A word from the Chairman
I’ve lent you $100M.
45 trades. 5 days.
Don’t get slaughtered.
— A.M.
I’ve lent you $100M.
45 trades. 5 days.
Don’t get slaughtered.
A Bull. A Bear. A Pig. is a draw-poker-like game played with the true annual accounts of publicly traded companies, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is free, requires no account, and settles its own arguments.
1.01 The objective of each player is to assemble the finest combination — nine concerns whose combined accounts best satisfy the Rule in force.
2.01 Every card bears a company's accounts for its latest complete fiscal year, as filed: revenue, operating income, net income, cash from operations, capital spending, research, dividends, buybacks, assets, cash, and debt. Three decks are sanctioned: The Big Board (every concern); Blue Chips (the thirty largest by public float); and The Curb (everyone else). Five era decks follow the founding of the concern: Gilded Age (before 1900), Interwar, Postwar, Reagan Era, and Dot-Com & After.
Rule 2.01 Comment: A founding date is a matter of company legend, not of filing. The Committee records the conventional date and declines to referee the Delaware paperwork.
2.03 Card fronts are blind: the concern, its ticker, and its sector, nothing more. The books are on the back, and a look costs five bucks, charged to the book on sight; a concern once opened stays open for the hand, traded away or not. After judgment the books of the nine are opened free of charge.
Rule 2.03 Comment: Diligence has always cost money. The Committee merely posts the price.
2.02 Each card shows the ticker over its stat fingerprint — a twelve-ray figure drawn from the accounts themselves. No logo, trademark, or likeness appears on any card; sector colors only.
3.01 Each hand begins with nine concerns, dealt face up. 3.02 Three sessions follow, and they are the trading day: The Open, Midday and The Close, with as many as three trades in each, replacements coming off the tape in order. Every session ends in a print. 3.03 A player may cash out at any time, forfeiting all remaining rounds and filing the nine as held.
3.04 The nine held when the rounds end are the combination. There is no discard, no spin-off, and no further selection of any kind.
Rule 3.04 Comment: A combination is nine concerns. It has always been nine concerns.
4.01 Every hand is a day on the Street, and it prints three times: the nine are graded after the Open under the long rule, after Midday under the short rule, and at the Close under whichever the bell rings. The hand is the three spreads together, less diligence. A hold takes the session’s print on the nine as held; the hand goes on. At the Open the deal announces a long rule — the Bull: Top Line (most combined revenue), Fat Margin (highest combined operating margin), Bottom Line (most combined net income; losses count against you), Cash Machine (most combined free cash flow — cash from operations less capital spending; for banks and insurers, whose cash-flow statements are a matter of theology, net income stands in), Coupon Clippers (most combined dividends paid), Growth Story (highest combined year-over-year revenue growth), Pigs Get Slaughtered (nearest the Trustbuster’s line without going over — the line is set for each deck at roughly what nine average concerns would bring, and is posted on the banner; exceed it and he breaks you up for nought), The Lab (highest combined R&D as a share of revenue), Ghosts (highest combined goodwill as a share of assets — the residue of past combinations), Old Money (most combined years since founding), or Compounders (highest combined return on invested capital: operating profit after tax, over debt plus equity less cash). At Midday the tape turns and a short rule is announced — the Bear: Short Line (least combined revenue), Thin Margin (lowest combined operating margin), Red Ink (least combined net income), Cash Burn (least combined free cash flow), No Coupon (least combined dividends), Stall (lowest combined growth), Tax Haven (lowest combined effective tax rate), Made of Air (least combined tangible book — equity less goodwill), or New Money (fewest combined years since founding). 4.01a The Close is sealed. When the nine are filed the bell rings bull or bear at even odds, and the nine are judged under whichever rule rang.
Rule 4.01a Comment: A balanced nine grades near fifty under either bell and books nothing. A hoarded nine books forty either way. The Committee does not advise; it merely observes that the Pig is the player who decides which, and when.
Rule 4.01 Comment: Fat Margin punishes greed. A seven-hundred-billion-dollar retailer is a great weight upon a margin, and the Committee has watched many a proud combination sink beneath one.
4.02 Your nine is graded against every possible nine on the tape — all 48,620 — and the grade is your percentile among them. Committee's Note. Of the 48,620, precisely 29,268 cannot be reached by any legal sequence of trades; the judges grade against all of them regardless, holding that perfection is not obliged to be attainable, and observing that the best nine you can build ranks in the top one percent in any case. A grade of 100 is the one perfect combination. 4.03 Your nine sets of accounts are then combined into a bolt-on composite concern, and the judges name the real company it most resembles. This finding is advisory, unappealable, and the entire point.
4.04 A hand graded at the fiftieth percentile or better is a Bull; below it, a Bear; a hand that crosses the line is a Pig. 4.05 Every point above the fiftieth percentile is one buck — one million dollars — booked to your statement; every point below it is a buck off the book. A Pig hand is entered as bacon and costs fifty. A book may go underwater; an account may not. 4.06 A statement is five hands, all five played, and every statement begins a hundred bucks in the hole: Abner’s call. The Chairman lends every player $100M at the bell, charges five for every look at a concern’s books, and expects the whole sum back when the fifth hand is filed. Your book is five hands of trades, net of diligence; your balance is the book less the call. Clear it and you are in the black; fall short and you are in debt. Either way the balance goes to the account — once a day for the daily deal; a replay of the same deal is practice and is entered as such. Open Outcry deals are fresh every time and always count.
Rule 4.06 Comment: The Committee is aware that a desk which lends you fifty million before you have sat down is not how banks work. It is, however, how the Street has always worked.
4.08 A statement, once its first hand is filed, is owed. Leave it — by the door, by a new deal, or by closing the book — and the desk settles it as it stands: hands filed count, the rest are entered as nought, and the balance posts.
Rule 4.08 Comment: The Committee has noticed that players who may abandon bad statements finish only good ones. The Committee finds this uninteresting.
4.07 The account is a lifetime balance and carries a rank: Debtor below zero, Clerk at zero, then Junior Partner at a hundred million, Partner at two hundred fifty, Captain of Industry at five hundred, Billionaire at a yard, Titan at five, Robber Baron at ten, Old Money at a hundred, Trillionaire thereafter. Each is marked with a parade.
5.01 Two players is 9 Shares; three, 18; four, 27. 5.02 Every seat receives the identical deal and tape, sealed until all have played — the duplicate principle, borrowed from bridge and dressed in pinstripes. Luck is issued equally and is therefore no excuse.
5.03 Every seat books its own spread each round, exactly as in solo play; the round's best hand is credited a hand won. 5.04 A dead heat on a hand is a merger of equals: books still move, no hand is charged.
5.05 After five rounds the table is ranked by book, largest first, and the leader takes the table. 5.06 The Holding Company keeps your account against every opponent by name — sittings, wins, and dollars either way — and against every named table.
6.01 Matches may be conducted by correspondence, identified by a six-character wire code. Rounds stay sealed until every seat has played. 6.02 Only decisions travel the wire; scores are never transmitted — every device derives the standings by replay.
Rule 6.02 Comment: Under this construction a fabricated score is not forbidden. It is unexpressible, which the Committee regards as the superior prohibition.
7.01 A completed solo game compresses into a code of about seventy characters. A rival who opens it plays your identical deal against your ghost, grade for grade.
8.01 The Judges are deterministic: the same deal, from the same seed, is identical on every device on earth. The daily deal is one deal, shared by all. 8.02 The Judges keep no accounts, sell no notices, and call no third parties. The whole exchange is one file. 8.03 Nothing here is investment advice. The accounts are as filed; the combinations are yours.
Buck — one million dollars; one point of spread. Yard — one billion. Spread — your percentile over fifty: the arbitrage between your nine and the average nine. Book — your running total this statement, five hands of trades net of diligence. Abner’s call — a hundred bucks, lent at the bell, owed by the fifth hand. Print — a session’s grade, filed on the spot; three to a hand. Hold — take the print as you stand. Balance — book less the call; black or red, it goes to the account. Clear — a balance at or above zero. In debt — below it. Statement — five hands, one balance. Lifetime — every balance ever, summed; the number people race on. The Tape — the standing of players, today and lifetime, verified by replay. Handle — the name you post under. Flat — fifty on the nose; nothing moves. Underwater — a book below zero. Haircut (also) — what a Bear hand takes off the book. Bacon — a Pig hand, past the line; costs fifty. Abnerage — forty bucks or better on a single hand; the Chairman’s own standard, and the organ plays. Peek — a five-buck look at a concern’s books. Diligence — the sum of your peeks on a hand. Post-mortem — the nine, opened free, after judgment. Ticket — the confirm after every hand: the print, the book, and a word from the Chairman. The Open, Midday, The Close — the three sessions of a hand, and the Bull, the Bear and the Pig: a long rule at the Open, a short rule at Midday, a sealed Close where the bell rings; three trades and a print in each. Long — a most/highest rule. Short — a least/lowest rule. Goodwill — what an acquirer paid above the books; the ghost of a deal. Tangible book — equity less goodwill; what you could touch. ROIC — profit after tax on the capital employed; the compounder’s number. The bell rang — which of the two judged the hand. Hold — take a session’s print without trading; the hand goes on. Settled — what the desk does to a statement you walk away from. The tape — the draw pile. Concern — a company. Combination — nine of them. The Trustbuster’s line — posted before every hand; cross it and you are the Pig. Merger of equals — a tie. Takes the table — wins the match. Blue Chips, The Big Board, The Curb — the decks. The Committee — the judges. The Chairman — Abner Macguffin, who signs the Articles and takes no calls.
10.01 The Tape is the standing of players: Today’s Tape, every statement filed on the daily deal, ranked by balance; and Lifetime, the sum of every statement a player has posted. 10.02 The Tape accepts no scores. It accepts the code of a finished statement and replays it with the Committee’s own engine; the balance it records is the one it computed. A fabricated balance is not forbidden. It is unexpressible.
10.03 One daily statement a day is posted per player; replays are practice. Open Outcry statements post up to ten a day. 10.04 A handle is bound to the device that chose it; the Account Code carries it to another. The Tape keeps nothing else.
The old floor traders kept a saying for greed: bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered. This game is named for the third animal, so that you remember the first two.
A Macguffin Co. Game · Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.