This may make me seem a bit geeky, but I have recently become addicted to Hollywood Stock Exchange (I mean, you know it’s got to be strong for me to feel the need to write about it).
The Hollywood Stock Exchange (or HSX) is basically a stock market trading system built around movies. You start with fictional money, and you only make (or lose) fictional money — but it’s still awesome.
You basically trade (movie)stocks, (star)bonds, (TV)stocks and (movie)bonds, as well as more advanced types of trading like short-selling and derivatives.
So for example, yesterday I purchased a large amount of stock in Prometheus, The Hobbit, and The Girl Who Played with Fire. I purchased Prometheus because the value is most likely going to increase because of the trailer they will post on Thursday (the same with The Hobbit, who’s trailer I thought was going to debut today), and because if The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo does well, I know the value of the sequel will go up a ton (it was cheaper as of now).
In another move, I short-sold shares on War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, and Captain America 2. This is because I think that War Horse and Tintin will do badly at the box office (both look bad to me) and I just don’t think a Captain sequel will do well. So today, when the two Spielberg films dropped in stock, I made money (a short sale means I committed to selling shares at the price they were yesterday, so when their value dropped today, I made money).
I also bought bonds in Rooney Mara (because of Dragon Tattoo), David Fincher (same reason) and Tarantino (Django).
I took out derivatives on many of my Oscar predictions (heavy on Woody Allen related awards) which will pay off when the nominations are announced (or I can sell them if people start to think they are more valuable and I change my mind, making a profit).
So this might all seem (as our publisher put it) like World of Warcraft for movie geeks. However, I’m pretty sure it’s a kickass way to learn the stock market while also gauging the success of movies — and as a film addict, why wouldn’t you want to give it a shot.
Oh, and if you do end up signing up (you get $2 million to start with), make sure you give me credit (‘streetlight708′ is my username) so I get bonus dollars.
