Are any other dopers besided myself members of the Hollywood Stock Exchange? Those of you who are curious may go here.
It is a virtual stock market game based on the amount of money a movie is expected to make during it’s opening weekend. You are given two million virtual dollars which you then invest in movies that you think will rise in value. You can also “short” movies that you think are overvalued.
I have turned my first two million into over one hundred and fifty million. It can be fun for those of you who follow the movie industry. Just as a quick example, “The Da Vinci Code” is being made into a movie. Ron Howard will direct. I bought it at 53 dollars a share. It’s now at 83. When someone is signed to play the lead and when it actually goes into production it will jump in value again. Finally, the opening weekend will come. The box office total is multiplied by 2.9 (I don’t know why not just 3) and that becomes the stocks value. If it makes 30 million dollars, it’s value will not fluctuate much from the 83 dollars a share that it is now. If it opens at 20 million, the stock drops to about 60 dollars a share and I lose about a million dollars of stock value. If it opens at 40 million, I make about two million virtual dollars because the stock becomes worth about 120 dollars a share.
Fun for some, boring for others. I grow curious to see if any other dopers share this interest with me.
I played HSX a few years ago. I won a nifty baseball cap (made my pile on Titanic, IIRC). I haven’t checked it out recently though. Maybe I will give it another look.
I’m really impressed they still keep my account active. I remember playing back when Dogma came out. That would have been in 1999. And I’m still accruing daily interest. Unfortunately, unlike a real stock account, HSX stocks tend to go away over time, as the movies are actually released. So a deserted account eventually goes stagnant.
Heh. I thought, hey, if I open a real brokerage account, and use the time I spent researching HSX stocks to research real stocks, I could make a pile of real money! Didn’t work out like that.
Anyway, I found that in HSX, success breeds failure. The bigger your account gets, the harder it is to find profitable things to do with your money.
Mynn, the big moves in stock prices come when the stocks are adjusted based on actual box office receipts the opening weekend. I made eight million dollars on Passion of the Christ, for example…and lost two million dollars when I thought that Spiderman couldn’t possibly make 70 million. It made over a hundred. Ouch. I have also been playing since 1998. With the amount of money I have now, my account will fluctuate by a million dollars or more daily.
I check daily, I’m worth a little over $28 million. I really made a killing with blockbuster warrants last summer. A $50k investment brought in over $3 million (thank you Spiderman!).
Wow…I had fully forgotten about that site. My account is still active, waiting on *Deuce Bigelow 2 * and the remake of A Star Is Born to come out.
I guess something I had owned cashed out, since I had a million in cash sitting there. I grabbed just over 10,000 shares of Cars. We’ll see what happens next year.
I’ve been playing since 1998. I too won a baseball cap. I got mine for answering a trivia question. I check it pretty often now when I’m bored at work. I’m worth a little over $18 million now.
I’ve been playing since about 1997~1998, but I stopped playing when I stopped seeing a bunch of movies every week. I used to follow bond readjustments; I made a bundle when SMGEL went from 4,000 to 1,000 due to a quirk in the rules. I’ve got about $175,000,000 in my account, and that puts me at position 3274.
I simply have no idea how I would invest just over 100 mil in cash. I might by the Da Vinci code just for old times’ sake.
I opened an account relatively soon after it opened. Did OK, but lost interest. What I thought was great was reading an article on how Hollywood is using the price of the stocks to figure out what movies are going to do well, what stuff in predev needs to “happen” and how to get feedback on changes to the movie. In effect, it became a free focus group for Hollywood. Genius.
Where was that article from, Chairman Pow? It sounds interesting. As I stated previously, I enjoy the site very much.
Bashere, are you still playing? If not, I expect to catch you by the end of the Summer. I’m also curious if anyone signed up for the site after reading this thread. A tear comes to my eye to think that I may have a small role in expanding the horizons of a fellow doper.
No really. After reading this thread, I went and bought a few movies that are interesting looking, but I didn’t worry too much about the price. I put as much money as I could into MovieFunds, in an attempt to get something other than simple interest. Playing it was a lot more fun when I saw a lot of movies; I used to make notes during previews.
The company is an interesting one. They are located on Santa Monica blvd in West Hollywood, and they have an LED ticker that runs around the outside of the building showing current stock prices.
