Merle's Stock Market Analyst Game

Requirements

• Business sections from a last week's newspapers.
• Pocket Calculator or Mathmatical Aptitute (in Fractions)
• A stub of Pencil to mark the Stocks
• A bit of Paper to figure on.

Optionals

• Friends who also have newspapers.
• Wads of money

How to Play

1. Get out the oldest newspaper (Monday), and look over the stock listings.
2. Choose 5 stocks that you like and mark them with the pencil. If you are playing with friends you may not want to put the marks on the newspaper. In any case, note down the name of the stock followed by the price on your bit of paper. This would look something like:
   

   Robert's paper - Do not peek !
   Westfield 12 7/16
   Hasbro s  18 5/8

3. When you have done all of this, then put away the paper from Monday, and take out Tuesdays'--But DO NOT LOOK AT IT YET !!!
4. All players must mark the stocks that they intend to sell on Tuesday on their papers. I use an asterisk ('*'), but you can use anything, as long as all of the players agree beforehand. ie:
   

   Robert's paper - Do not peek !
   *Westfield 12 7/16
   *Hasbro s  18 5/8

5. When all of the players are ready, open the Tuesday paper and note down the current prices of all of the marked stocks in the third column.. now Robert's paper will look like this:
   

   Robert's paper - Do not peek !
   *Westfield 12 7/16  12 11/16
   *Hasbro s  18 5/8   16 7/16

6. Draw an arrow next to each stock, and figure the amount of money lost or gained by calculating the difference (this is when knowledge of Fractions comes in handy). Robert's paper now reads:

   Robert's paper - Do not peek !
   *Westfield 12 7/16  12 11/16 ---> + 4/16 = + 1/4
   *Hasbro s  18 5/8   16 7/16  ---> - 2 3/16
   

7. Sum these differences to find out the total amount gained (or in Robert's case, lost). After some figuring, Robert calculated that he lost - 1 15/16.
8. Now you get to choose stocks from Tuesday's paper until you have 5 again. Be sure to gloat at your friends whenever you make money--that way they will never play with you again !
9. Then you mark the stocks that you want to sell and go on to Wednesday.
10. The game continues until you run out of newspapers or you get to today's date.

Winning

If you are playing solitare, then consider yourself a winner if you didn't lose (much) money.

Variations