Stocks & Bonds

Stocks & Bonds is an economic strategy board game published by 3M in 1964, part of the same bookshelf game series that later included Mr. President, and built for two to five players in a session of roughly sixty minutes recommended for ages twelve and up. Each player buys and sells shares in ten fictitious corporations over the course of ten rounds, trying to become the richest player by the game's end. Market conditions shift from round to round by drawing cards that mark the overall climate as bull, meaning rising, or bear, meaning falling, and players weigh when to buy in, hold or sell each of their holdings against that swinging market along with the dividends each corporation pays out. Whoever holds the most money once the tenth round closes wins the game. The design proved durable enough that Avalon Hill later released a licensed computer adaptation, Computer Stocks & Bonds, in 1982, carrying the same ten-corporation trading system onto home computers.