Author: COE
Translator: Marcelbuter
In the last edition of the TMC we promised to reveal the history of the Federation for you. Staff members researched the first five trading periods in Miniconomy. Today we will bring the second part in the series, which will focus on trading. Only few information remains from those rounds when it comes to economic information, but a summary of the facts would be boring. Therefore the following story is based on the statistics that were uncovered.
The winners
The first inhabitants of the Federation landed on the beach of Cyberia using small speedboats. Not knowing what potential the cities had, they spread themselves over the cities randomly. The Government provided a big part of the resources in the beginning, mostly to see the effect of the new productivity on the environment. The trading mind set turned out to be quite active, since Martijnleunissen accumulated 21684.19 I-Shell in the first week. After that first week the seismographs were off the meters, clouds of smoke came from the volcano, and people started panicking. There was no other solution that fleeing using the speedboats that were still on the beach.
After the eruption people had to start all over again, something this was lead by the traders from Eurodam, who at that time dominated the rankings. The second winner would be Richard, who accumulated a sum of 32904 I-Shell. Not bad seeing as the Federation was in no way developed to the touristic place that it is now, and the fact that there were no mayors who were offering lucrative exports. M1n1conomy deserves special mention in this trading period. It is always said of him that his trading skills are below par; however he was the 5th richest trader a week before a heavy storm ended another trading period. In the last week however everything went wrong. Although it is not known what happened, some say it had a permanent effect on the trader. At the same time, Richard was also known for actively recruiting new inhabitants. He published a course in the TMC that helped traders get their trading to the next level.
Someone who learned a lot from this course was Dhr. Fortuyn, who dominated the third trading period in all ways. Socially, politically, but especially in trading he excelled compared to other traders. He was the first person to break through the 100,000 I-Shell barrier, accumulating 146593,07 I-Shell before the volcano erupted for the third time, after which he left for the Netherlands, never to be seen again after, something some people say had to do with the murder of the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. In the spirit of Dhr. Fortuyn, a new pseudonym was created, Geert.
In the trading period that Geert first arrived on the scene, a trader named James was the first trader not from Eurodam who turned out to be the richest trader (net worth: 109549.57 I-Shell). However this was nothing compared to the spectacle which was the first trading period. Haverhoek started out as a small electronics dealer who in four weeks time worked himself up to the richest player in the history of Miniconomy. An astronomical number of over 6 million I-Shell was the amount he ended up with at the end of the period. He did this by dominating the stock trade, using funds from the sales of his electronics store.
The stock exchange
A giant building for the stock exchange was built by the Government in the second trading period. The Eurodamarak was founded with a loud ringing of the opening bell. The basic principles for the stock exchange still work the same as in those days. The amount of trading symbolized the stock worth instead of the demand of the stock, something unique at this time. To measure this amount, a few factor weighed out against the normal factors, which in the end determined the stock price increase or decrease.
At this time everyone could buy an unlimited amount of stocks, whereas now a limit of 50 stocks has been set. When the stock exchanged opened its doors, people were hesitant in buying, waiting to see what the effects of trading were on the stock prices. The first thing that traders noticed was that especially the prices of stocks from smaller cities (especially Yenville) rose quickly. The prices of products were more expensive in these cities, which lead to less volatility in these cities and changes in the prices of these stocks went quickly. If someone would buy a large amount of products, the price of the stock would rise up to 3 times faster than that of Eurodam, where more products were sold during the day, something which was harder to predict when buying these stocks.
Four weeks after the start of the stock exchange it went horribly wrong. For the first time the words stock market fraud were thrown around after the Zwollar Fund rose 48% to 398 points within 24 hours. The Government quickly acted on this, lowering the price of the fund by 80 points right away. These events also lead to the founding of detectives, responsible for the stock exchange. These detectives quickly found out that it was not an isolated case, but more one of a series of manipulations that turned out the be the biggest case of fraud in the history of Miniconomy.
In the fifth trading period another spectacle shocked the stock exchange. The FES in Yenville was sold out within a few days, which lead to a very low volatility, which in return lead to the possibility of manipulation by raising the stock prices by tens of percentages and by not trading for a while, lowering it again to the earlier price. The winner of the trading period Haverhoek was a specialist in manipulating the market, while he was never sentenced for these sets of manipulations. Since everything was done within the law, nothing could be done except for tightening the laws concerning stock trading.