[OrangeCat]

Zephed,

What wildwood explained is how it works in the real world. The VSE (Virtual Stock Exchange)is a little different. The trading rules on the VSE site says:

If a VSE user in the Individual Competition was interested in buying stock in Company X, and Company X has a trading volume of 100,000 shares at the time the user was placing a trade, the VSE user would be able to buy up to a maximum of 100,000 shares.

If real life, buying a 100K shares of X would significantly affect the price. But it appears VSE will fill the order using the last price as long as the current total volume that day is sufficient. Another way VSE differs from real life is stop orders. If you set a stop loss, a market order to sell is entered when the price is hit. The price you are filled at could be way below the stop price. If a stop limit order is used the order might not get filled at all. It appears the VSE will treat stop limit and stop market orders the same as long as the size of the order is less than or equal to the current total volume that day.

My point is that the VSE does not function like the real world when trading large blocks of low volume stocks. This is a "feature" someone could use to their advantage in the contest. I’m not complaining about it, just making people aware of the differences since this is supposed to be a fun learning experience. Anyway, as I said earlier, I’m making selections as I am in real life regardless of what others do in the contest.