Welcome to Capitalism!!
By Dan Coleman


Word Wrap probably required

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ABOUT:

	This is a stock market simulation game in which you buy and sell stocks of companies (like Texas Instruments, IBM, Sears, Nike, etc. etc.).  I find that alot of times, the stocks stay relatively low so you don't end up with the bad situation of having a million dollars but having to pay almost that much to invest in a stock.  In other words, the more money you get, you'll be able to invest more, hence, losing or gaining more sizable amounts of money depending where the stock goes.

	Well, I actually decided to make this game a long time ago, but some things didn't work out and I just droped it.  I made a Q-Basic version of the game about a month later. . .and so my interest was sparked again.  When Hurricane Floyd went through, I had about 50 hours with no power on my hands, so the 83 was programed on.  Didn't have a ton of options, but I worked on it and tweaked what was good and fixed what was bad.  So here we are.


THE GAME:

	Essentialy this game tries to simulate a pretty crazy market, in which the stocks are fairly unpredictable, but a good player can make money.  In case you don't know what hardly any of the stuff means, let me help you out:

Price: It is the current (in dollars) price for the stock named next to it.  If the price hits zero at any point, then you will (except for the stupid bug) lose all of your stock in that company, so be carefull.

Prev:  Previous...this shows the price of the stock the previous day, allowing you to see if and how much money you made/lost the past day.  Good players also use this as a key for when they should buy stocks.

Own:  The amount of shares (NOT the dollar amount) you own in the company.  To find out how much money exactly is invested, just multiply this by the number listed under your stocks price.  (Just in case you weren't smart enough to figure that out.)


Some strategies for sucess in the market:

1.  When the game first starts, you don't really have alot of money, so try to invest in a stock that is relatively low.  At times, you may even invest in a stock that is at only one or two dollars, but as often as not it will crash and you will lose big.

2.  I know it's technically possible to buy a stock at zero, but where's the fun in that?

3.  When you get alot of money, start investing a little more heavily in the safer stocks (at the 30-45 or so range).  But another good strategy is to (at the same time as making longer-term investments) set aside 10 thousand or so and completely risk it by investing in a cheap stock.  Even if you lose out on the deal, it won't hurt you too much, and if you win, you win big.

4.  In this game, a diverse portfolio won't usually bring in the big money, and long-term investing is for losers who enjoy sitting there and hitting end turn fifty-million times trying to make quick money.  In order to make the game the most fun, try to buy or sell something every two or three turns (if not every).  Active stock manegement makes a huge difference on how much fun this game is.



Version History:

	Capitalism v1.0 - Core of the game, but not much else.

	Capitalism v1.1 - Made the stocks random at the begining, 			  changed a few minor things to make it more	 			  random.

	Capitalism v1.3 - Moved it up to 1.3, irst public release, 			  made the about screen and had it optimized 			  (dropped 400 bytes!)

	Capitalism v1.5 - Bumped it up another .2 because I added a few 			  features (gamble, the day counter, and some 			  others), made it smaller, and finally decided 			  to release it to the stupid public (only by 			  request though, and hence this readme took 			  life.)
	Capitalism v1.6 - Extremely small coding change, although 			  nothing major.  Sorry :).  Just enough for a 			  re-release (the game would crash on a friend
			  sometimes.)


	Future versions - none envisioned yet, but if I get enough suggestions I might add some more stuff.

	Bugs - well, unfortunately you don't always pay when a stock crashes: for some unknown reason about 25% of the time with certain stocks you will still own your stock even if it crashes. . . I guess for that you can pretend there was divine intervention.

Just for the record, I am not responsible for any damages done to your calc (I don't know what would happen).  And this is just a game meant to simulate a random market, so none of these names and numbers reflect anything but random integers and the first few major corporations that came to my mind (although, IBM tends to do alot better than TI, for some reason, let me know if you notice the same thing).

My e-mail is dan546@hotmail.com, so I would appreciate any comments or suggestions that you have.  The more feedback I get, the easier it is to program the next game.


So I guess there is nothing else to tell you but play. . .and enjoy!	