Stock Market - Peter Young (Your Spectrum-Issue 2-Page 85)


Fancy yourself as a budding financial genius - well, here's your
chance to prove it. Dealing in stocks and shares, your task is to
make a veritable fortune anticipating the 'bears' and 'bulls' in
the stock market.
	There are four skill levels to the game, and these determine
how much prices have changed independently of the information
given to the players. Depending on the number of players
involved, you should choose your level carefully. Playing alone,
you would be wise to opt for level four; for two players, level
three would be the best bet; for three players try level two; and 
if there are four or more players then level one is for you.
	You specify how many rounds you require (a good game
would comprise six rounds) and, complete with 1000 to play
the market, each player gets to study the seven companies available
for speculation and decides which shares to buy. You can
'cheat' a little as you're provided with three rumours as to what
might happen, with the option of a fourth which has to be
bought. Of course, if you get found out trying to bribe an official,
you could find yourself in hot water!
	You'll notice that the shares in Akran, Belso, Cobra and
Dobro will not fluctuate too much each round, whereas speculations
on Elsat and Finet will turn out a lot more lucrative. The
final company, Bchip, represents the kind of share which never
actually falls in value, but whose gradual rise in price will 
never make you a Nelson Rockefeller.
	All prompts for the buying and selling of shares are indicated
on-screen, and the program is error-trapped should you decide
to type in a lot of nonsense! When all players have completed
their various transactions, the Spectrum will list any changes of
share values and inform those unlucky enough to let their funds
go down to 0 that they'd better reserve themselves a place on
the window-ledge.
Should a company be dissolved, all shares in this enterprise will
be discontinued and you stand to lose all your cash. However,
you will find that the company will re-emerge due to
an influx of government subsidy and trade will continue with the
share prices being set to their original starting price of 15. 
After the final game turn, the program converts all share holdings into
cash and gives each player their final tote - the winner, of
course, being the one who has made the biggest fortune.


Lines 1-15      Initialise screen colours, POKE Caps Lock and keyboard bleep,
		and finally PRINT the game title.
Line 20         Sets the initial values of the bribe attempt and the game turn.
Lines 21-23     Get the details of the number of players, skill level, and the
		number of game turns required. The subroutine starting at line
		9100 (called no less than three times within this short routine)
		reads the keyboard.
Lines 25-30     Call the variable subroutine and jump to the main program.
Lines 40-60     Contain a subroutine to print screen details. This is positioned
		at the beginning of the program to speed up the proceedings.
Lines 100-330   Main program loop. This is called once per turn for each player.
		This portion of the code prints the screen, rumours, and bribe
		attempts if necessary.
Lines 4000-4030 Unknown rumours routine. This routine calculates the 
		extra rumour.
Lines 5000-5110 Contain the buying and selling of shares routine. Each player is
		asked if they want to buy or sell shares. Checks are made on the
		number of shares available and the amount of cash the player
		has - this information is used to stop 'illegal entries', ie.
		cheating.
Lines 6000-6220 Calculate and print information on the rise and fall of shares,
		and also the suspension of shares.
Lines 7000-7040 Check to see if a company is bankrupt, and plays a merry little
		ditty when all is lost.
Lines 8000-8220 Initialisation of variables.
Lines 9000-9060 The 'end of game' routine. This prints details of who has what at
		the end of the game, cashing shares and announcing who has
		made the most of their opportunity.
Lines 9100-9130 Wait for a key to be pressed, returning to the main program with
		the string, K$, holding the necessary data.
Lines 9997-9999 A SAVEing routine for those of you who have purchased ZX
		Microdrives. Do not type in these lines unless you have
		Microdrives.

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TYPE: Strategy 

COMMENT: 


This info file was typed by Jim Grimwood

Downloaded from:
Desert Island Disks -- http://www.image.dk/~frankie/
Maintained by:
Michael Bruhn -- frankie@image.dk

