From now on, the commission for a trade will be calculated the following way: For trades below 1,000 shares, the commission will be $10 flat. For trades above 1,000 shares, the commission will be $10 + $0.01 for each share in excess of 1,000 shares. For example, a 1,500 share trade will incur a $15 commission (1,500 - 1,000) * $0.01 + $10 = $15.

This commission schedule is more realistic, as it makes high volume trades more expensive. In the real market, a large order would influence the stock price - this is now simulated on UpDown with a higher commission.

The stock ticker shows the stocks in your portfolio and watch list and stocks you’ve recently checked out on UpDown. The new home page that you see before logging in has more information on the market and what’s currently happening on UpDown.

Let us know what you think.

Michael

First, you get to brush up your financial skills in a Three-week intensive finance training program covering accounting, consolidated financial statements modeling, mergers and acquisitions modeling, leveraged buyouts and valuation.

Then, you get to apply them in the real world during a Guaranteed four-week internship at a premier private equity or venture capital fund.

Up to 15 qualified candidates will be able to join this program this summer. UpDown members get a 5% discount.

Learn more here.

So far, all orders were executed in one batch regardless of their volume, allowing for substantial volume trades of even lower volume stocks in seconds. Now, orders will get executed based on the volume that is traded in the real stock market.

Small orders of high volume stocks (i.e. 1,000 shares of Apple (AAPL)), will still be executed immediately. However, the execution of a large order of a low volume stock will happen over time as the volume becomes available.

For more info, check out the new paragraph on partial fills in our help section.

Looking forward to your feedback!

The goal of the new navigation is to make navigating the site easier and allow faster access to your portfolio. All the trading features (your portfolio, trading, the watch list, and your performance) can be found under the new navigation item “Trading“. The new “Community” section hosts information about other members, your friends, groups, and networks.

A substantial number of you have asked for more learning content. Today, we launch our Education Center which I hope will be a great resource for beginners and advanced investors. For now, it contains a glossary, an investing 101 section, and an overview of the services that different online brokers offer. You can also contribute by suggesting additional glossary terms or writing a review for your stock broker.

Let us know what you think.

We got a lot of interest for expanding the learning aspect of UpDown. Many of you are also interested in being able to trade options and forex on UpDown. We’re already working on some of the ideas you mentioned so stay tuned …

Out of 600 completed surveys, here are the winners of the itunes $20 gift cards (you will also receive a separate email):

semille2
wlingke
Delta_5
UnVraiRobillard3
amg800
gallfera531
leo0648
Frankky
bassettb
moneyman187
GKM
skidaddy
chocomog
jkag007
Moosle
spaceball1
venutijp
kaloko
Jproductions Corp.
sstrom61
TheMush
thatmanguy
hallmarp
jmnmic27
beezr15
Poundit
scrummy
rrfrith
JackFawRealz
Jognils
clee6
kzhang
Taxicr

Thank you again to everyone who participated!

Michael

But in our Facebook application we have published trading information, specifically when a member makes a buy and sell. This experiment is working well, so we’ve decided to bring it to UpDown.com.

Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to see when a friend has:

• Made a buy, including the amount
• Made a sell, including the company name and amount
• Added another friend
• Joined a contest, group or network

We’re really excited about this new feature and think it will make the site more interesting for groups of friends.

Over the past few months we’ve added to and enhanced quite a few social features on the site, including groups, contests, networks, friends, and we’re about to make improvements to our member profiles.

These features all make the site more fun, and enable better collaboration and competition. But they work better when members can find each other.

As part of these changes, we’ve decided to require and show real names. We’re also going to show real names across the site by default. You’ll be able to turn this off with the profile settings.

UpDown members can compete to win over $4,000 in valuable financial analysis courses that can help them do better in upcoming job interviews.

These courses are taught by Wall Street professionals and focus on developing the essential skills for valuing and analyzing companies.  Check out the course descriptions here.