I can’t seem to get there. I’m just leaving a browser open trying to load the page.
Arghh! The stock I wanted to play has already gone up 2 since opening this morning. Oh well, virtual , virtual angst…
After at least a dozen failures, it finally took my first order. I think one is all I can stand to make today.
Now if the stock would quit attempting to crater and turn upward, I’d be having a good day.
I was gonna suggest maybe starting tomorrow instead of today, but now that Saltire’s actually managed to make a trade, I guess that option’s out.
I finally got an order placed. I had earlier tried registering anew to get through, to no avail; that’s why there’re two of me in the competition. Ignore the second one; I’ll try to figure out tonight how to make him go away (it’s a little creepy to type something like that about yourself).
Just checked my year end performance. Let’s see. Last year I stick with such winners as Lucent -80.8%, ATT -66.1%, IBM -21.2% and Vodafone -27.7%.
I wish this had only been virtual trading!
Dinsdale: may I offer my sympathy?
My brother-in-law works for ATT and has been hurting because of the drop in their stock; his options are worthless. Part of his holdings is Lucent because he got it as part of their spinoff, so he’s got a double-whammy going too.
I’m in!!
Just placed three orders!
Yep - it looks like we’re actually allowed to play the game now.
Sorry about the problems this morning. If I could have done anything, I would’ve.
beatle, if you can tell me which one of you to delete, I think I can take care of your double-identity.
I managed to get in and make 2 trades this morning… I am sure I’ve lost money already. 
I let my son in as jantom; hope you guys don’t mind. He’s 11 and beats me all the time at Monopoly. He can’t stand to see me win at anything.
Neato - I’m in as well. Now what do I do?
Priceline - that’s my tip o’ the day.
I’m in, as Dignan1. Someone took my “normal” handle.
:sigh:
Well, as of the close of the first day of trading, I am down 0.01%. Since the server doesn’t computate percentages smaller than hundreths, that’s about the best I could have hoped for. 
The game is open, the trades have begun, and there are only 57 days remaining.
A few reminders:
[ul]
[li]The site delays all trades twenty minutes. This is not a problem or limitation… it is a touch o’ realism. In real life, chances are that your broker is not going to leap right up from his desk to run down to the trading floor to make your trade. Also, the information people like us get online is delayed the same amount of time. If our trades were processed immediately, we would be able to cheat (for more information, see the last few pages of the thread from our last game.[/li][li]Cool Feature: When you are looking at the Basic View of your portfolio, there is a hyperlink just above the header row that says, “portfolio to go.” If you click on it, a javascript window opens that shows your portfolio, updated automatically every 5 minutes. This allows you to keep reading the SDMB without losing the ability to obsess over every change in the value of your holdings.[/li][li]The rankings information takes some time to update. Again, that’s just the way the site works. Deal with it.[/li][li]The VSE is, ultimately, a free service provided by a business. That’s why, if you want, you can pay for “premium services.” I don’t recommend them particularly, but you should know that you can grease the wheels if you feel you need an advantage over pantom. Also, if you post to their message boards, login each day, invite others, make money, etc, you earn “member points.” You can then turn those in for freebies like trial subscriptions to magazines. Whoopee. :rolleyes: Again, I mention it simply because you should know everything there is to know about the site. Please don’t invite people outside the SDMB Community to join our competition (pantom, I forgive you; it’s the champion’s prerogative.;))[/li][li]If I have forgotten anything, please post it here, IM me or send me an email.[/li][li]If anyone has any problems with the site (like Chris did last time), send me an email. I don’t know if I will be able to do anything about it, but I will try.[/li][li]Have Fun! :)[/li][/ul]
sdimbert, my non-playing evil twin is sdmb_beatle_2. I hope you can delete him; he might just beat us all if he just sits there and collects interest. I just looked around over there and I didn’t see a way for me to take him out.
I just tried “exit competition,” and the number of competitors increased; until today’s rankings are posted I can’t check to see if I smoked the evil twin or not.
sdimbert: noted about my son and non-sdmbers. I was downright flattered by that bit about needing an advantage over moi. (still blushing, I think. Must repeat: pride goeth before a fall, pride goeth before a fall, pride…)
Sorry, but it seems that I can’t delete players. I will keep checking, but for now, we’ll just ignore him.
I still can’t get in. :mad:
Well. This morning I find myself up by 11.5%. Whoohoo!
Welp, I’ve been in on this one since the start and can report that the site is as buggy as ever. Maybe the dopers are overloading the system?
Who knows.
Thinksnow, you need to be incredibly patient right now and simply keep on trying. From time to time it opens up and you can zoom around pretty easily. But around the time you want to buy or sell a stock the system will freeze and laugh at your growing angst and anger. At least that’s been the case with me so far.
A “just so you know”, the last round of this game started off buggy and then eased up later on. The creap and crawl that it’s doing now it didn’t do before.
wtf? It multiplied the amount of shares I wanted to purchase on all my buys by 10. So now, instead of having 50K left over, I’ve used 50K of my margin. grrrrr