trading more interesting.
>Disincent trading back to the Treasury.  This could be as simple as the 5%
>commision or sales tax which Slakko suggests.  I would suggest only doing
>it on trades INTO the treasury, so as to keep as many as possible
>circulating.  (For simplicity let's just make the BUY price of the
>Treasury 5% lower than the SELL price of the Treasury.  e.g., if the
>Treasury SELLs its holdings at 100 today, then the Treasury BUYs at 95.)
>You can still make money if the prices go WAY up and there are no other
>traders.
	I definately agree with this.  Things are much more interesting if
there's a penalty for trading back to the treasury.

>A semi-plausible dividend scenario:
>
>Dividends are to be paid to the shareholder of record every odd week
>Monday.
	How about at the same time fortnightly dividends are paid?

>Take the current balance of the Treasury (A$10000) subtract the Treasury
>balance after the last time dividends were paid (A$9000), multiply by the
>dividend ratio (.75), divide by fully diluted shares (750) to get the
>dividend per share.  In this case, A$1.  Yes, you need to worry about
>rounding and such.
	I suspect in the long run the amount of money in the treasury
falls, so this may not be a great basis for dividends.  How about the
change in the number of players or the number of proposals which are either
accepted or rejected by vote (and not by quorum failure)?

	For reference, here's what I had originally suggested:
c)  If for any reason the ownership value is unspecified, it will be set to
10.  If the ownership value is less than 0, then it will immediately become
0.  Whenever a stock is purchased by any entity other than the Ackan
Reserve, the ownership value will become (P/S)*(S+1) immediately before the
stock is purchased, where P is the ownership value and S is the number of
stocks in existance. Whenever a stock is sold by any entity other than the
Ackan Reserve, the ownership value will become (P/S)*(S-1) immediately
before the stock is sold, where P is the ownership value and S is the
number of stocks in existance.

	This was equal to the other two values as part of the market value.
In addition to the Chair, the Ackan Reserve had two board members.  By
majority vote it oculd buy or sell shares, increasing or decreasing the
volatility of the market irrespectively.

- --
- -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 17:53:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:

> 	I suspect in the long run the amount of money in the treasury
> falls, so this may not be a great basis for dividends.  How about the
> change in the number of players or the number of proposals which are either
> accepted or rejected by vote (and not by quorum failure)?
> 

In the long run, we are all dead. (It couldn't be avoided.  No, seriously,
it couldn't.)

Hrmm, that might make an interesting basis.  I don't much care about what
in particular is chosen, as long as it is something measureable and
somewhat (but only somewhat) predictable.

As to when dividends are paid.. cool, whenever.

IB
hoping someone else will up and offer to codify this

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 17:53:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Duncan Richer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:

> >A semi-plausible dividend scenario:
> >
> >Dividends are to be paid to the shareholder of record every odd week
> >Monday.
> 	How about at the same time fortnightly dividends are paid?
> 
> 	I suspect in the long run the amount of money in the treasury
> falls, so this may not be a great basis for dividends.  How about the
> change in the number of players or the number of proposals which are either
> accepted or rejected by vote (and not by quorum failure)?

Why not make the dividend based on the change in stock prices over the
last two weeks, as follows:

Find the Stock Value from the last dividends (or as 20 for the first one,
or something), and subtract it from the current Stock Value.
Issue a dividend of half the difference if positive, zero if negative.
Subtract the dividend from the current Stock Value (if non-zero dividend
was issued), by setting each component to the average of its "current"
value and its value at the last set of dividends.

This method has a real-world sort of model - the dividends come out of the
stock value, and they are related (presumably) to how well the company is
doing - a falling stock price means no dividend (as we can assume falling
stocks indicate the company is doing badly).

Yours,
Slakko
- -- 
Duncan C. "Napier Building Room 102" Richer aka
Slakko (Lost) Warner - http://dcr24.quns.cam.ac.uk/ - Queens' College
Cambridge, 1st Year PhD(Pure Maths), CUDipSoc, CUSFS, CUSTS, CURS etc
Acka - President "Gumball" Web-Harfer RuneMaker ChessUmpire Map-Harfer

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 18:02:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Matt Miller wrote:

> 
> In the long run, we are all dead. (It couldn't be avoided.  No, seriously,
> it couldn't.)

Okay.  Enough lame humor.  Next person to make a bad pun gets thwapped
with a Keyne!

rufus

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 18:20:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

>Find the Stock Value from the last dividends (or as 20 for the first one,
>or something), and subtract it from the current Stock Value.
>Issue a dividend of half the difference if positive, zero if negative.
>Subtract the dividend from the current Stock Value (if non-zero dividend
>was issued), by setting each component to the average of its "current"
>value and its value at the last set of dividends.
	My problem with this is that stock holders already profit when the
market goes up.  I'd rather that this be based on something else.

>This method has a real-world sort of model - the dividends come out of the
>stock value, and they are related (presumably) to how well the company is
>doing - a falling stock price means no dividend (as we can assume falling
>stocks indicate the company is doing badly).
	That's not how I understand them as working.  As I understand it, a
public corporation sets a dividend value per share, and adjusts it
occasionally when it's making a lot of money or going broke.  And stocks
often rise and fall for other reasons than how well the company is doing.

- --
- -Henry Towsner, AKA else...if, The Fearless Alibi Posesser, Laefu, and Yilran

	<[email-masked]>

	Success is the child of audacity.
		-Benjamin Disraeli

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 18:42:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:

> 	That's not how I understand them as working.  As I understand it, a
> public corporation sets a dividend value per share, and adjusts it
> occasionally when it's making a lot of money or going broke.  And stocks
> often rise and fall for other reasons than how well the company is doing.

Mostly true.  The frequency at which companies change their dividends is
up dramaticlly from 20 years -or even 10-  ago.  Stock prices tend to be
based on  earnings currently, plus some of what earnings might be like in
the future and what the industry their in is doing as a whole.  This means
that companies with a mature product can fire all their development staff,
and increase earings (in the shortish term), thus pushing stock prices up
because people are stupid, and earn big bone-uses for managment.  

rufus
- -- 
not bitter about that at all.

really

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 20:40:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

> >A semi-plausible dividend scenario:

> >Dividends are to be paid to the shareholder of record every odd week
> >Monday.
> 	How about at the same time fortnightly dividends are paid?

I'd actually rather something happen on alternate weeks.  It gets too
much with Swingpoint awards _and_ fortnightly dividends going on the same
day.  At least salaries weren't on the same day this month...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Tears For Fears:Elemental
Current Book--Sean Stewart:The Night Watch
I think that I shall never see--my contact lens fell in my tea.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 21:03:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Guy Fawkes <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, David Scheidt wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Guy Fawkes wrote:
> 
> > If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
> > the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
> > charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
> > day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.
> 
> Perhaps some sort of sliding scale fee would be the thing here:  no fee
> for the first N stocks sold that day, and increasing fees for each N
> stocks after.  Might be more harfing than it is worth, and there is a
> whole bunch of potential for huberting.  

The Hubert factor would definitely turn me against any sort of first N
basis.  Applying any fees to all stocks sold that day makes much more
sense.

GF

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 21:06:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Guy Fawkes <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Fin: Too much of a good thing.

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Towsner wrote:

> >> If we were to adopt /dev/joe's queuing principle (all transactions for
> >> the day happen at midnight), one could modify it to
> >> charge a 5% premium or so if more than X number of stocks were bought on a
> >> day, and address a 5% penalty if more than X stocks were sold on a day.

> 	I don't love the queuing stuff, especially since the market now
> changes throughout the day.

I don't like the fact that the market changes throughout a day; it makes
it intriscally Hubertish -- were you able to buy or sell before the jump
or drop?

Guy Fawkes

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 22:20:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Ackan Reserve Financial Report

Daily News:
	The market fell slightly today, perhaps demonstrating the wisdom of
the many, many people who sold shares today.

Rules and Regulations:
	A heated discussion began today over a number of possible changes
to the stock market.  One popular suggestion, which was later endorsed by
the Board of the Ackan Reserve, was placing a fee on all sales of stock to
the Reserve, to encourage interplayer trading.  Another, also endoresed by
the Board, was to have shares pay dividends, although the details are still
being discussed.  Watch [email-masked] for more information.

Stock Market Information:

Assuming no futher announcements today (after the results of proposal 2808
and the potato), the following information will take affect at 12:12
tomorrow:

	Current Value: 41.88
	Positivity Value: 35.8
	Activity Value: 7.33

	Change Today: -0.3
	Change in Positivity: +0.0
	Change in Activity: -0.3
	Percent Change: -0.7%

	Activities Today: 14

- --
The Ackan Reserve Financial Report
Published by the board of the Ackan Reserve
Coming daily since 1998

	else...if

		ELSE...IF

	Chair, Ackan Reserve

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 23:20:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Butler

> I bid A$25 for the Butler.

Unless I am mistaken, The Gingham Wearer's bid above was the highest
for the Butler, and so e obtains it for that price.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Song In My Head--Robbie Robertson:Fallen Angel
Current Book--Sean Stewart:The Night Watch
Please, no deja vu; I don't want to go through that again

------------------------------

End of acka-finance-digest V3 #48
*********************************