Hello there. I wanted to create this guide because the only other I found was really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and did not explain anything to me.

I just want to say that I'm not some kind of pro X games player that shares his knowledge he obtained during 10 years of playing it.

I've never played any X game before I got X3. That was 4 days before I started writing this.

I started as a Humble Merchant and I was struggling and trying to make enough money to get something real going, trading Ore and Energy Cells and stuff. I got about 70k in my first day, and then I discovered Kingdom's End. That beautiful place, that doesn't really interest beginning traders, because it doesn't sell anything good for them.

But it has stock market that you can access.

I've got about 50 million Credits in ships and stations now, 20 million Credits invested in shares and 15 million Credits on my account.


I will focus on Corporate/Company Index here, because I find it easiest to make money on.



@EDIT- As @The Human Turtle and @jacka.sonorus pointed out in comments, there ARE different stock exchanges. You don't HAVE to go to Kingdom's End to do this, but it's what I did and I'm just sharing my opinions here.

Each stock has requirements for you to access it, IMO Boron is the easiest to achieve, because it's really close, travelling there does not put you at risk of running into pirates, and you need only one rank up to use it.

If you don't want to rank up with Boron, go to Seizewell and pay 10 000 Credits to Teladi to acces stock. I don't like paying, so yeah.

• Credits
  
• SETA
  
• Trading System Extension
  
• Time
  
• Knowledge how the stock exchange works

You will need about 100 000 Cr to start making money faster than trading. You can start earlier, but obviously it will be much less profitable, because you won't be able to buy as many shares.

How do you get that? You will need to consult other guides for that. I traded my way to there, others sell their second ship. Whatever works for you and your scenario.


You will need that to wait for shares to change their value. In case you don't know what SETA is- it's the time acceleration thingy.


You just need to install it, I'm afraid, it's not expensive and you should own it anyway.


X3 is a time consuming game. Stock exchange is no different. Unless you get a satellite in Kingdom's End, you will have to sit around to access the stock exchange. During that time you won't really do anything because you need to actively Time accelerate with SETA.


This will be covered in this guide, so if you have everything else, hop on in.

I'm writing this from a Humble Merchant point of view, I don't really know where other scenarios start. Anyway, the system you want to head to is Kingdom's End. If you haven't discovered it yet, it's North-West of the Argon Prime. More north than west.

To use the stock exchange you do not need to be docked in stock exchange station. To open the stock exchange you need to click the topmost button on your HUD. You can't really miss it from there.

So you got to the Kingdom's End and you can open the window with companies and corporations that interest us.

You should see quite a few companies. Overwhelming, isn't it? Not at all.


In X3: Albion Prelude companies cannot go out of business(Well, maybe they can, I did not experience that yet.). How do they work then? They have Y amount of shares, and each share is worth Z amount of Credits. There is set Minimum and Maximum worth of shares. You can see that in the window with all Indexes(basically the Company/Corporation stock exchange).
That means that if you invest when the share is at minimum worth and you buy it, you can only profit.


Look at the top of your window. It's explained there. You can toggle it to either mean best time to buy shares, or best time to sell shares. Default is best time to buy, and I'm going to explain thigs from this point of view.


Well I've already kinda explained it in first header, but let's go over it in details:

• Quickly scan all the companies indexes. Is any of them 100?
  
  YES :D- select that company, and buy all the shares you can afford(the 'end' key will help you with that).
  
  NO :(- worry not. Neeeeeeeext bullet.
  
  
• Any company at 99?
  Yes!- check the Current share value Is it same as Minimum share value? Yeah!- Buy all you can afford.
  
  No!- Worry not. Neeeeeeext bullet.
  
  
• So we don't have anything at best buying prices. What do we do? Well, we can do a few things.
  
  #1 is use SETA(note: You can't use it while you're docked, so just don't dock anywhere and float around in space.) and wait for anything to hit 99/100.
  
  #2 Buy something that's lower index. This is not too risky if Current share value is within 2-3 Credits of minimum.

Sit back and relax. If you bought at index 100 you have a guaranteed profit. Hit your SETA button and wait for the shares to become more valuable.


In the beginning every 10k credits counts, and it's easy to make it.

I leave it up to you to decide when to sell, but note this: Some companies go up and down very often, but won't become highly valuable. You can wait for 10 real life days and the company might never drop over 10 index points. Does that mean they're worthless? From the company viewpoint, maybe. But from the viewpoint of someone who wants to grab easy money, there's nothing better.

Why? Because if you buy at 100 and sell at 95, you're profiting. Repeat 10 times over the hour and you've essentially made the profit of 50 index points worth. Did it drop to 50 over the hour? No. They're worth the same amount of credits as in the beginning, but you have 100k credits more.


That being said though... Over the time you will see which companies are "stronger"(meaning their shares tend to be closer to maximum worth most of the time, with temporary increases in index. That's a good time to buy. I'm talking about 30-40 index points here, not 5-10. If you invest because something has increased 10 index points you might find yourself losing a million or four because it wouldn't stop increasing.


You see what I mean, right?

What next you ask? How much do you have? 2 millions? At 2 millions you make really nice money with investing it further... But maybe you want to start your trading empire? Go ahead and buy one trading ship and MK3 trading software, and set it to sector trader. That should take less than 1 mil Cr, so you will have enough money to invest in MOAR SHARES.


Really though, you can't expect me to tell you how to play this game, I presented you one way of making money, what you spend it on is not my business.

Hope my guide helped you, safe travels :)


Oh wait, you want to read a little more in detail? Okay then, let's go.

7.7.2013-section added



Some companies have a big difference between minimum share worth and maximum share worth, some have smaller. Some have almost 300 000 shares, some have barely 100 000.

This all depends on whether you have time and want to make more money fast[1], or you've made enough money to get the ship you wanted and start doing some missions, while the shares become more profitable[2].

See screenshot:

• Tosi Da Consolidated- 162 000 shares, min-max difference of 81 credits. That means if Index drops by 10, each share we bought will be worth 8.1 credits more.
  
  
• Yohulis Zusilas Gustiosanis IV Ventures (god I hate those names)- a whopping 262 000 shares, min-max difference of 131 (!) credits. That means if Index drops by 10, each share owned will be worth 13.1 credits more.

The conclusion seems obvious, right? If we want to get more credits, we want to invest in Yohulis. Well, not necessarily.

• Tosi Da has a minimum worth of 21 credits. That means if Index drops by 10, we have made 50% profit on each share.
  
  
• Yohulis Zusilas(...) has a minimum worth set at 55 Cr. If index drops by 10, we have made not even 25% of base share worth.

Early on, when you can not afford all shares that are on the stock, it's better to stick with the low value, small amount of shares companies, because you're getting relatively more profit per Credit invested.


Actually, as you can see on the image below, if there ARE any low value companies at 100 Index, they are a better short-term investment. If you chose [1], this is what you want to do. It's pretty obvious IMO, 12 millions invested in 4 companies, each brining 1 million is better than investing 12 millions in 1 company that brings 2 millions.

You should only consider investing in the "bigger" companies if you have the money to spare(meaning there aren't any "smaller" companies at Index 100, or you don't need the Credits for your trading fleet). So if you chose [2], you want to invest in "bigger" companies and sell once you get 20-40 Index drop

When index is CLOSEST TO 100 BUY SHARES.
ALWAYS buy when it's exactly at 100, you can't lose on those unless you sell them at 100 too.

When index is CLOSEST TO 0 SELL SHARES.
Always sell when it's at 0, you can't benefit any more from those shares.

GO SMALL OR GO MISSION.
You will get the most profit from your Credits invested if you invest in shares that are worth closest to 0 Cr, "bigger" companies are good to invest long-term.

TIME ACCELERATE to make shares more or less valuable