Buying stocks in Athletes, what is this about?
The Answer is One Season.com: Opening in late September, the new site has been receiving a lot of attention and has grown to over 25,000 users in the first month. It is a free market system in which users can purchase virtual shares in athletes and the share prices are driven from supply and demand. The Virtual shares are called “SOI’s” or Synthetic Ownership Interests” and are purchased in the One Season Market place. (Market hours are from 9:00 am to 12:00 midnight.)
Why should you care?
Get in while its hot is what they say, and this market is exactly that. The market is brand new, prices are low, its a whole lot of fun, and its proving to be very viral. Within one month over 25,000 players have joined the site and the trading has been consistent. Some traders now have thousands in their accounts, I kid you not. I began about 3 weeks ago with an initial investment of 50.00 dollars and my account breached 750.00 dollars this weekend. Who knows if it will last, but I can reason that its well worth the risk wagered. Don’t want to spare your own change? not to worry, you receive a FREE 10.00 dollars to trade with, just for signing up.
The Basics: How it works.
Sign-up and Deposit
Log onto One Season, click sign-up for a new account, verify account via email and select a trading alias. After registering your account, you will be asked to deposit money via pay-pal, credit/debit card or e-check. Regardless if you choose to add money to the account or not, One Season awards every new member with a FREE 10.00 dollar initial investment. After choosing the amount you would like to invest, (max 2500 per year) you are now ready to being trading!
–The examples to follow are based off the 50.00 dollars I invested in the site about 3 weeks ago. (+bonus 10.00 for signup)
What to do next?
Purchasing SOI’s
It is now time for you to choose who you are going to invest in. Currently there are a total of 37 players from the NBA, MLB, and NFL to choose from. So, to begin you will want to choose a player who you think will be a popular buy. There is no science behind this decision and you may base your selection off anything such as: personal preference, popularity, standing, players stats, media coverage, inside information, playoff assumptions, awards, etc. The stock prices ARE NOT based upon the players performance and or stats. Ultimately your looking to buy a player that will be popular in the minds of the public and traders on the site. The more that player is traded, the more money you will profit. i.e. (Based off my 60.00 investment)
For my first purchases I decided to buy Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. I made this decision based upon the fact that both are the only two hockey players on the site, they are popular figures in the media, and I am a hockey fan; its that easy. When following through, I purchased 2 shares of Sidney Crosby at 13.50 a share, and 2 shares of Alexander Ovechkin at 14.50 a share. Investing 57.00 out of 60.00 dollars from my account balance.
After making your first purchase, your SOI SPORTFOLIO under ”My Account” will show most importantly: Names of players purchased, the price you paid, the price the stock is valued at, and the # of shares you now own. The next person who buys the share will then bid somewhere above that figure, say 14.00 dollars for Crosby and 15.00 dollars for Ovechkin. Assuming someone is willing to sell their Crosby/Ovechkin Stock at that price, which you can see in the “Trade Orders” section on every players page (picture below) the trade will complete successfully. As the trading price begins to rise with every trade, the price/value of the stock will also rise accordingly, thus earning you small profits.
Trade-orders Snapshot
What to do with your stock?
Sell/Hold
Stockholders or “SOI” holders have 1 of 2 options when withholding a stock or multiple stocks in any athlete.
1.) Sell off the stock as the price rises in the short term
2.) Hold onto the stock and hope that it will rise enough to split before selling
What is Splitting?
Splitting occurs when the stock price of any athlete rises over twenty dollars and remains over 20 when the market closes for the day. Having your SOI split is not guaranteed and it could take anywhere from a day, to a week, to a month for you shares to split.
How does this benefit you?
Splitting thus benefits you because you are doubling your shares and increasing your potential to earn more profit. In addition, you benefit from the Market price of each share also being cut in half, becoming more attractable for new investors.
- SOI SPORTFOLIO SNAPSHOT
As you can see in the SOI SPORTFOLIO Snapshot above, both of my stocks split in the first couple of days after I purchased them. My shares were each doubled to 4 and the price paid was cut in half, keeping my profit equivalent to the previous days gains, shown in market value.
SOI SPORTFOLIO: I now have a total of 8 shares selling at the split price of 12.50 which is equivalent to about 100 dollars. Up 43.00 dollars profit from where I began. Although holding out hasn’t greatly benefited me yet, since if I sold all 4 stocks last night at 25.00 I would have an equal total amount of 100.00, I now have the potential to increase again with 8 shares earning money rather than 4. Specific to the snapshot above, you can see Ovechkin has already increased to 16.27 and his total Market value is now 65.08 from 50.00 dollars early that morning. Had I sold him last night for 2 shares at 25.00 i would have been missing out on additional gains.
Visit the site here @ Oneseason.com
I hope this helps, and good luck trading.
October 27, 2008 at 10:31 PM
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor