I have a secret addiction. It’s a numbers game, and it involves the stock market. Worldwide trading, competition and deal making. Politics, strategy and intelligence. Math, resource management, supply chain in a simplified and fun way.

The game is Supremacy 1914. The universal language is mathematics just like the financial markets – risk, percentages, timing. This is why it can be played worldwide, even with limited English.

Almost everything in life can be related to financial markets. Jeff Bezos worked as a hedge fund manager prior to starting Amazon. Amazon is a “stock” market. In a way they are commodities, stock or inventory of specific goods.

How to Game the Stock Market in Supremacy 1914

This will teach you how to make money in real life, but also use your resources (money and commodities) to plan out production. You can’t do this if you don’t have capital, or are all in.

There are many nuances, but a basic understanding will get you a lot better results than without.

Resource/Production Management

The first thing you have to understand is the resource bar. It is a simplified production slider, but the concept is the same. There are 3 buckets of commodities – Food, Materials and Energy.

If every product in a batch of commodities cost the same to produces (it doesn’t work perfectly like so), then you simply look at what has the highest market price and produce more of that.

Food Commodity Resource Management Supremacy 1914
Since Fish has a higher market value, bleed the inventory and sell the grain, or buy the commodity at a lower price.

Commodity Price Spreads

Like a “Buy Box” – the spread is between what you can buy for, and what you can sell for. The magic is in the big spreads, where you can arbitrage a profit. Just buy at the low price and sell at the higher price at the same time.

Here are a batch of Energy Commodities – Where oil is has a higher market value, so sell it to buy gas and coal.


A little Rockefeller market manipulation never hurt anyone (except the consumer). Notice I’m bleeding my gas and coal to pump up my oil production.
Here you can see me dumping oil for more than 2x the price of gas at market price. Look at that spread.

Put Your Hand up on my hip, I dip, I dip, double dip. If you know that reference much respect. Can’t find the picture but simply, if you have the cash, buy on the other side. The most someone is willing to pay for oil is 4.6, but it is selling for 20.

Keep chasing it until to close the buy box, or tighten it up. Here we go.

Buy and Sell both Sides of the Market – Double Dip

Price Spread for Building Materials, Buy + Sell
Playing both sides of the commodity market (top bid for buy and sell), or double dipping in Supremacy 1914.

When you buy a commodity low and sell for high, that’s called playing the spread (I’m really making this up as I go lol).

Closing the Spread

Wide Materials Spread in Supremacy 1914
When the spread is too wide people are more likely to put up new bids, or close the spread.

When the spread is wide, people are less likely to buy or sell at market price. Some people do, either because they need it now, live “check to check”, or are dumb. This is the way the world works, and all economy.

This is why you always need money, and inventory. Liquidity.

Simple Financial Markets Are Easy to Manipulate

Finance and Data Analytics in New Hampshire – Robert Tanguay

There are many rules and regulations with stock and commodity markets, but the basic concepts are the same. People either buy or sell at the market price, or they place a bid.

Everything in this world can be described with economics at its base. Numbers and percentages – odds and likelihoods.

This is not a finite science – people are irrational. People make mistakes. They make decisions based on the information presented to them, and their backgrounds.

People Are Greedy

As I’ve stated in “Incentives and the Environment” – people do what is in their perceived best interest. This leaves room for misinformation and deception, however misfortunate.

Force is inefficient, but if you can make willing do something, well, that’s better for everyone. This doesn’t apply when you trick them to do something they don’t want to do, with things like fraud.

Read Incentives and the Environment Here

The stock market displays numbers, often incomplete and with delay. It’s like poker – the house always wins, but you can profit of the amateurs or casual players.

Playing With Real Money

That’s great Robert – you know that you can manipulate 12 year olds in Armenia out of pretend commodities.Wicked cool.

Trust me, I’m not. There are sophisticated people playing this quirky game. The same weirdos trade stocks, procure goods, live in economies across the world or even buy online ad inventory for marketing companies…. Perhaps the President of Armenia – and I get to talk to them and learn about what is happening in there neck of the woods in real time.

But let me show you.

Trading Real Stock – MINM

Minim is a company down the street from the office. It has a small market cap, and I know the founder. I’ve been researching the stock market for a long time. I’ve been very lucky with MINM: