Last Edit: 2 months 3 days ago

Warning: Video Contains Possible Spoilers

How Story Missions Affect Stocks

Throughout the game’s story, Lester will offer Franklin missions in which he’ll have to assassinate a target. These targets have a huge role to play in the company’s whose stocks are available for purchase, and their deaths will affect the value of their corresponding stock.

Although Lester will often tell Franklin himself, this table clarifies which stock the player should invest in before or after killing their target.

Stocks in the LCN network generally change with every in-game hour during the business day (around 8AM — 7PM) — usually it takes on full business day for an LCN stock to reach it’s peak value after an assassination. The BAWSAQ stocks usually change every 10-15 minutes of real-world time, though after an assassination the values of the affected stocks are usually changed immediately.

Note : The percentage return for your stock is only detailed in the web page called My Portfolio. To get the best return you may need to advance time in-game, which can be done 6-8 hours at a time when you enter the save menu next to a character’s bed, then exiting the menu without saving. To maximize profits, be sure to create a save before starting an assassination mission so that if a peak value is missed it can be reclaimed.

The Hotel Assassination

At some point Lester will start providing Franklin with side missions marked with an L on the map now before you can move past the story at this point, you’ll have to do The Hotel Assassination. In this case you are damaging the shares of Bilkington in order to raise the shares of Betta Pharmaceuticals.

Invest BEFORE mission: [BET] BettaPharmaceuticals (BAWSAQ)

Sell AFTER mission: [BET] BettaPharmaceuticals (BAWSAQ) at 21% return

NOTE: The following information on Bilkington Pharmaceuticals applies only to players on PS3 / Xbox 360. The market values of the Hotel Assassination have been severely reduced in the PS4 / XB1 edititions.

Buy AFTER mission: [BIL] Bilkington (LCN)

Sell AFTER rebound: [BIL] Bilkington (LCN) at an 80%+ return

After you sell BET at 81% return, don’t buy BIL right away. In several in-game hours BIL price will drop to its minimum and will stay there for at least 2 days, that’s when you buy it. Now comes a long period of waiting and sleeping in a safe house. It takes BIL a week to rebound back to $200+ price, thus giving you 80%+ return on investment (highest seen so far is 103.34%). Actual percentage depends of whether you buy right after selling BET or wait and whether you sell once BIL hits 80% or wait several hours more.

***NOTE*** This may be a glitch, but it is possible to get a return profit of over 100%. How I did this is that right after the mission, you should sell your [BET] stocks and then buy your [BIL] stocks. Your game should then auto-save. If it does, reload that autosave. As soon as it reloads, go ahead and go to your portfolio. If done right, the return should be way higher than 80%. But note that if you take too long in selling your [BIL] stock, the game will remember your last mission and put the stocks back down where it’s supposed to go and will have to wait to get the 80%+ return. Here’s a photo from Trevors phone on what your portfolio should look like if you did all of this right:

Need help keeping track of time on the Stock Market? We’ve built a handy conversion calculator for converting GTA time to real-world time. Just follow the link!

If you haven’t bought any properties up to this point or spent your money in any other fashion, Franklin (given you raised some money on street races or robbing armored vans and had around $85K before this mission) has about $300K, Trevor — almost $600K, Michael ends up with more that a $1M.

COMPLETE THE STORY

Before taking on any other assassination missions for Lester, complete the campaign mission The Big Score and finish the campaign. Depending on the outcome of your story, each character will have between $40M — $100M to invest in each stock that the following missions focus on.

Multi Target Assassination

In this assassination you are damaging the shares of Redwood in order to raise the shares of Debonaire.

Invest BEFORE mission: [DEB] Debonaire (LCN)

Sell AFTER mission: [DEB] Debonaire (LCN) at around 80%+ return

Buy AFTER mission: [RWC] Redwood (LCN)

Sell AFTER rebound: [RWC] Redwood (LCN) at around 300%+ return

You may have to wait a few days for Redwood to rebound, so just keep sleeping until it peaks (usually 48 hours).

The Vice Assassination

In this assassination you are damaging the shares of Facade in order to raise the shares of Fruit. The guides that I have seen have often missed a crucial step in this assassination: invest in Facade as it rebounds.

Invest BEFORE mission: [FRT] Fruit (BAWSAQ)

Sell AFTER mission: [FRT] Fruit (BAWSAQ) at 25%+ return

Buy AFTER. [FAC] Facade (BAWSAQ)

Sell AFTER rebound: [FAC] Facade (BAWSAQ) at 30% return

This step is the difference between making around $1.5B and $2.1B, so make sure you don’t forget it. Once again Facade may take some time to rebound so just keep sleeping until it hits the peak.

The Bus Assassination

This assassination is slightly different as it focuses entirely on the Vapid stock rebounding after you damage it.

Buy AFTER mission: [VAP] Vapid (BAWSAQ)

Sell AFTER rebound: [VAP] Vapid (BAWSAQ) at 100% return

You’ll have to wait a few days for the stock to rebound, so keep advancing time and checking the stocks at any time after 8am.

The Construction Assassination

This assassination has no rebound and focuses on getting GoldCoasts business back from another construction firm (not on any of the stock exchanges).

Invest BEFORE mission: [GCD] GoldCoast (LCN)

Sell AFTER mission: [GCD] GoldCoast (LCN) at around 80% return