Using the NeoDAQ to predict population

[Blovey]

Someone made a board a while ago discussing the current population of Neopia, and the estimates out there were wildly different. Ranging from a few hundred users to upwards of 10,000. While I personally think the site probably has 5-6,000+ unique users visiting daily, there isn't any actual thing on the site that displays this information anymore. People can make guesses based on neoboard activity, trading post lots and auctioned items, as well as participation in the various contests. But there is also one aspect that displays a hard number, showing somewhat accurately how many users complete that daily: the stock market.

If you visit the stock market page at (you need an account to see links), you'll see there is a column for "Volume". Volume is how many of each stock has been purchased that day.

For today, July 9, a total volume of 350,466 stocks have been purchased (at the time of me writing this, 10:47 NST). That is as few as 351 people, assuming they all bought 1,000 shares and one person bought 466. I'd say this could stretch up to 450 or so, as some people bought only 2 stock volume or 20 stock volume. Obviously, not everyone uses stocks as a daily but for a lot of people it's on the list so this can be a strong indicator on site popularity.

Thanks to the people over at NeoDAQ.com there is a wonderful aggregate of all stock market volumes since 2002 which will put a bit of history and context into these numbers: (you need an account to see links)

The blue line represents the amount of shares sold, while the black line represents the NeoDAQ price overall. The chart represents a little weird, so when the number on the right says 2,000 it actually means 200,000 shares were sold. As you can see, back in the peak of 2007/2008 as many as 2,300,000 shares were sold daily which equates to at LEAST 2,300 people buying stocks daily. Because of the influx of new users not knowing how the market works, people not buying their full 1,000 stocks, this number meant probably 4,000+ people were buying stocks daily.

What is also interesting is that you can hone in the results and see hour by hour updates to see when people most commonly buy stocks throughout the day. Most people buy right at the midnight rollover, then it filters off through the day with a spike around 5-6pm NST.

While this isn't a fully accurate representation of the site's users, due to not everyone using this as a daily, it can help you compare numbers to the past to give you an idea of how many people are actively using the site, as well as what times they are completing their dailies at.

[Dom~]

I guarantee there is less than 3000 unique people signing into neopets a day. When they still had the feature available, just before they took it away, there was never more than 1000 accs logged in at the same time. As far back as I can remember it was hitting 3-4000 people at a time. So 7 years later its definitely way less than that. The site is dying, and there is no argument there unless they change things, and change them soon.

[Blovey]

I guarantee there is less than 3000 unique people signing into neopets a day. When they still had the feature available, just before they took it away, there was never more than 1000 accs logged in at the same time. As far back as I can remember it was hitting 3-4000 people at a time. So 7 years later its definitely way less than that. The site is dying, and there is no argument there unless they change things, and change them soon.

No doubt the site is dying but even 1,000 people on at a time could be 10,000+ per day (people that log in for 5 minutes just to do dailies or play a couple flash games or feed their pets). I'm not saying 5-10,000 super active users, just people clicking onto the site.

[5945]

Wasn't there one for altador and it hit 10,000+ visiting his site, I doubt all of the current users went there... so must be more than 10k?

[Kawaii]

That is interesting, but I think only a small amount of people buy stocks. I personally don't and I knew a lot of people who didn't as well. I think if the number was that low they wouldn't even bother with the site. since the FB page has over 200k likes only 4k visitors a day would be really really pitiful.

[Salivating Slorg]

I guarantee there is less than 3000 unique people signing into neopets a day. When they still had the feature available, just before they took it away, there was never more than 1000 accs logged in at the same time. As far back as I can remember it was hitting 3-4000 people at a time. So 7 years later its definitely way less than that. The site is dying, and there is no argument there unless they change things, and change them soon.

That's not true. When the counter was still working, during normal hours of the day (in the US), it was around 5-10,000 people because it eventually got "stuck" on like around 3-6k when it stopped working.

[Urbex]

I was expecting you to compare previous year's stock market buys to the known population of daily active users that year to get an approximate percentage of users who use the stock market. Then with that percentage you could get a rough estimate by extrapolating the current estimated number of stock market buys and using the percentage. I believe that would provide a more accurate estimate.
It's safe to say that roughly the same percentage of people are still interested in stocks as they were a few years ago.

[j03]

This is some cool data but definitely no where near accurate enough to show how many people play still.

There are people who visit boards, people who just do stocks, food club, play the flash games, train their pets, etc.

There is so many different ways one can play Neopets. There are many that will do one thing and not the other.


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[Aska]

I am one of those people who do not buy stock, mostly because I am too lazy to read the guides haha. I wish the counter would come back up though.

[Blovey]

I am one of those people who do not buy stock, mostly because I am too lazy to read the guides haha. I wish the counter would come back up though.

It's a very easy way to make money. Just find a stock that is currently selling at 15-16 NP per share and buy the max of 1,000 shares. Keep repeating every day with various stocks to build your portfolio (never paying more than 15-16NP/share). Then eventually as you check in on the portfolio to buy more stocks you'll see the prices go up, I typically sell when they are worth 60 NP/share. Quadruples your money for seconds a day.