It's called the
Stock Exchange and it may be considered a game, but is it? Yes, you use play money to buy fantasy stocks, but those stocks are tied to real vehicles that you believe will either be a sales boom or bust. CSX trading may deliver a real predictive message about how new vehicles will do in the American marketplace. You are becoming an automotive forecaster while attempting to outsmart your peers by trading car stocks for play profits that will earn you prizes for your superior performance. Expect to hear new lingo around the water cooler, something like, "I went long
G8 and short
Sequoia and made big bucks, CSX bucks."
Edmunds.com's battery of seasoned experts, many with Ph.D.s, attempt to forecast new vehicle sales based on a variety of historical factors. Now you have a chance to compete with our team and your friends by employing the Wall Street trading strategy of "buying low — selling high," and not necessarily in that order, as CSX allows you to "short" car stocks that you believe will fall short of their predicted sales targets six months from their on-sale showroom release dates. You'll have to ask yourself questions like, "Sequoia sold just 23,273 in all 2007. Can the all-new model really sell 18,900 in its first six months based on a full-year 2008 estimate of 42,000?" Or, "The new
BMW 1 Series is cheaper than the
3 Series, which sold 142,490 in 2007, so even with fewer model variants, should the 1 Series sell more than 9,000 units in its first six months?" As your CSX Car Stock Guru blogger, I will only give you the facts, leaving it up to you to make your own "investment" decisions.
