Wall Street Raider Changelog

What's new in Wall Street Raider 9.75

Jan 3, 2023

Many of the popular features in Wall Street Raider have been developed in response to suggestions by users over the years. These include some ideas (like adding Bitcoin) we initially thought were "off the wall," or others, like creating and realistically simulating price action for convertible bonds, we at first rejected as being impossibly difficult to implement, but eventually got around to including, after much trial and error (and hair-pulling) in development.
Since we seem to be running out of good ideas ourselves lately, almost all the upgrade features in this release are entirely in response to a "to do list" of good ideas for "do-able" features or changes that we have received since we released 9.50, coming from several different users, and which we felt were worthwhile improvements. We always appreciate the good input, though we can't incorporate every idea someone comes up with, as we try to keep the complexity and ease of use for simply playing the game from becoming overwhelming for new players. The changes in this release and prior releases are listed below as follows:
Advanced Options Trading Platform Added. We recently received an excellent suggestion by a user of Wall Street Raider, requesting that we create an options trading platform for doing complex options trades all at once, something similar to the real-world Trade Station offering by Ameritrade. Until now, it was possible to construct sophisticated options trading strategies (hedges) in Wall Street Raider, such as straddles, strangles, bull spreads, calendar spreads, Butterfly spreads, etc., but you had to put the different options positions in place one trade at a time. Very often, between putting in the trades, the price of the underlying stock would have moved significantly, making it difficult to implement the complex position as you intended. Now, you can enter up to 8 trades on the trading platform screen and execute them all at the same time with a single click.
Also, one click on a "Close All XYZ Options" button will now allow you to instantly close all option positions you have (or a company you control has) on a particular stock, for instance, on XYZ Corp. This is a handy additional feature of the trading station platform. Thus, if you have established a complex option strategy on XYZ Corp., such as an Iron Butterfly spread, and you decide it is time to close out all of the positions in that spread, one click on the "Close All XYZ Options" button will instantly settle all of XYZ options at the current market prices.
To make such complex option strategies simple to implement, we have added a new screen, an "Advanced Options Trading Station" to this release of Wall Street Raider. It lets you do up to 4 put trades and 4 call trades, all at one time. This works out perfectly, since many of the most common esoteric options strategies involve either 4 puts or 4 calls, or 2 of each.
In addition, the HELP button on this "trading station" screen will take you directly to a detailed discussion, with examples, of all the major options trading strategies -- covered calls, long or short straddles or strangles, vertical bull or bear spreads, calendar spreads, Butterfly (and reverse Butterfly), Condor and reverse Condor spreads, and Iron Butterfly or Iron Condor spreads. You can learn a lot, by trial and error, about complex options trading strategies with this new tool and the accompanying instructions.
We have even "automated" the creation of the most widely used complex options trading strategies, where you click on the AUTO-TRADE button on the Advanced Options Trading Station to bring up this menu:
You can simply choose one of the listed strategies and enter an expiration month for all of the options that will be created, plus enter the quantity of options for each of the contracts, then click on the "GO" button to post the details of all the components for the selected strategy on the Advanced Options Trading Station screen. The Advanced Options Trading Station image below shows an Iron Butterfly strategy created with the AUTO-TRADE feature:
Once posted, you can either click on "SUBMIT" to execute all the trades at once, or if you like, make any desired modifications before execution.
Commodity Price and Other Alerts Are Now Available. In Version 8.0, we added stock price alerts to Wall Street Raider. In response to requests of users who found the stock price alerts very useful, aiding them in trading and investing in stocks, this release has added price alerts on spot prices of each of the five commodities in the simulation -- crude oil, gold, silver, wheat, and corn, as well as on the Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies, and the Stock Index.
In addition, you can now set up alerts to notify you when any of the interest rates (prime rate, long bond rate and short bond rate) reach a level you specify, or when the GDP growth rate goes above or below a growth rate you specify.
Because of the many, constantly changing economic and financial factors in the game, as game time passes, it is often easy for you to fail to notice some major change that is occurring, such as a large increase or decrease in interest rates, or an emerging economic boom or recession or spike in a commodity price. Accordingly, you can now set up alerts for any of the key economic and financial indicators, so you will be alerted when one falls to or rises above levels you specify, which can be very helpful in reminding you to review and perhaps change your current investment strategy.
Up to 100 stock and/or commodity price or rate alerts can be pending at any one time. As with stock price alerts, each commodity price or other alert will remain in effect for a full year of game play, or until the price or rate objective has been reached and you have been notified by an announcement, whichever occurs first. You can set up alerts at multiple price points or rate levels on a particular item and on one or more stocks.
Now, instead of a "Set Stock Alert" button on the MISC Menu, that button has been replaced by a "Set Price or Rate Alert" button, which brings up an extensive menu from which you can pick the type of alert you want, either a stock price alert on the current "Active Entity" or an alert on one of the various commodities or other items for which alerts are now available.
Buying or Selling Business Assets Streamlined. In this release, when you wish to have your controlled company buy some business assets from another company in its industry, a pick list of all the potential sellers in its industry is displayed. Similarly, if you want your company to sell some of its business assets to another company you control, a pick list of all the companies you control in the same industry, plus all holding/trading companies you control, is listed for you to select as the buyer. If you wish to sell the assets to a company you do not control, then, as in previous versions, the software will pick the potential buyer (if any) and indicate how much it is willing to buy. (You cannot choose a company you do not control and force it to become the buyer.)
Setting Term of Bond Issuances. When you decide to have a company that you control or an ETF that one of your companie manages issue bonds, you are now able to set the year of maturity within certain upper limits or for a term as short as 3 years. The shorter the term, if less than 10 years, the lower the interest rate the company will have to pay on the bonds, all other things being equal.
New Database Search Features, To Find Companies with Positive Cash Flow. Two new cash flow-related items have been added on the Database Search screen. One allows you to search for companies with projected positive cash flow for the next 3 months. The other allows you to also include in your search results those companies that have negative cash flow overall, but that have positive cash flow before debt repayments on their line of credit and/or the payoff of a maturing bond issue.
More New Database Search Features, To Find Short Sale Candidates. Two more database search features have been added, in order to search for possible short sale candidates. Select the "FIND SHORT SALE CANDIDATES" item on the Database Search screen and the program will look for stocks that have a number of negative characteristics, such as downward momentum, excessive price-to-net worth ratios, and negative cash flow, and will list such stocks.
Since many of the stocks that will be listed will be those that are D-rated (bankrupt, but not yet liquidated or reorganized), and since the simulation will not allow you to short the shares of such stocks, a second button, "...BUT EXCLUDE BANKRUPTS," has also been added, which will exclude any such "walking dead" companies in the selection process, if you also check that box. Thus, if you check that box to exclude the "zombie" companies, the only short sale candidates that will be listed will be those companies with "C" or better credit ratings, which you CAN sell short.
No More Automatic Dividend Increases by Companies You Control. While previous editions of Wall Street Raider did not generally do automatic dividend increases for a company you controlled, that was changed when we introduced the "autopilot" feature a few years ago, so that companies you control that are on "autopilot" function pretty much like the companies you don't control, except they don't do major actions like buying a stock or initiating a merger, or issuing new stock. However, some players found it annoying that when they wanted a company on autopilot to stop paying dividends, or only pay a minimal dividend, it would often boost the dividend if the company had big earnings increases or had a great deal of liquidity. Thus, in this release, companies you control will not raise their dividend automatically, whether they are on autopilot or not. (But will still cut their dividend payout when necessary to do so, or in a "cash flow crunch.")
Bank's "Hot Deposits" Now Shown on Its Financial Profile. As a convenience to users who control or invest in banks, we have added a line item in the Financial Profile for a bank, showing the amount of its demand deposits that are held by players or companies in the simulation, as distinct from deposits by "the Public," which tend to grow or shrink gradually. Previously, that information was only shown in a Research Report on a bank.
Demand deposits by players or corporations in a bank should be considered "hot deposits," since they can suddenly be withdrawn at any time, such as when a company makes a large expenditure, like a purchase of a stock or other assets. From the bank's standpoint, it is nice to have a lot of such non-interest bearing deposits, since the cash can be loaned out or invested bonds or stocks. However, having a large amount of such "hot deposits" can cause some instability, because of the possibility of sudden and large fluctuations in those deposits, which might cause liquidity problems for the bank, forcing it to sell assets to pay off the depositor, possibly at an inopportune time.
Advanced Options Strategies Added to the Strategy Manual and HELP Files. For purchasers of the W$R "Full Package" and for registered users who purchase this upgrade, the W$R Strategy Manual now has a lengthy section on complex options trading strategies used by real- world professional options traders. Similar explanations are included in the W$R HELP file. Those discussions cover straddles (long and short), long and short strangles, bull and bear call spreads, bull and bear put spreads, calendar spreads, and even more arcane and complex spreads, such as the Butterfly, Condor, Iron Butterfly, and Iron Condor.
Understanding the mechanics of the complex options strategies may cause short-circuits in your brain as you try to grasp how they work, but we decided to provide this esoteric information for the benefit of players who wish to delve more deeply into the intricacies of options trading.
(These complicated options strategies are actually easier to utilize in our other game, Speculator, since W$R has some "insider" restrictions on the use of puts and short calls on stocks of companies you control, which may prevent you from being able to create some of the more advanced options trading positions we describe.)
Currency Exchange Rates Updated. In the current global economic crisis, exchange rates have been changing rapidly, as the U.S. dollar strengthens against nearly all other currencies. We have updated the exchange rates for the 22 non-US currencies for which Wall Street Raider can be configured, as of late December, 2022.
Saved File Compatibility. Version 9.75 is file-compatible with saved games from Versions 6.0 or higher.

New in Wall Street Raider 9.52 (Oct 17, 2022)

New in Wall Street Raider 9.50 (Jan 2, 2022)

It's a sign of the times....Inflation has come to Wall Street Raider! (No, not to the price of the game, which hasn't changed since mid-2014.) In the simulation, inflation is not all bad; this release adds an inflation factor to the price of gold and silver, which will tend to gradually appreciate, all other things being equal, at about 4% a year above an assumed initial price of $1,200 per Troy ounce. (Indexing stops after 35 years of play, which is the "standard" game length.) Thus, buying and holding physical gold, or buying long-term (5-year) futures will tend to be more profitable for gold and silver investors, since their prices will now have an inflationary bias. This will tend to make precious metals somewhat of an inflation hedge, though not a great investment, unless your timing is very good.
As requested by a number of players, Bitcoin has been added as a new asset class to trade in Wall Street Raider, and we have also added Ethereum, another popular crypto-currency. As in the real world, we have made the price action in both cryptos EXTREMELY volatile, as pure speculations, and both also include an inflationary bias, as with the precious metals. Thus, both of the cryptos are also somewhat of an inflation hedge, if you are not wiped out by the extreme price fluctuations in the interim!
We have also added a new (but rare) scenario, where Bitcoin may be banned by most of the world's major nations. While it will not be completely eliminated if that occurs, as it will still be legal in a few countries like Belarus or Bangladesh, its price will take an enormous plunge of 90% or more and won't ever significantly recover from the banning during the rest of the game. This danger adds another element of risk to your trading in Bitcoin, which is already wildly volatile, both in this simulation and the real world, where China has already decided to ban the use of Bitcoin.
Some players have been critical of the antitrust rules in Wall Street Raider (corporate antitrust damage suits and government fines, forced divestitures, and restrictions on anti-competitive takeovers), saying that these rules, as in the real world, make it difficult for the criminally-minded create a good monopoly in an industry. Accordingly, as was suggested, we have added a new "Cheat Menu" item that now lets you turn off either the private antitrust suits or the government fines and interventions, or turn off both. We trust that making the simulation lawless will evoke memories of the "robber baron" days of the late 1800s, when there were few, if any, laws against monopolies. The only downside of this new cheat is that it will disqualify all the players from setting a "personal best" high score in that game.
A "Suppress Cash Flow Warnings" item has been added to the Settings Menu, to suppress such warnings, if you control a lot of coompanies and are seeing too many such warnings.
Several minor improvements in this release include the following:
As one user suggested, we have added a new feature, when you do a merger of a company with a company you did not control prior to the merger. If the acquired company has significantly better management than the acquirer, you may sometimes be asked if you want to replace the management of the acquiring company with the management team of the acquired company. This will only occur under certain rare conditions, when both are in the same industry and their businesses are roughly comparable in size. (This feature is not applicable if either company is a holding/trading company, but applies to mergers in any other industry. It is also not applicable if the player controlled both companies before the merger was consummated.)
We have changed corporate cash flow projections to show, as a subtotal, net cash flow before debt repayments, before arriving at the total net cash flow. This is a more useful way of displaying the numbers, since in many cases some or all of the amount to be repaid can be borrowed right back, depending on a company's credit rating at the time repayment is made.
Vietnam has been added as another nation in which to incorporate a start-up. As with a number of Third World and Asian countries, incorporation of your startup company in Vietnam will make it more difficult for a hostile acquiring company to effect a merger with your company in Wall Street Raider when there is a large percentage of "public" stockholders who are more likely to vote against the merger in such countries. Thus, incorporating in those countries can be somewhat of a defensive strategy, to avoid losing control of your company in hostile merger attempts, in some cases.
As suggested by the player who urged us to add Vietnam as another country in which to incorporate, we have made projected earnings estimates for Vietnamese companies much more volatile and often wildly inaccurate, which he indicated is the case for Vietnamese companies in the real world.
Vietnam Airlines (a dormant company initially) has been added, replacing Sabena Airways in registered versions of W$R, since the real Sabena, a Belgian airline, is now defunct.
The Financial Profile of a company shows the amount of any interest rate swaps to which the company is a party. In this release, if the company is a party to only one such agreement, which is the usual case, the name of the counterparty is also shown in the same footnote, for your convenience.
In previous versions, when you wished to do an interest rate swap (if a counterparty could be found), the sim searched only for companies with a solid credit rating and no existing swap agreements. In this version, the search for a counterparty will include companies that have only one interest rate swap in effect, if the second one will be an opposite position. For example, if Company XYZ already has a short position in an interest rate swap, it could become a counterparty in a swap where it becomes the long party; and vice versa.
The Database Search function has been modified so that any time credit rating is one of your search criteria for stocks, the companies listed will be sorted by credit rating, rather than alphabetically. A similar change was made when doing bond searches in Version 9.0.
In previous versions, a contingency reserve would often be set aside to cover the after-tax costs of antitrust litigation, for a company that was a defendant in one or more pending antitrust lawsuits, but the amount set aside was based on a simple, one-size-fits all computation. In this version, a much more complex algorithm computes the amount needed in the reserve, analyzing each such lawsuit separately, and taking into account the level of risk posed, as a better approximation of what amount should be set aside. Then, if there is still a significant sum left in the reserve after all such pending cases against the company have been resolved, a portion of the reserve will be added back to income each quarter, reducing the reserve, in the case of companies not controlled by human players.
We have fixed one tax loophole, to be congruent with Sec. 362 of the U.S. tax code. Previously, if ABC transferred stock of XYZ to sub DEF, and the stock had a "tax basis" of 500 million, but its value had declined to only 100 million, the 500 million tax basis was added to ABC's basis in its DEF sub, and the XYZ stock "carried over" its 500 million basis in the hands of DEF. Now in W$R, as under the US tax law, when the tax basis of the stock that is contributed is higher than its value, the basis of the XYZ stock will no longer be 500 million. Its tax basis will be set at its market value of 100 million. This also applies to capital contributions of bonds.
A somewhat similar tax loophole could be exploited and ABC owned 100% of both DEF and XYZ, both trading well below their tax basis and DEF acquired XYZ by merger. In that case, as in the real world, DEF's tax basis in the XYZ shares would be the basis of all the XYZ shares in the hands of other entities before the merger (in this case, ABC's basis for the XYZ shares). ABC could then buy the XYZ stock from DEF for $nnn dollars, and DEF could return the $nnn dollars to ABC as a dividend, so everything was back to where these transactions started, except ABC would have considerably higher total tax basis in the 2 subs than before, creating what could be taken as a bigger tax loss, out of thin air! We have fixed that, to make the basis of new shares acquired by DEF in the merger with XYZ have a tax basis equal to the value of the stock, instead of the "carryover" tax basis. (Clang! The sound of two more loopholes closing!)
When a bank you control is selling off a corporate loan, such as where the debtor has a "D" credit rating, the sim will look for another bank that has enough cash to purchase the loan. In prior versions, if you controlled any other banks, the program would first look for any other bank you controlled and ask if you want it to be the buyer; if it could find no such controlled bank, or if it did and you answered "no" to the question for each of your other controlled banks, the loan was then sold to the first uncontrolled bank it randomly found that had sufficient funds to make the purchase.
However, if, for example, you controlled 20 other banks that had ample funds, W$R previously would go through the list and for each such bank it would ask if you wanted to sell the loan to it. Obviously, if you were dumping a "D"-rated loan, you wouldn't want to sell it to another of your banks, so that could be annoying. In this version, the software simply randomly looks for a bank you do not control (which has adequate funds) and instantly has it buy the loan you are trying to sell.

New in Wall Street Raider 9.0 (Jan 4, 2021)

We have received a number of requests from users in the last year to include some kind of cash flow projection or warning system when companies you control are about to run out of cash. Our response has generally been, "Nice thought, but devilishly difficult to see how I could do that, especially where there are complex corporate structures involving complexities like the presence of convertible bonds or 80%-owned subsidiaries that are contributing unknown amounts of taxable income and/or tax credits to a consolidated group's tax calculations, all at different times."
Nevertheless, during our period of house arrest ("self-quarantine") during the COVID-19 crisis, we have had plenty of time on our hands, which we didn't want to waste watching the rubbish on the telly, so we decided to tackle that thorny project, knowing that it would be vastly more complex than the existing cash flow annual projection for the individual players. It was, but we've come up with a cash flow projection for non-bank corporations that isn't perfect, but will generally give you a pretty good estimate of the near-term cash flow of a corporation, with considerable detail, giving you some ideas of what policies you need to quickly change if your corporation is burning through its cash and credit rapidly and headed for a crack-up on the financial rocks. Accordingly...
This version now includes detailed 3-month cash flow projections for corporations, which can also help you determine when a stock you are considering an investment in (or shorting) is about to run out of cash and/or borrowing power, and perhaps be forced to sell off assets when it has burned through all its cash and credit. Or, it can give you some assurance that a company is sailing along smoothly, with no near-term liquidity problems. The complex code that does the calculations is also a diagnostic tool that can give you warnings (pop-ups or in research reports on a stock) when a company is about to experience a serious cash crunch in the next three months. In such cases, the actual projection and how it is being calculated will also show you where the worst bleeding is occurring, so you can take appropriate action -- if possible.
This feature is also an invaluable tool, once you recognize that your company has a cash flow crisis coming. You can do "what-if" analyses of changes like cutting the dividend paid, slashing R & D spending, or cutting back on the growth rate, or increasing the dividends paid by stocks your company owns controlling interests in, and doing new cash flow projections to see how such changes in policy will affect the bottom line cash flow, to prevent your company from having to make forced sales of assets. In addition, if you change certain settings that directly affect cash flow (dividend payout, asset growth rate, or productivity spending), you will be given an immediate warning if an increase you make in one of those settings will trigger a major cash flow problem in the next 3 months, in which case you may want to reverse the change you have just made.
Another new feature in this version is the addition of another 5 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to the 15 sector ETFs that were added in Version 6.30 (in 2012). These new funds consist of three bond funds, and two triple leverage (3x) index funds. One bond fund invests only in government bonds, another invests only in investment-grade bonds rated BBB or better, and the third fund invests only in junk (high yield or convertible) bonds with ratings of BB or lower, if available, (but not "C" or "D" unless the issuer is profitable and appears likely to improve its credit rating). The bond funds have somewhat volatile share prices, fluctuating mainly in reaction to changing interest rates, bit can be a good place for industrial companies or holding companies to invest excess liquid funds.
We appreciate the suggestion from a user that we build in 3x leveraged index funds, which we thought was a great idea! And while we were at it, we decided that adding bond funds might also be an interesting addition to the sim.
As in the real world, the two index funds tend to be very poor long-term investments, because of their constant buying and selling of index futures contracts, but are explosive vehicles for short-term trading. The long, or "bullish" ETF attempts to track the movements of the Global Stock Index, times 3. The other, "bearish," index fund is designed to try to approximate 3 times the movement of a short position in the Global Stock Index. Each index fund initiates futures positions no further out than 8 months and seeks to maintain total futures positions that are roughly 3 times the net asset value of the ETF. The bullish fund can quickly be wiped out by either a "Black Swan" market crash event, or, in the case of the bearish fund, a massive "melt-up" in the stock market.
The best thing we can say about these two 3x leveraged index funds is: "Buyer beware! And hang on to your hat for a wild ride!"
These 5 new funds do computerized trading according to complex algorithms only. Thus, a player who controls the insurer or securities broker that is the investment advisor to one of these 5 new ETFs will not be able to make any investment decisions for the index funds and only limited decisions for the bond funds, which will attempt to remain almost fully invested in bonds at all times. However, you can still make certain limited financial decisions, such as possibly doing new stock or bond issuances, or calling in existing bond issues. The corporate bond funds will quickly sell off any bonds that no longer meet their investment criteria, such as D-rated bonds or bonds that are much higher- or lower-rated than the credit category of bonds the fund is limited to holding.
Because your management functions for these new funds will be very limited, your company that is the advisor to such a fund will not be eligible to earn hedge fund-like performance bonuses, or management fees in excess of the 0.2% of assets minimum, unlike what they may earn for superior performance of the 15 (older) equity ETFs. The new ETFs are pretty much on "cruise control," with algorithms doing the trading so that they maintain their character.
A new "pandemic" crisis scenario has been added in this release. It will only occur very rarely, but, as in the current real world COVID-19 pandemic, when it does, the effects will be devastating (unless you happen to own gold or shares in the new triple-leveraged inverse index fund ETF, described above)! Like the "Peak Oil" and "Subprime" crises that can some times occur in the simulation, the new Pandemic crisis scenario can drag on for years, crushing stock prices and causing numerous bond defaults and bankruptcies, a time of much fear & loathing for bulls -- or great fun, if you are a bear (short seller).
Prices of put or call options on the stock of the two 3X leveraged index funds have been significantly increased in the options pricing algorithm, recognizing the extreme volatility of those two ETFs. Conversely, prices for options on bond ETFs, which ordinarily experience very low volatility, have been reduced in the pricing algorithm.
Restrictions have been imposed on the debt leverage that an ETF may take on. An ETF in W$R must now maintain a net asset value that is at least 3 imes the amount of its debts (bank loan and/or bonds issued). If its net asset value falls below that requirement it will be required to pay down bank loans, possibly forcing a sale of some of its investments. This means that an ETF's line of credit will be smaller than a corporation with the same credit rating, and that when an ETF issues bonds, the amount will be limited by the foregoing "300% Rule," which is based on a U.S. law (the Investment Company Act of 1940) that similarly regulates investment companies, such as ETFs.
Another change has been made to make ETFs more realistic. Capital gains dividends are now only paid at the end of the year, rather than quarterly, as is true of real-world investment funds. Previously, an ETF might distribute large capital gains in the first quarter or two, but then have capital losses in the following quarters, perhaps with little or no net gains for the year, but its assets will have shrunken due to the quarterly capital gain distribution. This change allows for a netting out of gains and losses during the year, which will help to prevent or slow the steady shrinkage of ETFs' assets over the course of a game.
At another user's suggestion, a new item has been added to the Database Search function, which allows you to narrow your search to a single industry. For example, you might do a search of all banks rated as a "STRONG BUY" by analysts and which have an increase of 10% or more in projected quarterly earnings for the next quarterly earnings report.
Another improvement to the DataBase Search routine, for bond searches, now sorts the display of the bonds that meet your search criteria by the maturity date of the bonds. This will make it easier, for example, to find bonds that mature very soon, which can be a good place to park excess cash at a reasonable interest rate. However, if you check the "Credit Rating" button to only display bonds with a specified minimum credit rating, then the bonds will be sorted by credit rating, as in prior versions of the game.
Loan amortization has been added for "mass loans" made by banks and insurance companies -- the quarterly principal payments of cash to the bank or insurer are equal to 5% of consumer loans, 2% of prime mortgage loans, and 1% of subprime mortgage securities owned by the institution, but flow in monthly at 1/3 of the quarterly total amounts. Of course, banks that have the asset allocation formula turned on will soon reinvest the cash according to that formula.
The varying amortization rates for corporate or ETF loans, which depend on multiple factors such as creditworthiness and cash balances of the borrower, have not changed. As before, "margin loans" to players are not amortized, and repayment is only required when the player receives a margin call because of insufficient collateral, due to a drop in the player's net worth.
Bank financing (lines of credit) lending rules have been liberalized considerably. Companies may now borrow amounts ranging from 1.5 to 3 times net worth, depending on the Difficulty Level at which you are playing and certain economic conditions. Thus, in the spirit of the times, Wall Street Raider companies will be more leveraged in the new version, especially if you play at the higher difficulty levels 3 or 4.
A number of improvements have been made in the anti-trust litigation features. The main change is that the amount of legal fees incurred by both the plaintiff and defendant are now sharply reduced, by roughly a third, if a case settles after pre-trial discovery has concluded, instead of going to trial. (Sort of an inducement to stay out of costly court trials.) Also, when a company you control is being sued and you are asked to accept or reject the settlement offer, you are now shown the amount your company has already incurred as legal fees, and the estimated total fees it will incur if you choose to go to trial, and similar information is shown when your company is the one suing, and you are asked to enter the amount you would be willing to settle the case for, on the courthouse steps.
Since Internet Explorer is getting long in the tooth, and Microsoft says they won't be supporting it much longer, we have modified portions of the W$R software that previously used Internet Explorer to access the Internet or to view certain files, such as the W$R Strategy Manual. Thus, now the program will use whatever browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer, etc.) that you have chosen as the default browser that you use on your computer.
When we are planning to buy a stock for ABC Corp, which we control, we will often select 2 or more companies we do not control as Active Entity, researching each of them, such as DEF Co. and XYZ Company. Then, once we decide to buy some stock of DEF Co., we may want to take another look at ABC's financial profile before doing the tranaction. Until now, this usually meant entering ABC's stock symbol before we take one last look at its financials and buy the DEF stock. We've often found that to be slow and a bit time-consuming, especially if we have forgotten ABC's stock symbol.
In this release, we have replaced the "Line of Credit" item on the main screen (in the "Active Entity Selected" box) with an "Acting Now" item, which will show ABC's stock symbol or name as the controlled entity that is doing the transaction if, for instance, we click on the "BUY STOCK" button. Now we can simply click on that item and -- presto! -- ABC is now the Active Entity and we can take a quick look at its statistics, without having to remember or look up its stock symbol and enter it again. Just a small labor-saving tweak we felt most users would like, since the line of credit information is available in various other places, like the "Credit Info" button or in a company's Financial Profile.
We have made a number of refinements to the "taxable liquidation" feature. The main change was to close a loophole that could allow a player to weasel out of the ugly situation where his or her company is subject to ongoing asbestos or "SuperFund" environmental clean-up lawsuits or costs, by quickly doing a taxable liquidation before the company's assets are too severely depleted.
Now the liquidating company will have to set aside 5% of its total assets (or a minimum of U.S. $200 million for asbestos claims or $100 million for environmental clean-up costs) before it can liquidate. (No set-aside is required in a TAX-FREE liquidation, since the parent company takes on the liquidated subsidiary's liabilities, including its liability for the asbestos or environmental damages.)
When you start to purchase stock in an ETF, you are given a warning that if you and/or your companies acquire more than 15% of the ETF, it will be disqualified and lose its tax-exempt status as an investment company. In this version, the warning will also tell you what percent of the ETF that you and the companies you control already own, so you don't accidentally buy enough of the stock to cause the fund to be disqualified.
We fixed a minor bug which could occur in games involving multiple human players. When there is only one human player the stock ticker, if running, will continue to run even after your turn ends, if W$R becomes the background program, such as when you open another program, like your browser, and W$R is no longer visible on your computer screen. That is what we intended. However, that was still occurring when there were 2 or more human players, which meant the ticker could keep running after your turn ended, when it should have stopped and waited for the next (human) player to begin his or her turn, which it now does since we have fixed the problem. Thus, now, if there are 2 or more human players and you cover the W$R screen with another application while the ticker is running, it will only run, at most, until your turn has ended, at the end or midpoint of a calendar quarter.
Version 9.0 is file-compatible with saved games from Versions 6.0 or higher. Although the 5 new bond and index fund ETFs were not created in a game you may have started and saved with v. 8.72 or earlier versions, the 5 new ETFs will automatically be created and inserted into a game you saved with a prior version, when you load the old saved game file.

New in Wall Street Raider 8.72 (Jul 13, 2020)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.70 (Jan 2, 2020)

In response to user suggestions, we have made some major revisions regarding the 15 Exchange-Traded Funds ("ETFs") in the Wall Street Raider simulationUsers have been asking for a way to manage the investments of ETFs and, somewhat like hedge funds, the opportunity to earn large performance bonuses for superior resultsAs long-time players of W$R are aware, it has always been a rule that you need to buy 20% or more of a company's stock in order to control it, and if you bought over 15% of an ETF, it would no longer qualify as a tax-exempt investment companyWhile each ETF was nominally "managed" by an investment advisor (an insurance company or securities broker), all that meant was that the "advisor" received quarterly management fees, as a percentage (0.2% to 1.0% annual rate) of total assets of the ETF, but didn't actually direct the ETF's investment activities, which are all managed by the software.
Accordingly, we have made a number of significant changes to enable players to actually manage most of an ETF's financial affairs, if the player controls the company that is the investment advisor/manager of the ETFThe changes include the following:
On the Buy/Sell, Financing, and Misc Menus, if an ETF managed by a company that the player controls is selected as the Active Entity (or was the most recently selected previous Active Entity), the ETF can engage in several actions on each of those menus: buying and selling stocks and options, doing public stock offerings (only once a year, in December, and only if the ETF's shares are up 15% or more for that year), bond issuances, calling or buying back bonds, and borrowing or making repayments of bank loansNote that issuance of new stock or of bonds will bring more assets under the advisor's management (resulting in higher advisory fees).
As before, the company that is the advisor to an ETF will receive a "base fee" paid quarterly, based on the ETF's total assets, at an annual rate of 0.2% to 1% of total assetsHowever, if the base fee is set at the minimum 0.2% rate, the advisor MAY also earn a performance bonus for each 2-year measurement period, if the ETF's net worth (as adjusted for capital gains dividends) has grown by more than 20%.
In general, this "gain-sharing" performance bonus will be similar to what hedge funds usually take: In this case, 20% of any gain in excess of 20%Thus, if net worth per share increased by 50%, the excess would be 30%, and the advisor's bonus would be 20% of that, or 6% of the beginning net assets, which can be a very large number, giving a HUGE boost to the earnings of the insurance company or securities broker that is the advisor.
To facilitate players' ability to have a controlled company become the advisor to an ETF, the Management Menu now will contain a "Become ETF Advisor" menu item for an insurance company or securities broker that you controlIf you click on it, your company will be able to buy the contractual rights to manage an ETF you choose, by paying the existing advisor an amount equal to 10 times the annual base management fee then in effect(This button only appears if your company does not already manage any ETFs.)
Once your company becomes an ETF's investment manager, you can begin trading stocks and options for the ETF, and possibly raising more funds by issuing more ETF stock or a bond issueYou may also want to lower the annual fee to 0.2%, to become eligible for possible performance bonuses, as noted above, or you may just want to raise the annual fee, although that is now only allowed if the ETF stock has outperformed the Global Stock Index by at least 2% in the last 12 monthsTo be eligible for a performance bonus fee, the base rate must be set at 0.2% for the entire 2-year measurement period(For some ETFs, the measurement period ends on December 31 of an odd-numbered year; for others it ends on the 31st of December in an even-numbered year.)
If you are managing an ETF, you can also have it buy back bonds it has issued or pay an extraordinary dividend of up to 30% of the total of its cash and T-bills, as long as it does not owe any bank debt or bond indebtednessHowever, you probably will not want to have it pay any extraordinary dividends, since that would reduce the amount of assets upon which the advisory fees are paid.
As in prior versions of W$R, there are limits on how much an ETF can invest in one stock -- which is 10% of the company, and it can only have one put option contract (on up to 10% of a stock), and one call option contract on a given stock at any one timeEach ETF can only invest in stocks or options of companies in a certain sector, such as energy or health careIn addition, as in prior versions, if a particular stock becomes too large a part of an ETF's portfolio, it may be forced to sell part of that stock holding, so you can't put all of an ETF's eggs in one basket!
Also, only one ETF is allowed to speculate in commodities, and you don't manage that activity -- the commodity trades are deemed to be done by a commodities broker and all such trading will cease once your company becomes the active advisor to that ETFThe same applies to the one ETF that is randomly chosen each game to occasionally engage in interest rate swapsSo you won't be able to take extreme gambles with the assets of an ETF you manage.
If you grow weary of actively managing an ETF, you can just put the company that is advisor to the ETF on "AutoPilot," and the software will take over management of the ETF at that point, as it does for other ETFs that players do not have the right to manageIf you are actively managing one or more ETFs, you will periodically get a pop-up reminder, if you have not done any transactions on behalf of an ETF in the past calendar year.
In prior versions, the prior stock price history of an ETF was adjusted downward each time the ETF paid a capital gains dividend or an "extraordinary dividend" (a non-taxable return of capital), so that such distributions would not reduce the ETF's total return to shareholders, on which certain incentive fees to the manager were basedStarting with this version, we have decided to also reduce the previous stock price history records by "regular" (taxable) dividends, in order to give a true picture of the ETF's total return on investment for shareholders, which should and now does include share appreciation PLUS all cash distributions.
A new setting has been added as an item on the Game Options Menu: "Max Growth Rate (Global) Throttle." This works like a throttle, to set a speed limit, such as 15% (or even a negative percentage), on the rate of growth of all the industrial companies you control that are operating on "AutoPilot." This feature will mainly be useful when you have a large number of controlled companies on AutoPilot and do not want them to grow their business assets at more than an annual percentage rate you specify, from -10% to 60%.
The default rate, unless you change it, is 60%, but having the "throttle" set at a high growth rate like 50% or 60% does not mean that your companies will all begin trying to grow their business assets at that rateIt simply sets a maximum rate of growth, one that the AutoPilot function will not allow your companies to exceedWithin that limit, AutoPilot will function as it did before, having some companies grow assets faster or slower, or have some actually reduce their business assets, by as much as 10% a yearBut none will exceed the "speed limit" growth rate you set by changing the "throttle" number setting.
The throttle feature will be particularly handy at times when there is a sudden change in the economy, such as a depression, when you have a large number of controlled companies on AutoPilot, at which time you could simply change the throttle setting to a minus rate, like -10%, to quickly have all your companies start DISinvesting in assets that are likely to become unprofitableIn the past, you had to change the growth rate for all your companies, one at a time, using the SET GROWTH RATE button on the Management Menu, and the AutoPilot function could in many cases quickly reverse your changes, unless you turned off AutoPilot for each such company.
Keeping your companies from trying to grow too fast has other benefits, such as preventing them from getting too large a market share, which would make them targets for antitrust lawsuits; or preventing them from creating oversupply vsdemand in their industry; or from pouring too much money into assets that are earning a low (or negative) rate of return, which could hurt the company's earnings and/or its credit rating.
Note that the limit on growth rate set by use of the "throttle" setting does not apply to companies that you actively manage (i.e., those that are not on AutoPilot) and does not apply to financial companies -- banks, insurance companies or to holding/trading companies.
In prior versions, the "Buy" or "Strong Buy," and "Sell" or "Strong Sell" recommendation buttons at the bottom of Research Reports could be clicked on to immediately buy or sell the stock in questionHowever, those buttons were not always very helpful, in certain situationsWe have made some major modifications to those functions, to very quickly identify entities you control that might be sellers of that stock if you click on the "Sell" button on the research report for that stock.
Also, in prior versions of W$R, when a company you controlled was the Active Entity and you clicked on such a "Buy" button to buy that stock, you would get an error message that the company cannot buy itself or sell its own stock short(An LBO or Greenmail buyback is required, for a company in W$R to buy its own stock, and a stock offering is required for a company to sell its stock.) Now, if you click on the "Buy" button on a Research Report on the current Active Entity, the software will suggest an entity you control (or you, personally) as the buyer.
Players who have gotten in a weakened financial condition have probably encountered the aggressive action whereby one of the computer players does a hostile merger, merging a company with massive, ongoing asbestos litigation liability or "Superfund" environmental cleanup costs with a company of yours, doing major damage to your financial empireWe think it is a neat feature, but not when it occurs repetively in one game, so we have made changes to prevent such multiple occurrences of this nasty tactic over a short period of time, like 5 years.
A new "ethical scenario" has been added, for firms in the security industry, involving the sale of its clients' passcodes and and other security secrets to criminals.
Version 8.70 is file-compatible with saved games from Versions 6.0 or higherAs in all upgrades, the "Help" files and optional Strategy Manual have been fully updated to reflect all significant changes in the simulation

New in Wall Street Raider 8.57 (Jul 19, 2019)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.56 (Apr 1, 2019)

This is a free upgrade for anyone who has registered Versions 8.50 or 8.55, as we fixed bugs that several users reported in those two versions.
If you are a registered user of Versions 8.50 or 8.55, email the author (link at bottom of page) for a FREE download link for Version 8.56.
Some crafty players have found a way to (temporarily) get around the W$R restriction on circular chains of stock ownership, and by inflating the value of one of the companies' shares, caused the stock prices of all the companies in the circle to shoot upwards to near- infinite prices, before W$R stepped in and broke up the circle, by forcing a divestment. Version 8.56 does much more frequent searches for such circular stock ownership, to nip such schemes in the bud, and is now more sophisticated in stopping attempts to create such circles, before the "virtuous circle" of rising stock prices in the companies can get started. Even cross-ownership of more than 10% of parent by its sub, for example, will now be blocked or quickly undone by a forced divestment.
In the "My Corporations" listing of all the companies you control, we have added another column of useful information, showing the percent of revenues each such company is spending or R&D or marketing. This will be very handy if one of your companies is spending a lot on R&D or marketing, resulting in losses, and is also expanding rapidly, which would widen such losses. Now you can notice any such unprofitable or unwise combination of settings for any of your companies at a quick glance.
The bond portfolio listings of corporate convertible bonds owned by players or corporations now indicate, with the abbreviation "cv." before the coupon rate, that the bonds are convertibles. As such, you can now tell at a glance which bonds in a bond portfolio have equity features.
An accounting change was made in this version, for companies that own less than 20% of the stock of another company. Previously, if the two companies were under common control, and XCorp owned 12% of YCorp, XCorp would include 12% of YCorp's reported earnings in XCorp's earnings, using the "equity method" of accounting for income from a subsidiary, and the dividends received from YCorp were not included in reported income. We decided to change that method, so that now XCorp must own at least 20% of YCorp to include a percentage of YCorp's earnings in XCorp's earnings (regardless of whether the two companies are under control of the same entity).
Version 8.56 is file-compatible with saved games from Versions 6.0 or higher.

New in Wall Street Raider 8.55 (Feb 6, 2019)

(THIS IS A FREE UPGRADE AND BUGFIX, ON REQUEST, IF YOU HAVE PURCHASED Version 8.50.) We discovered "bugs" that were introduced in 8.50, involving automatic trades of bonds by banks, which could result in either significant windfall profits or undeserved losses on such purchases. All purchasers of v. 8.50 have been notified by email of this free upgrade.
We have refined the Database Search feature added in 8.50, which allows you to exclude all but industrial companies from searches, by excluding financial companies -- banks, insurers, holding companies, and ETFs. That feature also excludes companies you already control.
Since some industrial companies have only a small amount of operating assets ("business assets"), in relation to their other assets, such as stocks, options, cash, and T-bills, they are much like holding companies, since their operating assets may have only a minor effect on their total earnings. Thus, we have tweaked the feature that lets you choose to exclude financial companies and companies you control to also exclude from search results any industrial company whose "business assets" are less than 20% of its total assets.
Some players have suggested that they should be able to turn off the bank automatic allocation of assets for any bank you control. A good idea, so we have added an "OFF" button on the Asset Allocation menu screen in this release.
After releasing 8.50, we had second thoughts on the choice we made to have companies that you actively manage not automatically buy or sell T-bills. Other companies, not controlled by players or controlled but on AutoPilot setting, automatically buy T-bills if the percentage of their total Cash + T-bills consists of less than 60% T-bills, or sell some T-bills if htat percentage is over 80%. That left all decisions on how much of companies' cash to invest in T-bills strictly up to the player for actively managed companies.
We have made a minor change, so that now an actively managed company that has cash will automatically buy some T-bills if its percentage of T-bills falls below 60% -- but it will NOT automatically sell any T-bills, except to cover any cash deficit that arises. Thus, for an actively managed company, you can put all of its cash into T-bills, and the T-bills will not be sold unless necessary. (However, cash that comes in, such as from earnings, dividends or other sources, will gradually build up until it is more than 40% of the total of Cash + T-bills, at which point an automatic purchase of T-bills, up to about 80-90%, will occur.)
A major accounting change has been made for the way bond holdings are valued, for banks and insurance companies. Previously, bonds that those entities held were valued (in computing net worth) at their current market value, which resulted in wide swings in net worth when interest rates went to extremely high or low levels, sometimes resulting in negative net worth for banks or insurers, even though they generally would hold most of the bonds until they matured at face value. At a minimum, such fluctuations in bond values based on interest rates caused regular changes in the entities' credit ratings and violent swings in their stock prices, due to the changes in net worth.
Under the revised system, bonds held by banks or insurance companies are now valued at their cost, plus or minus any discount or premium amortization that has occurred since purchase, which means they are valued at their "tax basis." The only exception is for D-rated bonds, which are still valued at the LOWER of their market value or their adjusted cost (i.e., tax basis).
In another modest accounting change, government and corporate bonds are no longer traded "flat" (without accrued interest). Now, when bonds are bought, you must also pay for the accrued interest through the date of purchase and the seller receives that payment. However, D-rated bonds (which are in default on interest payments) are still traded "flat" (with no accrued interest paid by the buyer or received by the seller).
A minor change was made to bond interest payments on D-rated junk bonds. In most cases, no cash interest will be paid on such bonds -- interest is just added to the principal owed. However, in some rare cases, where the bond issuer is not a bank or insurance company, owes no bank loans, and has enough cash and T-bills for the quarterly bond interest payment, it may pay the interest in cash, if its financial situation is not too dire.
The Spin-Off function, which was a bit opaque, has been greatly refined to give players more information about the tax effects of a proposed spin-off in a number of different situations, in which the tax treatment varies for different types of entities and depending on corporate ownership percentages of the company doing the spin-off. The rules still parallel the U.S. tax laws on spin-offs, but the tax results, when a spin-off is not entirely tax-free, are now more transparent to the player, enabling you to make more educated decisions on whether to execute a spin-off transaction.
Version 8.55 is file-compatible with saved games from Versions 6.0 or higher.

New in Wall Street Raider 8.50 (Dec 9, 2018)

Banks have become potentially more profitable in Wall Street Raider -- see below, regarding player and company bank deposits, which are now non-interest- bearing demand deposits, rather than interest-bearing time deposits (CDs). On the other hand, regulation of banks has gotten somewhat stiffer, at least for banks with too high a loan-to-deposit ratio. (Google the term "loan to deposit ratio" if you want a bit of background on how that figures into real-world bank regulation.) If a bank's loan portfolio in relation to deposits and its reserves-to-deposits ratio become too risky, the regulators may temporarily stop a bank from lending or buying loans, and perhaps put a freeze on lines of credit to most corprate borrowers, as well.
When a bank is deemed to be over-extended and too aggressive in making loans and equity investments, the "regulators" will limit the bank's new investments to government securities only, until its finances are back on a sounder footing.
As some players of W$R have suggested, in this new version we have built in the ability to set asset allocation percentages for banks, to help you better manage a bank you control, even if it is on AutoPilot, via a new menu item on the Management Menu. It lets you set allocation percentages of the bank's assets (for all assets EXCEPT stocks, options, and business loans), for any bank you control. You can set the percentages to allocate, if any, to 5 asset classes:
Prime mortgages;
Subprime mortgages;
Consumer loans;
Bonds (the total value of government and corporate bonds); and
Cash equivalents (cash, which earns no interest, like currency in the vault, and short-term Treasury bills, which earn a usually low rate of interest).
This version also allows players to set the growth rate for "public" bank deposits, between -5% and 10%. While rapid growth in deposits may seem best, it is a mixed blessing, unless the growth in reserves keeps up, otherwise the bank's credit rating will decline, meaning it will have to pay higher interest on CDs, and if the additional funds from new deposits are invested in loans, that will require more addtions to the bad debt reserve, hurting earnings -- not to mention increasing the overhead costs of serving more deposit customers.
A new class of investment assets has been added, and one has been changed. In this version, players and companies can now invest in short-term Treasury bills ("T-bills") that are highly liquid, like cash, and do not fluctuate in value. The rate earned on T-bills fluctuates with overall interest rates, and is generally somewhat lower than the interest rate on short-term government bonds, but they are an extremely safe investment. (Safer than bank deposits, since banks can and do fail in W$R.)
In all previous versions of W$R, all liquid assets of players and companies (except banks) were deemed to be held as bank Certificates of Deposit ("CDs"), on which the bank paid you or your companies interest on their "cash" balances. Since in the real world, corporations generally need to maintain significant cash balances and do not put all their liquid assets in time deposits (CDs), we chose to make the simulation more realistic. Now, companies' liquid assets are generally divided (unless you actively manage the company) between "cash" (non-interest-bearing bank demand deposits) and T-bills, about 30% cash and 70% T-bills.
Banks still receive interest-bearing CD deposits, but only from "the Public," along with some demand deposits from the Public. All deposits ("cash") of players and corporations that do business with a particular bank are now non-interest-bearing demand deposits (which will tend to increase banks' profitability, if they have significant deposits from players or companies). As in prior versions, cash assets of a bank will not earn interest, but banks will now invest most of their liquid, cash-equivalent assets in T-bills, like other corporations.
A new item has been added to the "MISC" Menu, to allow a player or any company a player controls to buy or sell T-bills, which is mainly useful for a controlled company that is not on "AutoPilot," and thus is actively managed by the player.
The automatic "sweep" setting, when it is turned on by a player, will still sweep any "cash" almost immediately and automatically to pay down the player's margin loan indebtedness. However, in this version, if a player owes no bank debt, the "sweep" setting will instead "sweep" all cash the player receives into T-bills, so that the player will be earning interest on the T-bills.
Options margin requirements, in W$R, which come into play when players or companies sell "naked" options, have been made much more sophisticated and realistic, similar to real-world options margin rules. ("Naked options" are created when you sell calls short without owning the underlying stock or you sell puts short when they are not covered by a short position in the underlying stock.)
In prior versions of W$R, when computing the short options liability of a player or company, against which net worth must exceed a certain percentage, to avoid margin calls or to allow for short sales of more options, the program simply computed that liability as the total of all the shorted put and calls of that particular entity. As revised, and as in the real world of options margin rules, if you are short $100 million of calls on XYZ and $500 million of puts on the same stock, the margin requirements aren't determined by adding up the margin requirements on the puts and the calls. Instead, only the larger amount, the $500 million of puts, is taken into account. Thus, if you wanted to short more calls, you could short $400 million more calls without increasing your initial or maintenance margin requirements, since the higher amount would still just be $500 million. (Real world options margin rules are much more complex than that, but the general principle is the same, where there are short positions on both puts and calls on the same stock.)
In this version, the program calculates the total call liability and the total put liability on each stock the entity has shorted options on. Only the higher of the call liability or the put liability is taken into account for each stock, and higher amount for each stock is added up to arrive at the total options liability, if the entity has naked options on more than one stock.
But before that calculation, the put or call liability for each stock is first reduced by taking into account any stock that the entity owns or is short -- that is, no liability is applicable to covered calls or covered puts. Only after that adjustment for any covered options is made does the software then add up the higher of the put or call liability (adjusted in either case) for each stock when totaling up the entity's "naked" options exposure (for margin purposes only -- not for computing net worth, which still takes into account the liability for ALL short options).
"Why do we mention these complex options margin details?" you may be wondering....
As a result of these margin calculation changes, it's now possible to do large-scale "strangles," when an entity sells short large dollar amounts of out-of-the-money puts and out-of-the-money calls on a given stock, betting that the stock will trade in a fairly narrow range until the puts or calls or both have decreased in value, or become totally worthless by the expiration dates, an interesting but high-risk options trading strategy used by real-world traders who have nerves of steel.
New "ethical scenarios" have been added, including one for European auto makers you control, where the company is about ready to release self-driving trucks but discovers there is ... um... a slight problem with the navigation software, which tends not to always recognized pedestrians.
Another new ethical choice scenario has been added for insurance companies, involving a strategy of denying health insurance claims to reduce costs, a rather cruel and heartless way to get richer....
The ability to manipulate earnings for banks, by adding to the quarter's bad debt loss provision has been made much more robust. Instead of only being able to add an amount to your bank's bad debt reserve (to temporarily reduce earnings) equal to 5% of projected profits or 10% of the projected quarterly loss, you may now add an amount equal to 1% of the bank's loan portfolio of business loans, mortgage loans, and consumer loans. Since the usual size of the bad debt reserve is usually only 1 to 3% of the loan portfolio, this can be a significant amount -- a one-time big hit to earnings that will hurt initially, but will enhance reported earnings in subsequent quarters.
On the DataBase Search screen, a new item has been added, which, if selected, will exclude from the search results any company that is a bank, insurance company, or holding company, or any company you already control. In short, only those industrial companies that meet your other search criteria, and which are not controlled by you, will be shown in the search results if you have checked the box for that item.
In previous versions, factors like "Industry Supply/Demand Improving" did not apply to financial companies, so they were not excluded, in which case searches often turned up nothing but banks, insurers, or holding companies -- as well as companies you already controlled.
In previous editions, late in a game in which you or other players controlled long chains of companies and control of a company near the top of such a chain changed hands, it could be very annoying to watch 50 or 100 timed messages pop up, announcing the change of control of each company in the chain. This would occur even if the "Suppress Popups" setting was turned on. In this version, such change of control messages will no longer be shown if you have turned the "Suppress Popups" setting to "ON." (Which is usually a good idea if you control a large number of companies.)
The transaction costs (the "bid/ask spread" and commissions) may have been unrealistically high in prior versions of W$R, since in the real world, large corporate trades of corporate bonds generally are made with relatively low transaction costs. Accordingly, in this W$R release, spreads have been reduced and the former 1% commission on corporate bonds is reduced to 0.2%, which will make it less costly to invest in or trade bonds. Note that commissions are not charged on either sales or purchases of T-bills, which are assumed to be bought directly from the government. (T-bills don't pay cash interest, but are sold at a small discount from face value, and steadily appreciate to their face value at maturity.)
When lists of companies are displayed, an "_H" appears for a company that is on the list, to signify that it is controlled by a hostile player. That marker now includes a number behind it, from 1 to 5, indicating the Player Number (as shown in the Who's Ahead? listing) of the hostile player. For example, if the company is controlled by Player #3, "_H3" would be shown. This will help you to quickly ascertain that a particular opposing player controls one or more companies in an industry, when viewing an Industry Summary or Industry Projection listing.
This release is file-compatible with files saved by earlier Versions 6.0 through 8.12.

New in Wall Street Raider 8.12 (Jul 2, 2018)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.03 (Mar 15, 2018)

In December, 2016, we added some helpful features to the "Who Owns What?" menu that is accessed from the General Research Menu. Now, when "looking under the hood" to see which entities have positions in commodity futures, physical commodities, interest rate swaps, or options, you are given the choice of viewing such positions for all entitities (as in prior versions) or viewing a list that only shows positions of yours or companies that you control. (This can be a real time saver, when you control a large number of companies and don't remember which companies have which futures, options, etc.)
After releasing Version 8.0, we decided to release a Version 8.01, with one significant rule change, which should make it far more challenging for some players, though it barely be noticed by most W$R players. We have tried to close a lot of the "loopholes" in 8.0 and other recent versions, but some can't be closed if we want to retain the basic nature of the simulation. Version 8.01 takes a different approach....
The only difference in Version 8.01 from Version 8.0, to make it FAR more challenging, is that your turn now only lasts one month, even if you don't do all 5 allowable transactions; but you can't end your turn until it ends automatically at the end of the month. (Once you do all 10 transactions, you can still do research, and things on the MISC Menu, like stock splits, loan repayments, advances, etc.) (The computer players, if any, all take their turns on the first day of the next month.)
This is designed to make it tougher for the players who unrealistically stop time passage by stopping the stock ticker (as much as possible) at the start of a game, and do several hundred repetitive transactions of one type or another, taking advantage of any "loopholes," and often turning their $1 billion into $200 billion or more in the first "month" or two of the first quarter of play in the first year. Now players will have to do five transactions, and let the ticker run to the end of the month to do another five transactions, which will be far more realistic, since no mortal human being in the real world could ever do hundreds of major transactions in a matter of weeks, taking over hundreds of companies and a dozen or more industries, make $200 billion overnight, etc.
This is a change that won't make much difference to most players, who are simply trying to invest in and manage companies, but will also move games along a lot faster if there are two or more human players, since turns will end pretty quickly, instead of going as long as 2 1/2 calendar quarters in some cases.
The following is a summary of the major changes in Version 8.0. (If you have purchased 8.0 and want the greater challenge of playing 8.01 instead, email us at the address at the bottom of this page, and we will send you a free upgrade link for 8.01 or 8.04.)
Version 8.0 has added a useful new class of investments or financing: convertible corporate bonds, convertible into the stock of companies. Players, banks and insurance companies can now invest in these equity- like bonds, which offer fixed income and more safety than the underlying stock, but which will participate in any significant gains in the stock, with much less downside risk. These securities add a powerful new tool, usable in many creative ways, to your arsenal of investment strategies.
As a financing tool, players who control a company can still have the company issue "straight" (non-convertible bonds), but may now choose instead to issue convertible bonds, at significantly lower interest rates than straight bonds, due to the "equity kicker." In addition, if the stock has risen above the conversion price by the time the bonds mature, or when the bonds are called before maturity, the company will simply issue new stock in exchange for the bonds at that time, instead of having to pay off the principal amount in cash.
Convertible bonds will now allow for new takeover strategies, such as, for instance, taking a large position in the convertible bonds issued by a company that seems to be firmly controlled by another player, which may give you enough stock to take control when the bonds mature or are called early, if they are converted to stock. (Such conversion won't occur, however, if the stock is below the bonds' conversion price when the bonds mature or are called.) Other strategies include doing half-hedges, where you buy 2x amount of a convertible bond that trades at a fairly low conversion premium (like 10%, or less, over the value of the underlying stock) and sell short 1x dollar amount of the stock, in which case you should make a profit if the stock goes up a lot, or down a lot, particularly if the bonds mature in just a few years, since the bonds shouldn't go down nearly as much as the stock.
Taking a user's suggestion, we have added a feature that lets you choose to be alerted when a particular stock's price rises above or falls below a level that you specify. The alert will remain in effect for a full year of game play, or until the objective is reached and you are notified by a pop-up message. A new "Stock Price Alert" item has been added to the MISC Menu. Simply click on that button and enter your specified target price for the stock that is the current "active entity," and you will receive a pop-up notification if the stock reaches the price target you set during in the next "year" of game play.
Currency exchange rates fluctuate rapidly, as world economic changes occur. As a result, the "default" exchange rates (relative to the U.S. dollar) we have built into Wall Street Raider can get seriously out of date in a matter of a year or two. Accordingly, in this version, if you start a new game in a non-U.S. currency, the program will display the default exchange rate (ranging from 0.64 per dollar for the British Pound to 1100 Korean Won) and ask you if you wish to change it by entering a more up-to-date currency conversion rate.
This release has a singular focus on creating MORE REALISM. Although previous versions imposed some size limitations on commodity futures, options, and interest rate swaps, those limits were unrealistically large. For example, if a player had enough net worth, he or she (or a company controlled by a player) could take positions in a commodity equal to many times the annual global production of that commodity, or buy or short puts or call options in an amount equal to 100% of a company's total outstanding stock, or do interest rate swaps limited only by the number of available counterparties (most of whom would be bankrupted if they were all on the wrong side of your successful swap deals).
Based on research into global production and storage numbers for the various commodities, as published by the International Energy Agency, the United Nations, and certain trade associations, we have limited the total amount of futures on a given commodity held or shorted by all players and companies in the game to 100% of annual global production for that commodity, and set a limit on total storage by all entities in W$R to 100% of estimated global storage of the commodity (by private entities). Each player and his/her companies are limited to 10% of the annual production or 10% of global storage capacity. (Or, in the case of crude oil, because of the vast magnitude of real world physical oil production and storage and futures trading volume, those limits are set at 5% in W$R instead of 10% of the annual/global amounts.)
In addition, we have made the size of individual futures contracts the same as the contracts actually traded on major U.S. commodity exchanges, such as 1,000 ounces of gold per contract (vs. 10,000 ounces per contract in prior W$R versions) or 100,000 bushels of wheat or corn (was 1 million bushels in prior versions).
This version also reduces the size of the options positions of call options (long) a player and his/her companies may have, from an amount equal to 100% of the underlying stock's total shares outstanding, to 20%. The limit remains at 100% of total shares for shorted calls, long puts, and shorted put options. However, the 100% options position limit applies to ALL players and companies combined, including companies not controlled by any player, for each of the four types of options positions (long calls, short calls, long puts, and short puts).
An absolute limit of $10 trillion (notional amount) or ten times net worth, whichever is less, now applies to any bank or other entity doing interest rate swaps. This may still seem like an unrealistically large amount of exposure, but in the real world, some megabanks like J.P. Morgan-Chase or Deutsche Bank are known to have had total derivatives positions (including swaps) of $70 trillion or more in recent years. Plus, you still have to be able to find counterparties in W$R with sufficient net worth to take the other side of large swap contracts, which is not always possible, unless you do a number of small swaps of much less than $10 trillion each.
The above changes should make it more difficult to quickly become a quadrillionaire, adding a large dose of realism to the simulation. You may actually have to successfully trade stocks or grow companies now, in order to amass a great fortune.
It can be useful to know at a glance whether the supply/demand situation in a particular industry is changing for the better or worse, or is stable. Thus, we have added, in the "All-Industries" projections of growth rates and profitability, a column which indicates whether each industry's trend is in the direction of improvement or worsening profitability, or if the rates of return are stable at the current projected levels of growth in supply and demand.
Interest rates paid by banks, while fluctuating, were the same for all banks in prior versions. This version recognizes that having deposits in banks with lower credit ratings involves a greater risk of default, so the CD rates paid by banks now reflect the greater risk by offering a higher interest rate. Banks rated AAA, AA, or A now pay the lowest rate on CDs, BBB, BB, and B-rated banks pay a slightly higher rate. Banks rated CCC, CC, or C are in a yet higher risk category, and pay an even higher interest rate, and the highest CD interest rates are paid by D-rated banks, which could fail at any moment, causing depositors to possibly lose part or all of their deposits. (Depositor beware!)
We have put some limits on the "Add Cash" cheat function. A player can now only use it once a game, and the maximum cash the player can add to his/her bank account is now limited to $10 billion U.S. (or the equivalent in other currencies). You can still decrease your cash as often as you wish (if you wish to experiment with poverty and/or bankruptcy), but any decrease is now limited to the amount in your bank account, so it will not create a massive negative bank balance that could bankrupt your bank and throw the whole economic simulation out of whack.
We put in these limits because W$R attempts to maintain a balanced, fairly realistic economic model in which all the companies and industries can function. Some players have discovered that if they suddenly added something like $100,000,000,000,000 million or so to their bank account, that it causes all kinds of problems like bankrupted banks, a stock index that goes from 5,000 to over a million in a few moments, etc. These crazy results get reported as "bugs," but only because such large amounts totally disrupt the economic model, like throwing a monkey wrench into a finely-tuned machine, just as such an addition to the real world money supply overnight would also create global financial havoc. Since we are seeking to make W$R more challenging and realistic, putting in these limits seemed like a good place to start. There are a few people on the planet worth more than $10 billion, but NO ONE makes $100,000,000,000,000 million or anything like that.
Of course, in a recent release (v. 7.50), we added a "Cheat Menu" with new "insider information" cheats you can use, without being disqualified (but with considerable risks), so there are still ample "cheat" opportunities in W$R, if you want to live dangerously.
In previous versions, in some bankruptcy reorganizations, the program modified, rather than totally eliminate, option positions on the stock of the bankrupt company, adjusting the number of options and the strike price, which sometimes yielded unreasonable results. In this version, during a bankruptcy, all call options on the bankrupt's stock are canceled with total losses to the holder and 100% profit to anyone who was short the calls (zero buyback cost). Puts are settled based on a stock price of zero, resulting in a gain for holders of the puts and a loss for anyone who had shorted the puts.
The "Streaming Stock Quotes" feature on the main screen has been improved by modifying the way the "Fill" button works. As before, when you click on the "Fill" button, the Streaming Stock Quotes list will list all the stocks you directly own (or are short), then all companies you control (up to the limit of 15 stocks). However, if the list is not full, in this new version the stocks of companies in which you have other equity positions -- convertible bonds and/or options -- will also be listed, up to the screen's watch list limit of 15 stocks.
This release is file-compatible with files saved by earlier Versions 6.0 through 7.83. (NOTE: When loading a file saved by versions prior to 8.0, v. 8.x will change the number of commodity contracts in each open position, to reflect the change in the number of ounces, bushels, etc., covered by each contract, so you won't unfairly incur a loss or receive an undeserved profit on existing commodity or futures positions saved in the old game file.)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.01 (Sep 26, 2017)

This version has added a useful new class of investments or financing: convertible corporate bonds, convertible into the stock of companies. Players, banks and insurance companies can now invest in these equity- like bonds, which offer fixed income and more safety than the underlying stock, but which will participate in any significant gains in the stock, with less downside risk. These securities add a powerful new tool, usable in many creative ways, to your arsenal of investment strategies.
As a financing tool, players who control a company can still have the company issue "straight" (non-convertible bonds), but may now choose instead to issue convertible bonds, at significantly lower interest rates than straight bonds, due to the "equity kicker." In addition, if the stock has risen above the conversion price by the time the bonds mature, or when the bonds are called before maturity, the company will simply issue new stock in exchange for the bonds at that time, instead of having to pay off the principal amount in cash.
Convertible bonds will now allow for new takeover strategies, such as, for instance, taking a large position in the convertible bonds issued by a company that seems to be firmly controlled by another player, which may give you enough stock to take control when the bonds mature or are called early, if they are converted to stock. (Which won't occur, if the stock is below the bonds' conversion price when the bonds mature or are called.)
Taking a user's suggestion, we have added a feature that lets you choose to be alerted when a particular stock's price rises above or falls below a level that you specify. The alert will remain in effect for a full year of game play, or until the objective is reached and you are notified by a pop-up message. A new "Stock Price Alert" item has been added to the MISC. Menu. Simply click on that button and enter your specified target price for the stock that is the current "active entity," and you will receive a pop-up notification if the stock reaches the price target you set in the next "year" of play.
Currency exchange rates fluctuate rapidly, as world economic changes occur. As a result, the "default" exchange rates (relative to the U.S. dollar) we have built into Wall Street Raider can get seriously out of date in a matter of a year or two. Accordingly, in this version, if you start a new game in a non-U.S. currency, the program will display the default exchange rate (ranging from 0.64 per dollar for the British Pound to 1100 Korean Won) and ask you if you wish to change it by entering a more up-to-date currency conversion rate. We have updated the default currency exchange rates for all 22 non-U.S. currencies, as of April 15, 2017, in this release.
This release has a singular focus on creating MORE REALISM. Although previous versions imposed some size limitations on commodity futures, options, and interest rate swaps, those limits were unrealistically large. For example, if a player had enough net worth, he or she (or a company controlled by a player) could take positions in a commodity equal to many times the annual global production of that commodity, or buy or short puts or call options in an amount equal to 100% of a company's total outstanding stock, or do interest rate swaps limited only by the number of available counterparties (most of whom would be bankrupted if they were all on the wrong side of your successful swap deals).
Based on research into global production and storage numbers for the various commodities, as published by the International Energy Agency, the United Nations, and certain trade associations, we have limited the total amount of futures on a given commodity held or shorted by all players and companies in the game to 100% of annual global production for that commodity, and set a limit on total storage by all entities in W$R to 100% of estimated global storage of the commodity (by private entities). Each player and his/her companies are limited to 10% of the annual production or 10% of global storage capacity. (Or, in the case of crude oil, because of the vast magnitude of real world physical oil production and storage and futures trading volume, those limits are set at 5% in W$R instead of 10% of the annual/global amounts.)
In addition, we have made the size of individual futures contracts the same as the contracts actually traded on major U.S. commodity exchanges, such as 1,000 ounces of gold per contract (was 10,000 ounces per contract in prior W$R versions) or 100,000 bushels of wheat or corn (was 1 million bushels in prior versions).
This version also reduces the size of the options positions of call options (long) a player and his/her companies may have, from an amount equal to 100% of the underlying stock's total shares outstanding, to 20%. The limit remains at 100% of total shares for shorted calls, long puts, and shorted put options. However, the 100% options position limit applies to ALL players and companies combined, including companies not controlled by any player, for each of the four types of options positions (long calls, short calls, long puts, and short puts).
An absolute limit of $10 trillion (notional amount) or ten times net worth, whichever is less, now applies to any bank or other entity doing interest rate swaps. This may still seem like an unrealistically large amount of exposure, but in the real world, some megabanks like J.P. Morgan-Chase or Deutsche Bank are known to have had total derivatives positions (including swaps) of $70 trillion or more in recent years. Plus, you still have to be able to find counterparties in W$R with sufficient net worth to take the other side of large swap contracts, which is not always possible, unless you do a number of small swaps of much less than $10 trillion each.
The above changes should make it more difficult to quickly become a quadrillionaire, adding a large dose of realism to the simulation. You may actually have to successfully trade stocks or grow companies now, in order to amass a great fortune.
It can be useful to know at a glance whether the supply/demand situation in a particular industry is changing for the better or worse, or is stable. Thus, we have added, in the "All-Industries" projections of growth rates and profitability, a column which indicates whether each industry's trend is in the direction of improvement or worsening profitability, or if the rates of return are stable at the current projected levels of growth in supply and demand.
Interest rates paid by banks, while fluctuating, were the same for all banks in prior versions. This version recognizes that having deposits in banks with lower credit ratings involves a greater risk of default, so the CD rates paid by banks now reflect the greater risk by offering a higher interest rate. Banks rated AAA, AA, or A now pay the lowest rate on CDs, BBB, BB, and B-rated banks pay a slightly higher rate. Banks rated CCC, CC, or C are in a yet higher risk category, and pay an even higher interest rate, and the highest CD interest rates are paid by D-rated banks, which could fail at any moment, causing depositors to possibly lose part or all of their deposits. (Depositor beware!)
We have put some limits on the "Add Cash" cheat function. A player can now only use it once a game, and the maximum cash the player can add to his/her bank account is now limited to $10 billion U.S. (or the equivalent in other currencies). You can still decrease your cash as often as you wish (if you wish to experiment with poverty and/or bankruptcy), but any decrease is now limited to the amount in your bank account, so it will not create a negative bank balance.
We put in these limits because W$R attempts to maintain a balanced, fairly realistic economic model in which all the companies and industries can function. Players have discovered that if they suddenly added something like $100,000,000,000,000 million or so to their bank account, that it caused all kinds of problems like bankrupted banks, a stock index that goes from 5,000 to over a million in a few moments, etc. These get reported as "bugs," but only because such large amounts totally disrupt the economic model, like throwing a monkey wrench into a delicate machine, just as such an addition to the real world money supply overnight would also create global financial havoc. Since we are seeking to make W$R more challenging and realistic, putting in these limits seemed like a good place to start. There are a few people on the planet worth more than $10 billion, but NO ONE has $100,000,000,000,000 million or anything like that.
In previous versions, in some bankruptcy reorganizations, the program modified, rather than totally eliminating, option positions on the stock of the bankrupt company, adjusting the number of options and the strike price, which sometimes yielded unreasonable results. In this version, during a bankruptcy, all call options on the bankrupt's stock are canceled with total losses to the holder and 100% profit to anyone who was short the calls. Puts are settled based on a stock price of zero, resulting in a gain for holders of the puts and a loss for anyone who had shorted the puts.
The "Streaming Stock Quotes" feature on the main screen has been improved by modifying the way the "Fill" button works. As before, when you click on the "Fill" button, the Streaming Stock Quotes list will list all the stocks you directly own (or are short), then all companies you control (up to the limit of 15 stocks). However, if the list is not full, in this new version the stocks of companies in which you have other equity positions -- convertible bonds and/or options -- will also be listed, up to the screen's limit of 15.
This release is file-compatible with files saved by earlier Versions 6.0 through 7.83. (NOTE: When loading a file from prior versions, v. 8.0 will change the number of commodity contracts in each open position, to reflect the change in the number of ounces, bushels, etc., covered by each contract, so you won't unfairly incur a loss or receive an undeserved profit on existing commodity or futures positions saved in the old game file.)

New in Wall Street Raider 7.72 (Sep 17, 2015)

New in Wall Street Raider 7.70 (Mar 3, 2015)

In the new version, if you choose to have computer players, you first choose the total number of players (2 to 5), and then specify how many HUMAN players there will be.
Since we have often noted in long games that a very successful computer player may sometimes accumulate control of several hundred companies, we have placed some limits on the number of companies each computer player can control, after which it will (usually) not attempt to acquire control of any more companies.
The Wall Street Raider Tutorial that we began including with Version 7.60 now includes links to a series of excellent video tutorials (not by us) on YouTube.
In previous releases 7.50 through 7.60, an "AutoPilot" function was introduced, whereby you can now select "AutoPilot" status ON or OFF for all the companies you control, by toggling the "AutoPilot ON/OFF" item on the "Game Options" pulldown menu. However, it was an all-or-none setting for your companies. In this version, the item works the same way, as a "global" setting, so that when you turn AutoPilot ON, it sets an "ON" variable for each company you control (except the one you are CEO of), and likewise if you set the AutoPilot global setting to "OFF" it turns the AutoPilot setting for each of your companies to "OFF." However, you may now change the ON/OFF AutoPilot setting for an individual company you control by using the "Toggle AutoPilot ON" ("OFF") button on the Management Menu. Thus, you may use the global setting on the "Game Options" menu to turn AutoPilot "ON" for all your companies, but may then decide to turn the setting for a particular company to "OFF" by using the "Toggle AutoPilot OFF" button that will appear on the Management Menu. Or vice versa.
Improvements have been made to the Interest Rate Swaps screens.
Limits have been increased on the maximum size (notional value) of a single swap agreement / contract.
Also, limits have been set on total exposure of a player or company, in addition to the previous limit on the size of one individual swap contract.
The government anti-monopoly agencies have been made a little bit less efficient in this version.
When doing tender offers to "the public" for stock of a company, you will now be advised by investment bankers as to what price (in excess of market price) you will need to offer in order to acquire all the shares you seek.
We have corrected a flaw in the Transaction Financing routine, when you are asked if you want to borrow to complete various transactions.
This release is file-compatible with files saved by earlier Versions 6.0 through 7.60.

Wall Street Raider Changelog

What's new in Wall Street Raider 9.75

New in Wall Street Raider 9.52 (Oct 17, 2022)

New in Wall Street Raider 9.50 (Jan 2, 2022)

New in Wall Street Raider 9.0 (Jan 4, 2021)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.72 (Jul 13, 2020)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.70 (Jan 2, 2020)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.57 (Jul 19, 2019)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.56 (Apr 1, 2019)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.55 (Feb 6, 2019)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.50 (Dec 9, 2018)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.12 (Jul 2, 2018)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.03 (Mar 15, 2018)

New in Wall Street Raider 8.01 (Sep 26, 2017)

New in Wall Street Raider 7.72 (Sep 17, 2015)

New in Wall Street Raider 7.70 (Mar 3, 2015)

New in Wall Street Raider 7.50 (Apr 1, 2014)

New in Wall Street Raider 7.0 (Nov 1, 2013)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.70 (Jul 8, 2013)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.50 (Dec 3, 2012)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.40 (Jul 6, 2012)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.35 (Apr 3, 2012)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.20 (Oct 4, 2011)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.1 (Nov 19, 2010)

New in Wall Street Raider 6.0 (Sep 2, 2010)

New in Wall Street Raider 5.40 (Jun 14, 2010)

New in Wall Street Raider 5.30 (Nov 14, 2009)

New in Wall Street Raider 5.20 (Jul 2, 2009)

New in Wall Street Raider 5.1 (Jun 21, 2009)

New in Wall Street Raider 5.0 (Apr 1, 2009)

New in Wall Street Raider 4.80 (Oct 4, 2008)

New in Wall Street Raider 4.70 (Jul 2, 2008)

New in Wall Street Raider 4.51 (Jan 28, 2008)

New in Wall Street Raider 4.1 (Feb 16, 2007)