How does stock trading work, and which stocks are best to invest in for profit?

Shares are bought and sold instantly at a system price that moves every minute. Buying is free and selling costs 0.1% of the value sold^[1][2][3]. You can profit in two ways: hold a benefit block that pays cash, items or a perk (7,500,000 CNC shares, for example, pay $80,000,000 every 31 days), or trade the price swings^[4][5]. None of the sources ranks the blocks by current return or gives today's share prices. To find the best block, divide its yearly payout by what it costs at the live price^[6][7].

How the market works

• You need a Stock Ticker, which costs 50 Points at the Points Building^[8][9].
• Buying and selling are instant, with no limit on shares bought, sold or owned. If the price updates mid-purchase, it can take about 10 seconds before you must confirm again at the new price^[1].
• You cannot trade while in hospital, in jail or traveling. Stocks cannot be traded between players, so every trade goes through the market^[1].
• Buying carries no tax. Selling costs 0.1% of the value sold, for example $1,000 on $1,000,000^[1][2].

Prices update every minute (formerly every 15 minutes) and are based on real-world stocks in the same industries^[3]. They are expected to rise about 10% a year on average, with no guarantee, and a single stock can double within a month or crash hard^[3]. Some players believe in-game buying or selling pushes prices in a particular direction. This is an unverified theory^[4].

Risk: nothing protects you from a falling share price, and a stock can crash well below what you paid^[3]. Every sale costs 0.1%, so small gains can disappear in fees^[1]. The market does not refund losses, so a block bought at a high price stays underwater until the price recovers. In 2015, Penicillin wrote that people do lose money but rarely talk about their losing positions^[10].

Benefit blocks

• Benefits depend on the number of shares you hold. Passive benefits need the share count held for 7 days. Active benefits pay every 7 or 31 days^[11].
• Active dividends cannot be stored: you must collect one before progress toward the next begins^[11].
• Each further increment of the same stock costs double the previous one and pays the same benefit again. For FHG that means 2,000,000 shares, then 4,000,000 more (6,000,000 total), then 8,000,000 more (14,000,000 total)^[11][12].
• Holding two separate minimum-size blocks does not give two benefits. The combined shares must reach the next, doubled threshold^[7][12].
• Separate purchases can be merged into a single position, which averages the bought price and bought date^[1].
• Since 22/06/2021, a sale removes shares from your newest purchase first. A red warning appears when a sale would interrupt a benefit or dividend cycle^[2].
• Mc Smoogle (MCS) dividend increments are capped at 10 (1,000 energy)^[2]. Energy is capped at 1,000 and happiness at 99,999, so payouts beyond those caps are wasted^[11].

Some wiki material comes from the Stocks 2.0 page, which describes the pre-2021 system. The current Stock Market page carries the live benefit table and the patch history^[11][2]. The Stocks 2.0 page says a block is active the moment it is bought^[13]. The current page says passive benefits need the shares held for 7 days^[11]. Treat the current page as correct. The Stocks 2.0 page's rules on stacking may also be out of date. It says separate purchases grant no benefit until they are combined, and that stacking resets Length owned^[14]. It also says a block can be split into two listings^[15]. The current page confirms that purchases can be merged into one position^[1].

Cash and property blocks (every 31 days)

Item and stat blocks (every 7 days)

Passive perks

The sources do not cover every stock. LAG (750,000 shares) and WLT (9,000,000 shares) appear, but without their benefits^[5][16]. The stocks listed between LAG and PTS are also missing, including Mc Smoogle (MCS) and Munster Beverage Corp.^[5][16][2].

Which stocks are best

None of the sources gives a current ranking of the blocks or today's share prices, and no recent player consensus on the best stocks is available. A block costs its share count times the live price, and that price changes every minute^[3]. The best choice therefore has to be worked out at the time you buy. The cash payouts in the table are fixed dollar amounts, so a cash block's yield rises when its share price falls and drops when the price rises^[5][16].

1. Work out the next block's cost at today's price. Remember that each further increment of the same stock needs double the shares of the one before^[11][7].
2. Put a yearly dollar value on the payout. Cash blocks pay a fixed amount per cycle^[5][16]. For item blocks, use what the item sells for. Energy, nerve and happy have no fixed price, so value them by how you would use them.
3. Divide the yearly return by the block's current cost. A 2019 guide calls this the yield^[6].
4. Buy the block with the highest yield, then recompare. A 2026 player-made optimizer script works this way: it buys whichever stock's next block earns the most per dollar, and it knows caps such as MCS at 10^[7].

Trading for price gains

Making money from price moves means buying low and selling high. The difficult part is predicting which way a price will go^[4][20]. In 2021, Chedburn said the 0.1% fee kept short-term volatility profitable while preventing script-driven, minute-by-minute trading^[21]. In March 2026, one player described trading $7.7 billion using undervaluation scores from the Smart Stock Vault script. They bought at a score of 45 or more (70+ counted as excellent) and held each position until its profit comfortably covered the fee^[19]. They reported an overall profit. This is one player's self-report, and their comparison with dividend blocks is not available in the sources^[19].

History (outdated). Before Stocks 3.0, trading was player-to-player, and 2017 wiki guides called it gambling against other players^[22][23]. Guides from 2017–2018 describe random hourly payouts, dividends paid as a percentage of the stock's current value, and only one benefit per stock no matter how many blocks you held^[24][25]. That year, Bug (an officer) advised buying FHG before maxing the bank and told young players to hold off on a Stock Ticker. He later marked his guide outdated after Stocks 3.0^[25][26]. A 2018 test that split money across random stocks gained 8.28% in one month but almost nothing in a stagnant month. It ran before instant trading and the 0.1% fee^[27]. Stocks 3.0 launched on 06/04/21, and the sale fee followed on 20/04/21^[2].

Where sources disagree

• The Stocks 2.0 wiki page says a benefit block is active the moment it is bought^[13]; the current Stock Market page says passive benefits require the shares to be held for 7 days^[11].
• Bug's 2018 guide says payouts were random hourly and a second block gave no extra payout^[25]; the current wiki says increments pay the same benefit again on fixed 7- or 31-day cycles^[11][12].
• 2017 wiki guides describe trading as a player-to-player market^[22][23]; the current wiki says trades are instant at the market price with no player-to-player trading^[1].