Shadowruns, Stock and Shares Options

[prettz]

How much money do you place on stock, per share, in for the various corps, mainly the AAA's? I was thinking about an upcoming game I'm going to start and I'm figuring that one or two of my players are going to want to transfer some of their shadowy income into stock. Now as I currently know about as much about finance and the stock market as a two-year old I find myself in a bind. I know it can be done I believe the books have made reference to runers owning stock and grabing shares as apart of their contracts before but how is it exactly done? First how do you price it and secondly since many are SINless how is it done (fake ID's or something else) and does the corp their running for and buying the stock from charge a little extra for helping to secure the shares?

[Herald of Verjig...]

If the corp has public stock, all you need is a valid ID and some cash to buy. With the amount of stock transations daily, it usually isn't worth trying to find out if those 3 shares bought at noon were related to the group employed by Johnson # 24871 at about 10:30. However, if some new person on the scene sets up to sell short (or whatever the term is for the arrangement that you profit if the stock drops) massive amounts of your stock, it may be worth tracking down the uninvestor in question and increasing general defenses.

With most megacorps, public stock won't be voting stock. This primarily means that your PCs can't get a controlling interest in a corp with just money alone. Price of stock changes, often. Sometimes stock also splits when the cost per share is seen as too high (split: each owned share becomes two shares at half value each). Some runs can affect stock values greatly, but many will have no effect just because no one learns about the action.

[bclements]

Remember, Novatech and SK are private companies (as in, stock in those companies isn't sold on the open market), but you can own stock in subsidary companies that they own. I think the rest of the megacorps are public, but for some reason I'm thinking Aztechnology isn't.

[prettz]

Thanks. Is there some pricing guides for determining share cost? I want to make it semi-realistic and as I have said I have no real idea. Manily I'm after pricing ideas for Wuxing and Yamatetsu as the runs with corps with be focusing working for those AAA's, that least those listed as public. Something along the lines of average, low-day and high-day prices.

[prettz]

Yeah Aztechnology is private but with so many public corps under them it really isn't that big of a deal.

[Herald of Verjig...]

There isn't anything in the books that I know of, and even very valuable companies in real life can have low value per share of stock.
Best way, pick a stock market and look up a company that you think is doing well. Either do some guesswork based on the stock history (I think most online sources record that) or some less scientific number manipulation based on assuming that the current value is about 3/4 of the maximum price it gets (max being the price range where the stocks are split). Convert it into nuyen, and go from there.

[Edward]

We have done this in the past in a grossly simplified way.

First you need a broker, somebody that will arrange your purchases and sales, matrix brokers exist but you need a sin, shadow brokers can also provide this service to the sinless, matrix shadow brokers are not trustworthy enough to use.

We did not concern ourselves with the number of shares owned but there value. Each month the GM would roll some dice, consider canonical events and the PCs runs and say how much the stock price moved (he had a system but I don’t know what it was typical movement was <1%) players with stock portfolios would update there sheets.

Voting stock is traded on the open marked for most mega corps (SK and aztechnolegy being notable exemptions) of cause no runner will ever earn enough stock to meaningfully effect the corporation, less control it. (billions of nuyen would be necessary to be noticed) but you do have the right to show up to stock holder meetings (difficult if your not using a good or real sin) and receive shareholder reports (that your shadow broker can pass on to you) witch can provide useful information.

Edward

[Nomad]

Loose Alliances has a section dealing with brokerage firms of a slightly "highly" illegal nature.

[the_dunner]

Assuming that the stock exchange doesn't change significantly in the next 60 years...

Most companies try to keep their stock value in the $10-$50 price range (per share). If it goes over $50, they'll usually split shares, so that the resulting shares sit at half that value. Mind you, this is an incredibly rough estimate/broad generalization. (One of the companies I've been looking at is sitting at $120/share. From talking to one of their employees, they have no intention of a split any time soon.)

Also, keep in mind, that many companies, particulalry large ones, don't want to deal with a person who buys just 1 or 2 shares. So, unless your broker is particularly cooperative, (aka coordinates purchases from multiple people) you'll need to buy between 10 and 100 shares at a time.

[Synner]

As someone has already mentioned the newly release Loose Alliances includes Brokerage X (originally introduced in SoE), an organization that helps multiply your (and other people's) ill-gotten gains through less-than-legal stock manipulation without any of the paperwork and documentation you would require going through a legitimate broker. The group is intended to help gamemasters run this side of the underworld without the hastle or book-keeping it might otherwise entail - and it also provides a number of plothooks to spice up what might be an otherwise straight forward business arrangement.

[JongWK]

IIRC, Warren Buffety's investment firm (Berkshire & Hathaway?) has never done a stock split under his term. A share is worth something like $95,000.

Ouch.

[SL James]

$84,400, actually.

[prettz]

Okay so how does this Brokerage X work exactly and what if any is its corp rating? If it is designed to be shadowy how does one get involved or is it more like the Swiss Banks? Finally how does it lighten the paper work involved in this?

[Backgammon]

[prettz]

I would except for three things:

1) I need money, unless Fanpro excepts hopes and dreams as payment

2) Synner said Brokerage X was in SoE and Loose Alliances so I might have to buy two books to get all the info on this one thing. That makes reason 1) even more difficult.

3) I'm not interested in Loose Alliances or SoE, except for this one thing. So I'm hoping to get some information on this because I really, really, really don't want to spend the money to buy the book(s) if Brokage X is takes up only one or two pages of information.

[Synner]

[prettz]

Huh, I thought the book dealt with shadowrunning for and against non-corporate entities in the SR world. Basically who they were and what there plans are/were, which was mainly why I wasn't interested. Mind sharing just how much of the book is devoted to "certain illicit black market brokerage firm which handles the portfolios for runners through legitimate fronts and facades - plus it has a twist which allows it to maximize profit beyond capitalizing on your direct investment" part of your description?

[fistandantilus4....]

That would be "What is Brokerage X" Alex

[Synner]

Brokerage X takes up only about 3 or 4 pages of Fiction and Game information within the DIY Crime chapter which also covers Tamanous, the Draconic Information Virtual Exchange network, and seven varied/specialist shadowrunner groups (including Assets Inc, DAMAGE and the aforementioned smugglers).

Here's a link to the preview PDF which includes the table of contents and lists actual contents of the book, who knows, you might find the book contains more stuff you're interested in: here

[SL James]

[Gyro the Greek S...]

I would imagine that a runner who knows his stocks could make decent additional profit from their 'insider knowledge' of who they will be hitting next: i.e., if you're hitting Renraku, sell some of that stock.

Of course, this is never a sure thing, but it's a good bet you could at least improve on profits made even if you don't benefit from a large windfall.

[Nikoli]

I'd be careful with that. Many's a crook what got pinched because they mucked about with their finances that would never have been touched prior. Al Capone was brought low for tax evasion, Martha Stuart for selling stock, etc.

[Synner]

[SL James]

You mean SIS?

Not that I mind having to go through three sourcebooks for information on three of the four private intelligence corps (Shadows of Europe for Infolio and Aegis, State of the Art for Argus, and Loose Alliances for a lot on Aegis), but I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that Loose Alliances gives you information to really play the other two, let alone SIS which has almost no information on it aside from what "SIS" stands for and where it's based.