The stockmarket is a great way to make money without risking a mugging. But it isn’t all plain sailing, and there are of course a few ways to make money from it. Before we get on to that though here is my disclaimer: The below is only intended to be a discussion of possible tactics, and I will not be liable for any financial loss you incur! (I would of course be very happy to liable for your profits)
So there are three ways I use to make money at stocks:
Buy Low Sell High (well duh!)
Benefit block hoarding
Buy Lower and just sell
Buy Low Sell High
The traditional method – and the one that most people think of when they talk about any kind of market trading. Of course it’s not as simple as that though, for starters how much do you want to make before you sell? On torn we can effectively use a high frequency trading strategy as prices only change every 15 minutes. So if you are in a position to always be there for those changes you can push the sell button at the best time.
Buying:
Now I still use the original torn stock exchange pricing scheme as a guide for buying price. If you weren’t around for the first TCSE the benefit blocks were done by price, not by shares held. So what I do is equate those numbers with the new shares required number and that is the price I expect the share to jump around. Some shares have drastically changed and this doesn’t apply, but for the most part it still works:
| Stock Code | Original BB | New BB | Price | My Price |
| TCB | 1000 | 1.5 | 666.67 | 633.33 |
| CNC | 3000 | 5 | 600.00 | 570.00 |
| MCS | 350 | 1.75 | 200.00 | 550.00 |
| WLT | 5000 | 9 | 555.56 | 527.78 |
| IIL | 35 | 0.1 | 350.00 | 500.00 |
| BAG | 800 | 3 | 266.67 | 500.00 |
| SYM | 250 | 0.5 | 500.00 | 475.00 |
| SYS | 1500 | 3 | 500.00 | 475.00 |
| TCSB | 2000 | 4 | 500.00 | 475.00 |
| LSC | 50 | 0.1 | 500.00 | 475.00 |
| TCHS | 50 | 0.15 | 333.33 | 400.00 |
| TCM | 250 | 1 | 250.00 | 380.00 |
| FHC | 750 | 2 | 375.00 | 356.25 |
| HRG | 500 | 1.5 | 333.33 | 316.67 |
| YAZ | 50 | 1 | 50.00 | 300.00 |
| WSSB | 30 | 0.1 | 300.00 | 285.00 |
| TCP | 200 | 1 | 200.00 | 280.00 |
| ISTC | 25 | 0.1 | 250.00 | 237.50 |
| TCC | 75 | 0.35 | 214.29 | 203.57 |
| TCT | 25 | 0.125 | 200.00 | 190.00 |
| GRN | 100 | 0.5 | 200.00 | 190.00 |
| EWM | 400 | 2 | 200.00 | 190.00 |
| SLAG | 300 | 1.5 | 200.00 | 190.00 |
| EVL | 350 | 1.75 | 200.00 | 190.00 |
| TMI | 1000 | 6 | 166.67 | 158.33 |
| IOU | 500 | 3 | 166.67 | 158.33 |
| MSG | 25 | 0.3 | 83.33 | 150.00 |
| PRN | 45 | 1.5 | 30.00 | 130.00 |
| ELBT | 600 | 5 | 120.00 | 114.00 |
| TGP | 200 | 2.5 | 80.00 | 100.00 |
Selling
Of course before every deciding what to buy I check the stock graph, usually for a year period, for an idea of how it’s moving. Anything older than a year can be a bit misleading – changes in game can change the demand for a stock, or can influence how often players do an action that improves/reduces the price of that stock. Here is WLT for example, one of my favorites, with a red line at my buying price.
Personally I like to try and make 1% off of any share purchase I make. And with any luck I can do this within 3 days of buying. But timing the selling can be tricky – remember there are a hundred others trying to do the same. With WLT I often see them sell out at about 560 per share (yes, above my buy price guide), and I actually buy at around 565 normally. They go up to 600 on the rare occasion, so there is plenty of room for selling.
When you hit sell your shares go in to a queue to be sold, the first available get sold first, so if you are the last to hit sell you will be waiting the longest. You can bet that if I hit sell at 571 (my intended profit) I will end up waiting three days or more and at that point I could be further in profit, or sometimes back where I started. If I hit sell at 568 though I could be in the middle of that queue. The price normally keeps on rising and people still buy at 570 hoping it will get to the 600 mark.
That of course is the other method of trying to make money at stocks. It’s not an easy one, shares stop selling the higher they go, and a lot of ‘big profit hunters’ end up hanging on to shares for a month or two to make 10% profit. If you compare the two methods and estimate I make 1% a week on an initial 100m, compared to 10% in 8 weeks, you would think I am missing out on 1.7% profit. But it’s important to remember the risks involved. In a year I may fail to make 1% on about 10% of my purchases. I would imagine a big profit hunter will fail on at least double that.
Benefit Block Hoarding
If you have plenty of spare cash around and want to lock it up, keep it safe, and still make a small profit then BB blocks are the one for you. There are three types of benefit as I see it
- Cash dividends
- Item dividends
- Game modifiers
The biggest money spinners are the Item dividends – they pay out once a week normally and the item prices are often quote good compared to the benefit cost. FHC for example is a 12m item every week, compared to 750m cost
| Stock | Benefit | Cost | Weekly payout | % Gain |
| HRG | Random Houses | 500 | 10 | 2 |
| LSC | Lotto Vouchers | 50 | 0.9 | 1.8 |
| FHC | FHC | 750 | 12 | 1.6 |
| SYM | Drug packs | 350 | 4.5 | 1.285714 |
| TCHS | Med packs | 50 | 0.5 | 1 |
| PRN | EDVDs | 270 | 2.5 | 0.925926 |
| EMW | Grenades | 490 | 1.3 | 0.265306 |
| SLAG | Lawyer Cards | 350 | 0.7 | 0.2 |
Cash dividends are poor – they rarely pay out, and when they do they are quite small compared to the block cost. TMI for example gave me 45m every 3 months or so. This is about 1.2m per week for a 1b cost.
| Stock | Cost | Payout | % Gain (3m/1w) |
| TMI | 1000 | 45 | 4.5 / 0.375 |
| IOU | 450 | 20 | 4.44 / 0.37 |
| TCSB | 2500 | 90 | 3.6 / 0.3 |
| GRN | 100 | 3 | 3 / 0.25 |
| TCC | 75 | 2 | 2.66 / 0.22 |
Game modifiers are all dependent on how you quantify things. CNC for example is good for oil rig owners, but won’t benefit anyone else, and if you own a rig it probably gives you 10% profit per day (5-6m) for the 2.5-3b investment. MCS gives 300 energy randomly, maybe once a week, but for me 300 energy could be 2 FHC (24m) or 12 mugs (12-100m).
Cash benefits:
| Stock | Benefit | Worth |
| TCB | Better bank rate | 5m a week? |
| MCS | Random energy | 24m a week? |
| WLT | Quicker travel | 14m a week? |
| YAZ | Free Banner Ads | Up to 3.5m a week |
| ELBT | 10% off house upgrades | Property sales dependant |
Company Owner benefits:
| Stock | Benefit | Worth |
| CNC | Oil rig profit / cost reduction | Up to 35m a week? |
| TCP | 10% company profits | Up to 7m a day |
| TGP | Increased Advertising | Unknown |
| SYS | Hacking Protection | Not quantifiable |
Other:
| Stock | Benefit | Worth |
| IIL | Reduced virus coding time | Minimal |
| BAG | Unknown | Unknown |
| TCM | Reduced Car Upgrade Costs | Minimal |
| ISTC | No Education Money Cost | Minimal |
| WSSB | No Education Energy Cost | Minimal |
| TCT | Free personal Adverts | Minimal |
| EVL | Random Happy | Minimal |
| MSG | Free classified ads | Minimal |
Trusted friends
There is of course another route to making money this way. But only if you have trust in another player 110%. Buy shares and get someone else to hold them for you. I do this with some of my closest in game friends, they get to keep 1 in every 3 items/dividends, and if they end up making enough money they can buy the shares off me.
Buy Lower and Just Sell
An alternative way of making money is by offering to buy shares off others at a discount rate. Often people want to get the money out of their shares quickly, and waiting for them to sell on the open market isn’t an option. This is a good opportunity for a player with time and money to buy them cheaper than market price (80-99% of cost). Once bought you put them on the market to sell like any other share, but you are gambling that they will sell before the price drops below what you paid for them.
So that is the low down on the stock market. If you need to make some cash to invest then read about how I would make some capital in my article Simple ways to make money