Rules for 2021 Regular Season

How scoring changes the player’s stock price:

At the beginning of the season, all player’s have a starting price of $1 per share. For each game played, the stock price of a player will go up if they score points, and will go down if they do not score. Goals and assists are given equal weight. Not all players’ stock prices will go up or down by the same amount after every game, even if they score the same number of points. The main reason why is that there are 3 different components that go into how much a player’s stock price moves. 1 – The absolute number of points scored, 2 – The relative number of points scored, and 3 – The consistency in which they are scoring.

If that sounds complicated ( which is kind of is, let’s face it! ), an easier way to think of it is that a player that normally scores more points has to continue to score more points to move their stock price up as much as another player that doesn’t score as often. So a player that averages 1 point per game has a higher bar to jump over than a player that averages 0.5 points per game. What this means is that many more players have the potential to realize the same returns in their stock price.

A much more detailed explanation of how this works can be found HERE.

Buying and selling stock:

After you have registered and created a trading account, you will have $10,000 in play money to work with. If you register after the season has started, you still can participate and trade player’s stocks, but you’ll have less time to make the most money than others who started at the beginning of the season.

You can buy and sell any player’s stock as often as you wish, and their are no transaction fees for doing so. However, if you sell a player’s stock, you cannot repurchase that same player’s stock until the team they played for has played at least 1 game first. ( This prevents double dipping, explained more HERE )

All player’s stock are available to buy and sell at any time except while they are playing in a game. At the time they are playing in a game, their stock is unavailable to either buy or sell. Once their game is finished, and their stock price has been adjusted accordingly, they are available again to buy or sell.

You do not have to buy or sell all of the shares you own, or wish to own at one time. You can accumulate shares over multiple transactions spread out over as much time as you wish, or sell shares in the same fashion.

All prices for player’s stocks will be updated daily and you can see the latest prices by going to their team page and looking at their price chart.

Transaction limitations:

You can purchase as many shares of any player as you like, up to a maximum of 10% of your total portfolio. So to start, you can buy up to $1,000 worth of any 1 player’s stock. You can buy stock in as many as 25 players at any one time.

If the amount of stock you have in a player is below the 10% limit, you can purchase more shares at any time up to this 10% limit. If the stock price of a player goes up so that the total value of the shares becomes greater than 10% of your portfolio, no problem! As long as you don’t sell the shares, their value as a percentage of your total portfolio is not subject to this 10% limit. Only if you sell the shares will this limit apply if at a later time you wish to repurchase stock of that same player. ( So be careful not to sell a player too soon that has gone up a lot in value, because you won’t be able to buy back the same amount unless your whole portfolio’s value has also gone up by the same amount. )

Any transactions that do not break the “double dipping” rule are completely within the rules and you are free to re-balance your portfolio in any way you wish between games.

If you already hold the maximum of 25 players, and you wish to purchase another player, you will be have to sell stock in 1 player before buying in another so that your portfolio remains at the 25 player limit.

Injured Players:

If a player is injured and not playing, their stock price will not change until they begin playing again. You can sell their stock for the last price it was at before they were injured with no penalty. The only limitation on repurchasing them when they begin playing again is that you have to keep your purchase within the 10% limit for the total value of your portfolio, just like any other player.

How to Win:

Making the most money from your transactions of course! ( Rather obvious, I know ) In theory you can buy and sell players’ stocks between every single game to try to capture as many price increases as possible. In practice, however, how do I say this? Good luck with that? In reality, you’re probably going to have to limit yourself in how many trades you make. Figuring out the optimal number of trades to make over the course of a whole season is one of the challenges of this game! Making too many trades, or too few will most likely hurt your performance, but for everyone the “right” number of trades to make is going to be unique to them.

Simply buying and holding a set of players’ stocks throughout the whole season can work if you pick very well. If you’ve browsed through the charts for the 2020 regular season, you will have noticed that there is a lot of fluctuation in stock prices for most players as the season goes on. Sometimes it will make more sense to take profits and move the money into another player during the season, or to cut your losses and find a better option instead. So in this way, it is very much like the stock market. The key to outperforming everyone else is to have better timing, risk management and strategies for picking the right players, and buying and selling at the right times.

Ultimately the game is as easy or complicated as you want to make it. You don’t have to have the most sophisticated or complex strategy to win. You just have to have an “edge”, and know how to use it!

Strategy Tips:

  1. Elite scorers will have very good returns on their stock prices if they keep scoring at a high level. So it pays to own the most productive ones.
  2. Breakout players who score at a much higher rate than they normally do will also have very good returns. In some cases, even better than elite players. ( But of course, there’s higher risk with these players too. )
  3. Not all players will score consistently enough throughout the season to keep their stock price constantly increasing. This can create both dangers and opportunities! A fast starter could be worth selling, while a slow starter could be worth buying at some point in the season. So it can definitely pay to watch for this.
  4. Many players won’t see very large movements in their stock price, so you have to be selective.
  5. Younger, emerging players tend to still have lower average scoring benchmarks that factor in to how much their stock prices move, so they are often where you can make higher returns. ( Kailer Yamamoto or Kevin Fiala would be good examples )
  6. Older players that have passed their peak tend to still have higher average scoring benchmarks which also factor in to how much their stock prices move, they they can often drop in value more than most. ( Joe Thornton or Joe Pavelski would be good examples )
  7. While you want to make as much money from the shares that you buy as you can, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to put all of your money to work immediately. Kevin Fiala is a perfect example to use. If you bought it stock and held it all the way through the season, you would have made roughly 20 times your initial investment. Awesome! However, waiting until after he had played several games would have meant that you could have bought his stock for as little as 50 cents, which would have doubled your return to 40 times instead! Sometimes it pays to wait!