IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2
MAKING INVESTMENTS AS A FINANCIER
BUYING SHARES IN OTHER COMPANIES
As well as bidding for shares in businesses, then waiting for them to convert into shares in a public company when the owner promotes to Manufacturer, you can buy shares in existing companies too. When a business launches an IPO and becomes a company, the broker will have a bunch more shares for sale, so it pays to keep an eye (or equivalent) out for new public offerings.
Before you start investing in other players' companies, you need to do a little research to find out which companies are going to be worth investing in. You can see a list of all the businesses in the game with 'DI COMPANIES'. You can find out who owns shares in a business with the command 'DISPLAY SHARES name' - 'name' can be a business, company or CEO name.
You can inspect the books of other companies to see their details before you decide whether to buy shares in them. 'DI ACCOUNTS name' - company or player name - will show you the accounts for the last five cycles. This will let you judge how well the company has been doing, and whether it is worth investing in. It'll also tell you the current share price at the end of the most recent company cycle, so you know how much you would be spending if you buy any shares.
If you keep an eye on the SpyNet Financial reports, you will also see when dividends are paid out, which will also affect your decision on who deserves your investment.
You should also talk to the CEOs about how they manage their companies. There's nothing like the personal touch to help you make a judgment on their success. It pays to cooperate with other players and build up business relationships with other companies, just as it does with businesses.
You can invest in any company, without the owner's permission, but buying shares without talking to the CEO first is going to cause bad feeling. The company could be owned by a Manufacturer or by a fellow Financier, but your peers are not subject to dissatisfaction so may not pay out dividends as often as you would like.
When you have decided that you want to invest in a particular company, use the command 'BUY amount SHARES companyname', where 'amount' is the number of shares you want to buy. You can only buy 100 in any transaction, although there's nothing to stop you making more than one purchase. You can't own more than 1,000 shares in a company, and the broker will always hang onto 1000 shares, so you can't invest in a company once that limit has been reached.
The price you pay for the shares is determined by - as you can probably work out - the share price, as shown on the company accounts. You will also pay the broker's fee of 1% (or 250 groats).
The act of you buying shares in a company is going to increase the share price, which will go some way towards keeping the other shareholders happy, thus staving off disaffection. The other main method that CEOs use to keep the shareholders from rioting is to pay them dividends - and that means your company gets the money. The more shares you own, the more money you will get when the divvy is paid out.
Should you find yourself disappointed with a company's performance, you can sell some or all of your shareholding, with 'SELL amount SHARES companyname' where 'amount' is the number you want to sell - 100 at a time. Once again, you will pay the broker a fee for the transaction. Selling shares in a company will make the share price go down, so it is a courtesy to warn the CEO that you intend to offload your investment.
There is a limit of 35,000 on the total number of shares you can own in other companies. Should any of the companies in which you have invested split their shares and bring your total portfolio above this limit, you won't be able to buy any more shares without first offloading some of the ones you already own.
Your goal as a Financier is to make money - a lot of money. You are going to need a seriously large heap of groats to finance your move to the next rank, which is going to involve buying a planet and paying to have it terraformed and linked to the rest of the Solar System.