Investment Income

[Howl]

I have to admit, I feel really funny making a suggestion about a game that is, ultimately, free for me to play. Especially when I spend an ungodly amount of time logged in. However, I have been thinking about something for awhile and would like to throw it out for mass consumption.

Currently, when you have money left over, you have two choices. You can leave it in your bank account where it stagnates, or you can attempt to invest it in players (whose value will hopefully rise over time). In that aspect, the transfer market operates a whole lot like an investment vehicle. The problem with letting money stagnate is that it loses its value over time due to inflationary pressure placed upon the transfer market.

I am wondering whether adding some short term investment vehicles like treasury bills (I'm not sure what these are called in Europe), term deposits, or savings bonds would add a bit more realism to the game??

I am not suggesting a full blown stock exchange (as that would royally screw up the game), but a short term, interest bearing investment vehicle would at least 'reward' those players who choose to hold on to their money......

Edited to include - holy crap, I talk like an economist!!!

[Red_Army_Squad]

Yeah good idea, but I think not really easy to make.

[zandyy]

Very good idea and quite easy to add as a feature.

In order to keep it simple, I think it should be called "investment" or "savings account", so that the less financially-aware managers can understand what it's all about.

The easiest way is to add it as an option under "economy" and use the same characteristics as "loan" - you can place money into "savings" for a fixed amount of time and get paid interest at fixed intervals, just like "loan". The interst should be 1-2% lower than those charged in "loan".

Zandyy

[kolarma1]

If you want to add this feature, you should make it real. Let players borrow and lend money in a market. I understand if you let the transactions be done individually there would be a lot of cheating. But, let's say between each two simulations you add the demand and supply and set the interest rate automaticaly to clear the market without any borrower being directly linked with a specific lender and vice-versa. If there is some mimimum volume this should work just fine. I don't know how complicated this would be to do but I guess not much.

[Paul_G]

I agree with the original suggestion... have it so that you can buy these bills before each season, then at the end of the season, they mature and you get... I dunno... a 10% return on them? Something like that would probably be pretty easy to institute.

I've said a few times before that the biggest problem with this game is that there aren't enough options as to what to do with your money, once you've established yourself.

I've got $50 million in the bank. My stadium is maxed out except for seating, and adding more seats (I've got 40,000) is just a waste of money. Sure, I invest in players, which is how I made my 50 mil, but I have 35 roster spots and I can only use 13 of them for development. And other than that, there really isn't much else to spend on.

As more players come into the game and SP gets more mature, the top players are going to have bankrolls approaching a billion euro. In fact, the richest players are probably already around there.

So we do need ways to spend money, or invest money, or just use the money we have in some way. It would add a lot to the game. This T-Bill idea is a good one, and I think we should also be able to spend money on a seasonal basis to increase the quality and quantity of our incoming youth players, too... stuff like that.

[unicool]

ok.agree with that.but it should be something like:good bussines or bad bussines.you can invest the money but in the same time you can lose thaose money.or a part of them.if you buy auctions and get 10% profit surely is only a inflation tool.if the bussines is going wrong you lose some money.ex:invest 5 milions and if the bussines is wrong you get back only 40% of them.thee should be a risc.if you only win the amount of money will be bigger and bigger and the players would became very expensive.when you have 200 milions and nothing to do with them,and you have good players you can bid 100 milions on a player and invest the other 100 milions and win 10%.it should be something like a lottery....win or lose.

[zandyy]

I still think the reasonable way forward with this is to have a feature that is simply the reverse of the loan feature. It can have the same time restrictions as loan, but with lower interest rates. That would simulate life best. I really don't see a reason to limit the time to start and end of season as was suggested here, nor to add a risk factor of losing the investment - treasury bills are not paid only when the issuer is bust, hence they should be at detault only when SP goes bankrupt. Also suggested here a rate of 10% - if we use the loan features, rates for each period should be 2-3% less than the loan, like in real life.