Shuler v Taylor Stock Trading

I was researching about the Heath Shuler campaign this morning, and found a political stock exchange that trades play money where the traders bet money on the outcome of certain political races, or events.

When someone signs up, they have W$1,000,000 deposited into their trading account, and they can start trading stocks.

Each stock starts out with a value of W$50.00, and goes up or down based on the buying or selling of such stock, the more people buy, the more valuable it becomes, the more sell, the less valuable it becomes. So, it is good to get in on the ground floor of a good stock, and not so good to get in on a bad stock just before it plummets.

For example, there is a stock, called OBL06, that predicts that Osama Bin Laden will be captured or killed by Dec 31, 2006. It's value is W$23.15. I'd hate to be the player(s) who initially purchased the stock!

The local congressional race is part of the stock exchange as well.

Heath Shuler's stock evaluation is W$61.06, and Charles Taylor's was W$50.00. So, being the loyal Conservative, I couldn't let that stand.
I immediately joined up (it's free), and purchased 5,000 shares. That brought the evaluation up pretty nice on par with Heath's...exactly matching it at W$61.06. Can I add, or what?

I wish I had known how much the stock would climb that much, or I would have bought more. I have several hundred thousand in W$ jingling in my pocket, and am currently studying where to make my next move.

I fancy myself a trader (at least in the real world), and am a student of Technical Analysis, which involves charting a lot of different variables, such as price, price change, volume traded, and such. My philosophy is that the market knows the current value of a stock, and will change to reflect that value from moment to moment, and that these trends are predictable, given you have taken everything into account, which, of course, is impossible, but fun.

Besides, I like math, and playing with numbers, unlike those dull and stodgy people who are students of Fundamental Analysis. These guys try to read everything about a stock to try to get a handle on where it is going, as far as it's value goes. Who wants to read a gazillion articles about a company in your spare time, when you could play with a calculator (or computer)!!!! Since I learned to chart stocks by hand with graphing paper (sometimes making my own), a newspaper, and plenty of paper and pencils, I still prefer that method when following one or two stocks, anything more, and it becomes quite time consuming!

There is an ulterior motive for my gushing about this "Pretend Stock Exchange."

I intend to entice both my readers to check it out because the more people are involved in trading activity, the more accurate the market is due to smoothing out of individual actions. And if local people are involved, perhaps I can more accuratley predict whether Charles Taylor will be going back to Washington, or if Heath Shuler will have to endure the spectacle of Redskins fans turning their backs on him everywhere he goes!

Rare Navel-Gazing Moment Alert !!!

You know, to some people, this is probably the most boring post I have ever posted.