These take many hours of work to put together, so I hope you can spare 3 seconds to give it a rating, because it really helps. If you find this guide extra helpful, please also consider giving it an award!


Having a Cookie Clicker save from many years ago, I already had almost everything done when the game came to steam, but I had never bothered with some of the shadow achievements until now. So as I work my way towards the Gaseous Assets achievement, I've found myself learning way more about the stock market than ever before, as most of the tech required to get Liquid Assets and Gaseous Assets (legitimately) is not even required to get all the other stock market achievements. But for those of you who also want Gaseous Assets legitimately, or perhaps those of you just looking to expand your game knowledge, I've decided to document everything right here, in one place.

It also just gives me something to do while I wait. For cookies.

With that out of the way, enjoy the guide!
~ KarmicChaos


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Update Note:

Seeing how I haven't updated this guide in nearly a year, I figured I should remove the WIP sections and do my best to tidy up the guide with the information I had for v2.048. This is still an invaluable guide for many people, so it felt wrong to leave it in a state of perpetual WIP for those that use it. I never did get around to updating it to include the new "You" buildings, as I lost interest after already having the Gaseous Assets achievement for myself. However I believe there is more than enough information in the guide to let those that use it figure out the changes in future updates. I may return to this guide if the stock market has another massive change like v2.048, but as of right now I will be leaving this guide in its current state indefinitely.

Good luck trading!
~ KarmicChaos


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As of Cookie Clicker v2.048, which added the Cortex Baker building (among other things), the stock market may act differently from what is described in this guide. There have been major changes to the stock market, most notably those of the global spike and Supreme Intellect, which drastically upset the existing meta.

Changes to Stock Market in Patch Notes:

• The bank minigame now tells you the value you previously bought a stock at
  
• The bank minigame flow is a little more exciting (oh gee how vague!)

Unlisted Changes to Stock Market:

• Added dragon aura "Supreme Intellect".
  
• Added new stock type "PBL" to match the new "Cortex Baker" building

Honestly, the ability to see your previous investment is a huge positive change for the stock market. I hope this change renews some interest in the minigame for players that were hesitant to try it before.

The vague mention of changes to the "bank minigame flow" actually refer to several changes to the stock RNG, which I have already updated in that section of the guide. If you would like a short list of the changes, here is what I found:

• Added several new, smaller RNG checks to add extra minor fluctuations to both values and deltas.
  
• Modes 3 and 4 now cause the stock value to change by 5 times as much (delta fluctuations remain unchanged)
  
• The pull of the resting value is now 1% instead of 2%, leaving stocks free to rise and fall much more than they used to.
  
• The random duration of a mode was reduced by 300 ticks; modes used to last from 10-1000 ticks, and now they last from 10-700.
  
• Added a new random event to stock RNG called a "global spike", which has the ability to drastically change the delta and value of many stocks in the same tick, while also forcibly ending the modes those stocks were in. This makes mode recognition much harder, since modes now last much less time than they used to.

Feel free to skip this section of the guide if you're familiar with the basics of the stock market.

The stock market is a minigame that one can access by spending a sugar lump to upgrade their banks to lv. 1, after which it can be accessed on any future run so long as the player owns at least 1 bank. It may look overwhelming at first, but once you learn to read it you'll appreciate its compactness.

The objective of the stock market is to buy and sell shares for different stocks in order to turn a profit. In essence, you buy shares when a stock is cheap, and sell those shares when that same stock is much more expensive.

All stock market prices are in "$econds", where $1 = 1 second of your highest raw CpS

In the stock market, there are 17 different types of stocks (listed below), each one corresponding to a different building you already own. The amount of shares you can own for a given stock is calculated using the following formula:

N = F + H + 10*L
where
N = number of shares you can own
F = bonus storage space from your offices
H = highest amount of the associated building owned this ascension
L = level of the associated building

So for example, if you just bought your 200th Time Machine, your time machines were level 3, and you have level 2 offices, you could calculate the amount of CRM shares you can own like so:

N = 25 + 200 + 10*3 = 255


* All calculations done using these IDs add 1, so you can just think of their ID's as a numerical label in the order they appear. (i.e. CRL is 1 & PBL is 17)

** Note that Grandmas and Cursors do not have any stocks associated with them. They are loosely associated with Brokers and Offices respectively, as described below.

Usually, buying shares costs 20% extra in overhead fees, cutting into potential profits. You can reduce this overhead cost by hiring brokers, as each broker reduces the current overhead by 5% (non-additive). Brokers cost a flat $1200 each, and the maximum amount you can hire is capped at:

Max brokers = ((highest # of grandmas owned this ascension) / 10) + (grandma level)

Due to diminishing returns, I'd only recommend hiring as many brokers as possible until you hit about 80 (unless going for Gaseous Assets).

Offices are a sort of stock market upgrade that give you extra storage space for all stock types and unlock access to certain loans. You start with level 1 offices each ascension and can upgrade them by sacrificing a set number of Cursors, although you won't be able to do so unless your Cursors meet the required level.


* The +50% warehouse space from Palace of Greed applies before the flat +250

Loans are an extra ability unlocked through the stock market that can be used to give temporary CpS buffs (followed by CpS debuffs when they are finished), in exchange for paying a large percentage of your current amount of cookies. Loans do have huge strategic potential in setting up buff combos in tandem with the Grimoire minigame, but since the applications of loans are not actually related to the stock market, I won't be covering their strategic uses in this guide.



1st Loan
Unlocked by having level 3 offices.






2nd Loan
Unlocked by having level 5 offices.






3rd Loan
Unlocked by having level 6 offices.

I would recommend players of all skill levels read everything from this section onwards.

The Bank Ceiling (or Market Cap) is a set value that actively affects the value of all stocks that rise above it. When a stock's value is higher than the bank ceiling, so long as the stock's delta is positive, its delta is decreased by 10% per tick, which basically means it it will lose 10% of its upward momentum every tick and inevitably fall back down. The purpose of the bank ceiling is to restrict the area in which stocks can move freely until the player levels up their banks.

The bank ceiling can be increased by leveling your banks with sugar lumps, raising it permanently by $3 for every level your banks have. By default, your bank ceiling starts at $97 (so at level 1 your bank ceiling is exactly $100), and will increase by $3 for every level you give your banks.

Each stock has a Resting Value that you need to familiarize yourself with, as it is the value that the stock actively tries to return to, making it extremely important to know for strategic selling and buying (more on this later). It's not just the average value of that stock, rather the game updates the value of the stock on every tick to be 1% closer to its resting value, doing most RNG calls afterwards (Step #3 in the "Stock RNG" section of the guide). This also means that the further a stock is from its resting value, the more drastically it will attempt to return to it. Note that since the resting value causes a flat change in value every tick, while the bank ceiling only decreases upward momentum (as opposed to giving it downward momentum), the resting value can actually overpower the bank ceiling in some cases. The resting value of a stock is also the value it starts at when you first unlock the stock market minigame each ascension.

Here is a table of the default Resting Values for each stock. It's quite easy to remember, since the values increment by $10 for the next stock type.


The resting values of all stocks can only be increased by leveling your banks with sugar lumps. For every 1 level your banks have, all stocks permanently raise their resting value by $1. Thus at level 10 banks, all values listed in the table above would be increased by $10.

Global Spikes are a new random event that affects the stock market, with a 10% base chance to occur on each tick. Since these upset the current mode of the stock, they are important to take into account.

When a global spike occurs, each stock has a separate chance to be affected by the spike. All stocks affected by the spike will experience a spike either up or down to both their value and delta, and their modes will immediately end. Keep an eye out for this type of spike across multiple stocks in the same tick so you know when this happens, as it means all of those affected stocks just changed modes!

In addition to regular stock RNG, each stock is always in one of six "modes", which impose additional rules to its RNG in order to make it more likely to act a certain way.

Each time a stock is assigned a mode, it is given a duration randomly selected between 10 and 700, which decrements every time the stock market ticks. Since stock market ticks happen every 1 minute, this means that sometimes modes can last for up to 700 minutes (11 hours & 40 minutes), assuming no global spikes occur. Once the duration counter hits 0, the stock is randomly assigned a new mode. Upon entering a new mode, the delta value of the stock carries over.

The main challenge of the stock market is identifying exactly which mode a stock is in; if you can do that, you can make a lot more profit a lot more consistently (more on this later).

12.5% chance

Per-tick mode effects:

• Delta decreased by 5%
  
• Delta increased by (-0.025 to 0.025)

In mode 0, the idea is that the stock's value won't move much per tick, with the delta kept quite close to 0, and is equally likely to move in either direction. In theory, this should lead to a stable line graph similar to the one shown in the picture to the right, but in practice this isn't always the case. The tendency for the stock's value to drift back towards the resting value can often overpower the low activity and cause the stock to gain momentum in a direction, so at times it can end up looking a lot more like mode 1 or mode 2.


25% chance

Per-tick mode effects:

• Delta decreased by 1%
  
• Delta increased by (-0.005 to 0.045)

In mode 1, the stock's delta changes are kept low, and value changes are minimal, but both the delta and value changes are weighted to increase the value of the stock more often than it decreases. This usually leads to a line graph like the one shown on the right, but with some bad RNG and a value that is already close to or beyond the stock's resting value, it can alternate moving up and down often enough to look much more like mode 0. Sometimes the delta picks up enough momentum in the negative direction from bad RNG to make mode 1 look like mode 2, further adding to the confusion.


25% chance

Per-tick mode effects:

• Delta decreased by 1%
  
• Delta increased by (-0.045 to 0.005)

In mode 2, the stock's delta changes are kept low, and value changes are minimal, but both the delta and value changes are weighted to decrease the value of the stock more often than it increases. This usually leads to a line graph like the one shown on the right, and although it happens a bit less often than with mode 1, it can be overpowered by some bad RNG gaining momentum in the positive direction, resulting in mode 2 sometimes looking more like mode 0 or even mode 1.


12.5% chance

Per-tick mode effects:

• Delta increased by (-0.015 to 0.135)
  
• Value increased by (0 to 5)
  
• (30% Chance) Value increased by (-7 to 3)
   AND  Delta increased by (-0.05 to 0.05)
  
• (3% Chance) Switch to mode 4

In mode 3, each tick is weighted heavily to increase the value and delta of the stock, and is therefore the mode in which stock values tend to climb the fastest. Despite not actually being any rarer than mode 4, this mode is still the rarest mode to encounter due to having an additional rule: Every tick, this stock has a 3% chance to immediately switch to mode 4, regardless of how much longer the stock could have stayed in mode 3. When this happens, it is not treated as a normal mode switch, meaning there is no 70% chance to enter mode 5, and the duration from mode 3 carries over to mode 4 instead of a new duration being generated. This almost always leads to stocks in mode 3 getting cut off much sooner, thus lasting a lot less time and being rarer to see. I would consider this the second easiest mode to identify out of the six (right after mode 4), especially because of how uncommon it is to see it.


12.5% chance

Per-tick mode effects:

• Delta increased by (-0.135 to 0.015)
  
• Value increased by (-5 to 0)
  
• (30% Chance) Value increased by (-3 to 7)
   AND  Delta increased by (-0.05 to 0.05)

In mode 4, each tick is weighted heavily to decrease the value and delta of the stock, and is therefore the mode in which stock values tend to fall the fastest. This is typically the easiest mode to spot out of all six modes, though large upward spikes can make it tricky. Usually, telling when mode 4 ends proves to be the challenging part.


12.5% chance

Per-tick mode effects:

• Delta increased by (-0.15 to 0.15)
  
• (50% Chance) Value increased by (-5 to 5)
  
• (20% Chance) Delta now equals (-1 to 1)

In mode 5, each tick changes the delta and value by a random, potentially large amount, with an equal likelihood of it being positive or negative. Additionally, mode 5 features 2 extra rules:

• When a stock switches modes from mode 4 or mode 3, there is a 70% chance to override that mode switch, instead making the stock switch to mode 5.
  
• In mode 5, every tick has a 20% chance to completely override the current delta value with a random delta value between -1 and 1, effectively causing all momentum in either direction to stop and be replaced.

Mode recognition is the most vital skill to have in order to be successful in the stock market, so this part of the guide is extremely important. Here I will cover examples of weak/strong modes, explain why they may happen, and how you can go about identifying and distinguishing between them.

When a mode is doing what it is supposed to be doing very well (e.g. mode 3 raising stock value very quickly), it is usually much easier to identify. I will be referring to this as a strong mode. When a mode is doing its job very poorly, or even the opposite of it's job (e.g. mode 1 lowering the value of the stock), it is much more difficult to accurately determine what mode the stock is in. I will refer to this as a weak mode. In the case of modes 0 and 5, I will also use the term neutral mode to refer to situations where the stock is relatively stable and doesn't move much in either direction.

The example images I used in the above "Modes" section of the guide were cherry picked examples; they were each an image of a strong mode (or neutral mode in the cases of modes 0 and 5), since those were the easiest for the reader to identify. Most of the time, modes aren't nearly that clear cut, being somewhere between strong and weak. Modes 0, 1, and 2 (which I will later call the low-activity modes) tend to look like each other a lot of the time, as well as modes 3, 4, and 5 (AKA the high-activity modes) looking similar to each other.

Let's start by breaking down the high-activity modes, as they are arguably much easier to tell apart from one another than the low-activity modes.

Luckily, I managed to document a situation where I simultaneously had EGG in strong mode 3 and CKI in weak mode 3, as shown in the following screenshot. This makes the differences between the two much easier to spot.

As you can see, EGG is in a strong mode 3, and is climbing quite effortlessly, while CKI is in a weak mode 3, and seems to be suffering from more frequent drops in value, keeping it from rising much further.

The first thing to note is that a defining characteristic of mode 3 is how it handles its slopes. It's quite apparent that most of the time it is rising in value, it maintains relatively the same slope until it hits its next drop. Then, when it drops, it also usually maintains the same dropping slope until it rises again, and usually drops at a much steeper rate than it climbs. And once it starts rising after a drop, it goes back to a climbing slope very similar to the one it had before the drop.

Combined, this gives mode 3 a very easy-to spot tell: If the stock is rising at a relatively constant rate, and is occasionally interrupted by big, straight drops only to go back to the same rising rate, it is in mode 3. This ends up looking like a zig-zag or lightning bolt pattern, examples of which have been accentuated in the above image with dotted lines.

Even in the most chaotic-looking situations, you can still apply this logic to tell if a stock is or was in mode 3. Can you spot at least a few of these "zig-zags" and "constant slopes" in its history, even if it gets chaotic in between them?

So why is EGG in a strong mode 3 while CKI is in a weak mode 3? It's mostly bad RNG causing downward spikes more often for CKI, but also:

As you can see, the red dotted line is both the bank ceiling & CKI's resting value. Usually, Mode 3 can easily overpower the downward pull of a resting value (as is the case with EGG), but since CKI is also above the bank ceiling, it is losing 10% of it's upward momentum every tick. Also note that if EGG were below it's resting value, it would be in an even stronger mode 3 than it is now.



In the same way that mode 3 has an upward-trending zig-zag and constant slopes, mode 4 features the exact same thing in the other direction. However, this is not the only trick you can use to distinguish mode 4 from the others. Remember the additional rule for mode 3?

"Every tick, this stock has a 3% chance to immediately switch to mode 4..."

When a stock is in mode 3, it is extremely rare for it to stay in mode 3 for its full duration, instead being much more likely to eventually switch to mode 4. This means that, if you manage to identify a stock that is in mode 3, its next mode is almost guaranteed to be mode 4.

So if you're not sure whether the stock you're looking at is in mode 4 or not, be sure to ask yourself what mode it was in before this one.

As with all other weak modes, a weak mode 4 can sometimes be weak enough to travel in the opposite direction, an example of which can be seen on the right. Note that despite the value of the stock increasing rapidly, you can still tell that this stock is in mode 4 due to the zig-zag being present, as well as the slope of the upward spikes being much steeper than the downward slopes (just like how mode 3 drops at a steeper rate than it climbs).

This example likely happened due to a streak of bad RNG combined with the fact that WCH was about $90 below its resting value, which would cause the upward spikes to be much steeper and the downward falls to be less steep due to the constant upward pull.

In a situation like this one, you should avoid buying shares in this stock, no matter how tempting it may look, since it is still in mode 4 and will drop back down.

Consider the above image. An inexperienced stock trader would see this and think that this is in mode 3 (I've literally seen images like this used to represent mode 3 in other guides). It's not, it's actually just trending upward in mode 5, and I'll tell you how I know.

The first trick to identifying mode 5 is usually a dead giveaway, and is why I am so confident that this stock is in mode 5. Just like with mode 4, ask yourself what mode it was in before this one. As you can see in the screenshot, before this large upward spike there was a downward-trending zig-zag, identifiable as mode 4. Now recall that mode 5 has a 70% chance to replace the next mode when a stock changes out of mode 3 or 4. Also recall that mode 3 almost never finishes its duration due to it's additional rule of having a chance every tick to switch to mode 4. Together, this means that mode 5 can be identified quite easily, since the other 3 modes that might've come before it (0, 1, or 2) look nothing like mode 4, and mode 5 follows mode 4 70% of the time.

There is another trick to identify mode 5 involving its capacity to override the current delta value (which on average happens every 5 ticks). About half of the times that this override happens, the line graph will briefly plateau, causing irregularity even in the most consistent rises and falls. You can see examples of this accentuated with dotted lines in the image above, as well as some more frequent and noticeable examples in the image of a neutral mode 5 below.


These plateaus are a good identifier for mode 5, so get used to keeping an eye out for them.

As for why the upward trend happened in our first example, the answer is quite simple. Mode 5 has an equal chance of going up or down, meaning on average it should maintain equilibrium. However, it is also being pulled by its resting value, thus given enough time, mode 5 will always cause the stock to return to its resting value, regardless of direction.

Use this to your advantage.

Oh, and in our upward-trending example, CNM was $90 below its resting value.

The low-activity modes (0, 1, & 2) are MUCH harder to tell apart from each other, to the extent that they actually look identical in many situations. Fortunately, there is an aspect to their behavior that lets you sus out which is which: Where they are (and how they act) in relation to their resting value.

Mode 0, like mode 5, has an equal likelihood of moving up or down. Unlike mode 5, however, mode 0 only increases/decreases the stock's delta value (as opposed to also changing the stock value directly). Mode 0 can't change delta by much per tick, and actually decreases the delta by 5% each tick (moving it closer to 0, so negative deltas don't become more negative). So this inability for mode 0 to change value directly, coupled with the low impact it can have on delta, means that stocks in mode 0 should barely move up or down much at all (outside of regular stock RNG), giving it the "stable" look that we associate it with.

But we're forgetting something. Remember how stocks in mode 5, despite their average being in equilibrium, would still always converge on their resting value because of the small pull it had disrupting the equilibrium? The same logic and reasoning applies to mode 0; it averages to equilibrium, thus the pull of the resting value will disrupt that equilibrium by a small amount, meaning that over time, a stock in mode 0 will gradually approach its resting value, regardless of direction. In the case of mode 0, once it gets close enough to it's resting value (~$5), the pull of the resting value is much weaker, to the point where the low activity of mode 0 can balance it out to achieve a "stable" look for the stock. You can see some great examples of this behavior in the image below, where all 3 stocks are in mode 0.



tl;dr If the stock isn't within ~$5 of its resting value when in mode 0, it will start noticeably sloping towards its resting value until it does get close enough to stabilize.


Here we have another lucky screenshot of two stocks being in the same mode while exhibiting different behavior. SLT is in a strong mode 1 and is climbing as expected, while CHC is struggling to climb at all, instead stabilizing to the point of looking a lot more like mode 0 than mode 1.

In fact, how can I be sure that CHC is actually in mode 1, and not in mode 0 or 2?
This is the big problem with low-activity modes... their low activity lets them easily be manipulated by the pull of the resting value, and they all end up looking like each other. So instead of looking for "tells" like the zig-zags and plateaus of modes 3-5, we must rely on logical reasoning to determine which is which.

Using CHC as an example, we can immediately tell that it is in a low-activity mode, ruling out modes 3, 4 & 5. We can then continue the process of elimination by asking ourselves what we would expect CHC to do if it were in a specific mode, after which we can eliminate the modes that seem the least likely.

• If CHC was in mode 0 in this scenario, what would we expect it to do? Usually, mode 0 tries to stay stable (like CHC is now), but as mentioned above, mode 0 should actually be expected to noticeably slope in the direction of its resting value. In this case, CHC is well above its resting value, so we should expect to see some sort of a downward trend, which is definitely not present in the image. Therefore it is unlikely that CHC is in mode 0.
  
  
• If CHC was in mode 1, we would expect to see it sloping upwards against the pull of it's resting value, right? Well, mode 1 is a mode of low-activity, which means that it will start to struggle to maintain its direction against the resting value a lot sooner than the higher-activity modes (the pull of the resting value gets stronger the further away the stock gets). So despite CHC only being $30 above its resting value, it is still at least plausible, since this is potentially more than enough distance for the pull of the resting value to be strong enough to make it look "stable" while in mode 1. Therefore it is plausible that CHC is in mode 1.
  
  
• If CHC was in mode 2, it would be in a strong mode 2, since it would both be sloping downward and have its resting value pulling it downward. The movement of CHC in the image is far from looking like a strong mode 2, therefore it is highly unlikely CHC is in mode 2.

Out of these three possibilities, mode 1 seems to be the most likely by a significant margin. Using the process of elimination like this is a great way to identify all three of the low-activity modes, not just mode 1. Try it for yourself next time you see a low-activity mode, it's surprisingly effective.


Like with mode 1, you can logic your way through the process of elimination to identify mode 2. It's basically the same gimmick in the other direction.

This is by far the most technical part of the stock market. Although most of this information used to be quite unnecessary to know, as of v2.048, the stock market RNG has gone through several changes. Not only that, but it is now much more important to understand the details of stock RNG due to the addition of the Supreme Intellect aura, which tweaks very specific steps in the RNG. If you hate math and this section is difficult to wrap your head around, you aren't the first, but unfortunately, you may be unable to fully comprehend certain effects of Supreme Intellect as a result. Nonetheless, I have done my best to break this down into more digestible chunks to help as many people understand it as possible.

Every 1 minute in real time, the stock market "ticks". On each tick, every stock is updated with a new value. The function that generates this new value does so through a series of steps that depend on RNG, the stock's resting value, current value, mode, and delta value. The delta value (represented by the Greek letter Δ) of a stock is literally a "rate of change in value" for the stock, or more simply a number assigned to how "fast" it is moving in a given direction. The delta of a stock is added to the stock's value at the end of every tick, with RNG calls and changes to the delta happening before this step. To be more specific, the list of steps taken each tick by the function that updates stock values is described in detail below:

To help highlight the differences, all parts of stock RNG that are new or different in v2.048 will be bold and italicized, with the old version being crossed out.

(New) Before any stock RNG happens, there is a 10% chance to create a "global spike". If this occurs, two numbers are generated: a "global delta" (a number between -1 and 1) and a "global probability" (a probability between 0% and 100%), both of which are used by all stocks during step 4 that tick.

1. Decrease size of delta by 3% (brings it closer to 0)
   
2. Do the following steps (depends on mode)
   
   Mode 0:
   • Decrease size of delta by 5%
     
   • Change delta by a random number (between -0.025 and 0.025)
   Mode 1:
   • Decrease size of delta by 1%
     
   • Change delta by a random number (between -0.005 and 0.045)
   Mode 2:
   • Decrease size of delta by 1%
     
   • Change delta by a random number (between -0.045 and 0.005)
   Mode 3:
   • Change delta by a random number (between -0.015 and 0.135)
     
   • Change value by a random number (between 0 and 1) (between 0 and 5)
   Mode 4:
   • Change delta by a random number (between -0.135 and 0.015)
     
   • Change value by a random number (between -1 and 0) (between -5 and 0)
   Mode 5:
   • Change delta by a random number (between -0.15 and 0.15)
3. Update value to be 2% closer 1% closer to resting value
   
4. (New) If a global spike was generated this tick, have a % chance to do the following (this % is the global probability)
   
   • Decrease value by: (global delta) * (1 + 7 * (random number between 0 and 1)^3 * delta)
     
   • Decrease value by: (global delta) * (1 + 7 * (random number between 0 and 1)^3)
     
   • Increase delta by: (global delta) * (random number between 1 and 5)
     
   • Set this stock's mode duration to 0.
5. (New) Change value by: (random number between -1 and 1)^11 * 3
   
6. (New) Change delta by a random number (between -0.05 and 0.05)
   
7. 10% chance 15% chance to change value by a random number (between -1.5 and 1.5)
   
8. (New) 3% chance to change value by a random number between -5 and 5
   
9. 10% chance to change delta by a random number (between -0.15 and 0.15)
   
10. Apply the following chances (depends on mode)
    
    Mode 0, 1, or 2:
    • Do Nothing
    Mode 3:
    • 30% chance to change value by a random number (between -7 and 3) AND change delta by a random number (between -0.05 and 0.05)
    Mode 4:
    • 30% chance to change value by a random number (between -3 and 7) AND change delta by a random number (between -0.05 and 0.05)
    Mode 5:
    • 50% chance to change value by a random number (between -5 and 5)
      
    • 20% chance to override delta value with a random number (between -1 and 1)
11. If value is above Bank Ceiling and delta is positive, decrease size of delta by 10%
    
12. Change value by delta. (i.e. if value is 10 and delta is -2, the new value is 8)

After all of this, the game checks to see if the value is below $5, at which point it will reduce any negative delta (downward momentum) by 5%. If the value is below $1, the game will simply set the stock value to be $1.

TL;DR: Supreme Intellect makes the stock market move a lot faster due to more drastic RNG, so once you get a good grip on how the regular stock market works (without Supreme Intellect), I highly recommend you frequently equip/unequip Supreme Intellect and Reality Bending when using an active strategy and going for Gaseous Assets. Use supreme Intellect & Reality Bending to drop all stocks drastically, then unequip them and wait for them to rise back to their resting values. This is the new meta.

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As of Cookie Clicker v2.048, Krumblor the Cookie Dragon has a new dragon aura that directly impacts gameplay for all minigames:

Supreme Intellect
"Confers various powers to your minigames while active.
See the bottom of each minigame for more details."

When this aura is equipped, hovering over the icon at the bottom of each minigame gives a description of what this aura changes in that minigame. For the stock market minigame, this description reads "The stock market is more chaotic."

That's not a very useful description, so here's what Supreme Intellect actually changes:

Equipping Supreme Intellect modifies a variable that is used in several formulas by the stock market, with the intent to make the market "more chaotic". By equipping the Reality Bending aura, 10% of the effect of Supreme Intellect is applied, and by equipping both auras at once, you can stack them to get 110% of the effect. There are 7 aspects of the stock market affected by this "chaos", organized in this table and described below in order from left to right.



Reduced Mode Duration

As covered previously in the guide, when a stock switches to a new mode, it is given a random duration between 10-700 ticks. Supreme Intellect reduces the maximum by 200 ticks, so any random durations chosen with it equipped will be between 10-500 ticks, leading to more frequent mode changes in the stock market. In practice, the effect this has is extremely minimal, as on average (without Supreme Intellect), global spikes cause any given stock to change modes every 20 ticks.


Mode 5 Bypass Chance (Increased Chance of Mode 5)

When either Supreme Intellect or Reality Bending is equipped, a new RNG call is made every time a stock switches modes, with up to a 50% chance to bypass mode RNG entirely and just put the stock into mode 5. This operates similarly to the previously mentioned 70% chance to override and switch to mode 5 whenever a stock is exiting mode 3 or 4. These two override chances run separately, thus their probabilities stack.

To be specific, if a stock is switching from mode 3 or 4 while Supreme Intellect is active, there is an 85% chance that the override will succeed. If it fails, there is still a 12.5% chance for the randomly chosen mode to be mode 5, cumulatively meaning there is an 86.875% chance for said stock to enter mode 5.

Note that this is the only aspect that does not offer additional benefit for equipping both auras; it caps out at 50%.


Delta Override Range (Steeper Plateaus in Mode 5)

Recall that, when a stock is in mode 5, every tick has a 20% chance to completely override the current delta value with a random delta value between -1 and 1, effectively causing all momentum in either direction to stop and be replaced. By equipping Supreme Intellect, the random value of the replacement delta can instead be anywhere between -4 and 4, effectively making the "plateaus" that are so useful for identifying mode 5 so steep that they become un-traceable.


Delta Reduction (Decreased Delta Stability)

In order to prevent RNG from stacking too much delta in a given direction, a 3% reduction is applied to all delta values at the very start of each tick (Step #1 in the "Stock RNG" section of the guide). By equipping Supreme Intellect, this constant delta reduction is lowered from 3% per tick to 2% per tick, letting stocks gather much more momentum before this reduction becomes a hindrance.


Value Spike Range (Steeper Value Spikes)

For every tick, each stock has a 3% chance to experience an additional value change of a random number between -5 and 5 (Step #8 in the "Stock RNG" section of the guide). By equipping Supreme Intellect, these random value spikes instead pick from a range of -10 to 10, making the random value spikes much steeper in the process.


Delta Spike Range (Steeper Delta Spikes)

Similar to the value spikes described above, on every tick, each stock has a 10% chance to change its delta by a random number between -0.15 and 0.15 (Step #9 in the "Stock RNG" section of the guide). By equipping Supreme Intellect, these random delta spikes instead pick from a range of -0.25 to 0.25, making these delta spikes much steeper as well.


Global Spike Chance (Increased Chance of Global Spikes)

Global spikes are a tricky topic to explain in basic terms, but they can have drastic effects on a large portion of the stock market when they occur. Before any of the stocks are put through the RNG formula, there is a single roll to see if a "global spike" will be created for that tick. By default, this has a 10% chance to occur, but by equipping Supreme Intellect, this gets raised to a 20% chance.

If this global spike occurs, there is a second roll for each separate stock to see if it will be impacted by this global spike (step #4 in the "Stock RNG" section of the guide). Factoring this into our probabilities tells us that there is a 5% chance of a global spike affecting any given stock on every tick (10% chance with Supreme Intellect), meaning on average every stock is affected by a global spike every 20 ticks (every 10 ticks with Supreme Intellect).

DISCLAIMER: Please understand first and foremost that the stock market is a long-con game. Something like the small pull of the resting values only affects the stocks a little bit at a time. Only by giving it enough time will you begin to notice that even a 1% difference from equilibrium actually makes a big difference in the long run, even with the worst RNG luck. Have patience.

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So you're now a master at recognizing modes, but you've also now seen how complex the modes can get. This leaves us with just two huge questions left to answer:

"When should I buy?" & "When should I sell?"

The truly correct answer is "Whenever you think it's a good idea to", since even if your judgement sucks right now, you'll only improve over time. While this answer isn't satisfying, I'd say it trumps everything else I write in this section of the guide, since situations will vary, and what works for me may not work for you.

To begin, all strategies a player can use in the stock market can be broken down into two categories: Active and Passive.

Passive strategies get profits much slower than active strategies, but only require minimal interaction on part of the player. The simplest form of passive strategy, which requires you to know almost none of the information from this guide, is to simply check in on the stock market a few times a day, buying all stocks that are some amount or percentage below their average, while selling all stocks that are some amount above their average (top/bottom ~20-30th percentile is reasonable for this). Note that this is in relation to the stock's average, which is usually different from their resting value.

If you struggle to calculate stock averages on your own, there are plenty of completely legitimate external calculators made by the community that do all of the math for you.
I personally use this one.
This now links to the outdated version, however it has a redirect to the new sheet for v2.048. Steam does not like direct links to google sheets, thinking they are malicious links, so I will leave this link as is. If you were using one of these sheets before the v2.048 update you will need to start a new one from scratch from the updated template.

So for those of you who want to get Gaseous/Liquid Assets legitimately, the best course of action is to combine the two types of strategies. When you are away from the game for longer periods of time, use the passive strategy (buy stocks that are significantly lower than their average and sell the ones you have that are significantly above their average). Then, when you get back, your stocks are likely to be in a more beneficial place than when you left, and you can decide what to do from there. When you are actively playing the game, or only away for shorter periods of time, you should ditch the passive playstyle and use active strategies instead. By combining both of these strategy types, you can make the most out of your time in-game while still making some progress while away from the game.

As a side note, if you are the type of person who would prefer to fully automate the stock market, this guide wasn't exactly written with you in mind, as it focuses on game knowledge that's only really useful to those trying to get Gaseous/Liquid Assets legitimately. With that being said, I would still like to provide some insight. As far as I know, all "legitimate" (non-cheating) stock market mods, scripts, or other forms of automation use the passive type of strategy I described above, where they automatically buy and sell when stock values reach certain thresholds. This is because writing a script to attempt any decent active strat is impossibly complicated to do without straight up cheating by extracting hidden data such as modes, durations, and deltas. Believe it or not, if you are using a mod to automate the stock market nowadays, it most likely does this. If you are against cheating but still insist on automating, try to avoid these types of mods/scripts, but also just know that you would still make profit even faster if you also learned the stock market and played actively whenever you could.

Active strategies are any type of strategy that makes use of the information (especially the mode recognition) provided in this guide in such a way that the player can predict and exploit where the stock is likely to go in the near(-ish) future due to factors such as mode, current value, and resting value.

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As stated previously, I'd highly recommend forming your own active or hybrid strategy using both your own experience and the information given in this guide. However if you are too lazy to do this, or perhaps are looking for a strategy to use as a starting point for yours before deviating into your own techniques, look no further. Below is my own personal active strategy that I use, simplified down into a digestible list of simple actions that I always take while I play actively:

NOTE: After the v2.048 update, this strategy WILL NOT work as well as before. This unfortunately means that any strategy you formulate now will likely need to babysit the stock market a lot more than before.

• ALWAYS BUY if the stock is below $5
  
• BUY if the stock is within $20-30 of its floor value
  
• BUY if the stock is in strong mode 3 or 1
  
• SELL if the stock is within $20-30 of its ceiling value
  
• SELL the moment a stock passes the bank ceiling (unless it has a resting value above the bank ceiling AND it is in mode 3, 5, 0, or 1, then sell when it gets close to it's resting value or switches modes)
  
• SELL IMMEDIATELY if the stock is in mode 2 or 4.

ALSO:
If the stock is noticeably below its resting value:

• BUY if in any mode 1 or 3
  
• BUY if in upward-trending or neutral mode 0 or 5
  
• SELL if in downward trending mode 0 or 5

If the stock is anywhere above its resting value:

• BUY if in strong mode 1 or 3
  
• SELL if in downward-trending or neutral mode 0 or 5