What’s new, different, gone and missing (short version)

So now that a few folks are messing around with the site, I should probably document some of the changes for you all, since I haven’t updated the copy of the site (yet). The biggest change you will find is that the ‘sell’ button is gone and you no longer enter number so shares that you want to buy. Instead you enter the amount of money that you want to place into a ‘buy order’. The system then attempts to buy as many shares from the least expensive sellers that it can find. As a shareholder, you have to set a ‘selling price’ for your shares.  This can be any amount that you want and you can change it whenever you want. There are a finite number of shares, and currently the system is defaulting to 10,000 for each thot.A new thing, is ‘advanced trading’. With this, you can place order to buy or change your selling price contingent on circumstances like a change in the trading price of a thot. At the moment that is the only trigger that is active, but shortly you will also be able to trigger advanced orders with changes in market cap. You set a duration for these orders and if the trigger does not occur, the order will expire. This way you can continue trading and making (or losing) money even when you’re not online. Stuff that’s gone: TAXES. there are no taxes in the system. CAPS. there aren’t caps (at least not like there used to be). You can pretty much set your prices to whatever you want within reason. But there is no penalty for ammassing huge sums of thollars in your bank account. FROZEN THOTS. thot don;t freeze anymore. From time to time trading might be paused on a thot pending an investigation of strangeness, but that should be (fingers crossed) rare. THOT MANAGERS. no more thot managers or hostile takeovers.  There’s more, but I’m really tired. I’ll be discussing a lot more about the motivations for all the changes in future posts. Also there are technical changes that might be interesting to some.PLEASE let me know what you think. It’s all a bit different than before, and I’m anxious to know if you find it to be: harder/easier, more/less fun, etc. Also, when corresponding, please let me know if you participated in the first public beta last fall or if you are new. Oh, one more thing…This new market does away with the whole ‘simulator’ algorithm thing. Fluctuations, prices and all that are now directly driven by the shareholders. That means that the overall experience (i.e. enjoyment) of the site now heavily depends on numbers of people driving those changes. The site will fail if it doesn’t cross some tipping point of traffic. So, if you enjoy it and see an opportunity to bring new poeple in, please do so, for your own sake (and mine too). Thanks everyone. I hope this works.  -Steve