Share questions

Short answers to what players often ask about shares. For the whole story, see Selling your own shares and Trading shares.

Every company has 50 shares, all held by the company itself when it is founded. Selling some of your own raises money you never pay back. Shares you buy in other companies pay you dividends every week, and selling them to other players at a profit earns S-points for your S-rank. It all happens under Shares in the menu, on the tabs Buy shares, My shares, Dividends and Stock points.

Yes. You cannot lose control of your company, so you can sell all of them. The money goes into your savings and counts towards your Company Value like any money you earn. Only 2 of your own shares can pay you dividends, which is why the tutorial suggests keeping that many. Selling your own shares earns no S-points.

Open Buy shares, click a share to open its page and press Buy. The price leaves your savings at once, and the share is yours at the next update. You get the share of that company that has been for sale the longest, not necessarily the one you clicked. You may buy 5 shares a day and 1 of each company a day, and hold at most 2 of any company, your own included.

Buy shares lists only the shares you can buy right now. Tick Also show shares I can't buy now to see the rest: Too dear means the price is more than your savings, and Limit reached means you have used the day's buys, already bought one of that company today or hold 2 of it. Orders still waiting count as bought, and the day's count starts again at midnight. A share someone has just put out for sale only shows 30 to 300 minutes later.

Orders fill at the next update, oldest first. Yours is dropped if no share of that company is left by then, because someone else bought it first or it was taken off the market, if the company has stopped trading, or if your savings no longer cover the price. The money comes back to your savings at that update. Buy orders on the Stock points tab shows each order and why it was dropped.

Buyers only see a share 30 to 300 minutes after you put it out for sale; until it sells, FS marks it on My shares. Buyers then get the share of your company that has been for sale the longest, so yours wait behind earlier listings, the bank's included. Each player may buy only 1 share of a company a day and hold 2, and early in a round players have little money. If you need the money now, sell to the bank instead.

On My shares, tick the shares and press Instantly sell to bank for a reduced price: the money is in your savings at once. The bank pays 80% of the share price, less 10% for each risk class above 1 and 5% for each day of the round's last week; the Bank pays column shows what you would get. The risk class rises the longer the company's owner stays away from the game, and names in orange (class 2 or 3) or red (4 or 5) show it. A bank sale gives no S-points and cannot be undone, and the bank then puts the share up for sale again.

For the first 7 days after founding, it is your Company Value divided by 50. After that it moves every midnight: up by 1% of the day's rise in Company Value (down with a fall), and up or down as you climb or fall in the C-rank, that part by at most 25% a day. The weekly awards on Mondays add a bonus for their winners, and the price never falls below £1. Buying and selling shares does not move it, so the way up is to grow your Company Value faster than the companies around you.

10% of what your company earns from selling goods, on the market, to the bank and in shops, and from office work, goes into its stockpile. That money is never yours to spend: it pays your shareholders' dividends, so the more you sell, the bigger they are. The part for shares that pay nobody, such as those the bank holds, stays in the stockpile, which carries over up to £50,000 after each payout; anything above that is lost. The Dividends tab shows your stockpile and the next payout per share.

Every Sunday at 06:00, and once more ten minutes before the round ends. Each share is paid 2% of its company's stockpile, and 20% dividend tax is taken from what you receive. Only your 50 most valuable shares pay you, at most 2 per company, and what counts is the shares you hold at the moment of the payout. On My shares, set Show to "latest dividend": shares in green pay you, those in red do not.

Yes, on up to 2 of them, the same limit as for any other company, and they count among your 50 paying shares. Your other own shares pay nobody, and their part stays in your stockpile. So selling the rest of your own shares costs you nothing in dividends.

S-points (stock points) come from shares: 1 for every £100 of dividends you receive, and 1 for every £100 of profit when you sell another company's share to a player. Your S-rank is your place by S-points; until you have some, it shows N/A. The Stock points tab lists your trades and what each earned, and S-points also count towards your Career points.

A sale earns S-points only when you sell another company's share to a player for more than you paid. None come from:

• selling your own company's shares,
• selling to the bank, or the bank buying your shares when the round ends,
• a sale with no profit, or a profit under £100,
• sales after your first 5 sales of other companies' shares to players that day, which count whether they made a profit or not.

If a company goes bankrupt or is closed, its shares become worthless and vanish from whoever held them. Shares it held in other companies pass to the bank, which puts them on sale 2 to 22 hours later. When the round ends, the bank buys every share still held, your own company's included, at what it pays on the last day. That gives no S-points, but the money counts towards your final Company Value (Rounds).