HOLLYWOOD STOCK EXCHANGE
THE ENTERTAINMENT MARKET
THE ENTERTAINMENT MARKET
Market Announcement: MovieStocks will no longer halt and adjust on opening weekend
Beginning with the weekend of November 25th, MovieStocks of wide release films will no longer halt trading at 6 pm Pacific Time on Saturday and adjust in price on Sunday.
Since the halt time was pushed back from Friday to Saturday six years ago, traders have been able to make trading decisions based on real box office performance. Keeping the MovieStocks halted for another 16 hours or so has become redundant as MovieStock prices have mostly been settled by the Market. This is especially true for films that open on Wednesday like the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend.
As noted throughout the site, the price of a MovieStock reflects the film's potential domestic box office during its first four weeks of wide release, or twelve weeks if the film remains in limited release. This remains the same and does not change. What has changed is the movie industry after nearly 20 years of MovieStock price adjustment. The standard weekend adjust multiplier has gone down from 2.9 to 2.8 to 2.7 as opening weekend takes up a bigger fraction of the 4-week box office. Now, films are opening on Thursday night, which skews the opening weekend of genre blockbusters resulting in adjust prices that end up much higher than the delist prices of MovieStocks. On the other hand, films that open before Christmas needlessly adjust down in price or remain deflated due to their opening weekend making up a smaller fraction of the 4-week box office over the holiday season. These artificial price spikes and drops during opening weekend do not accurately reflect these films’ box office.
Making matter worse this year are several films opening wide on Sunday, December 25, which does not have a reliable standard multiplier. There’s also no certainty that studios will even issue official two-day estimates on Monday, December 26 necessary to do the price adjustment.
Thank you for all your feedback as this decision was not made lightly. For those who still want to play the halt, the Opening Weekend Warrants still halt on Friday at 10 am Pacific Time. You can invest 100,000 shares, just like MovieStocks.