[CanRay]

The best way Shadowrunners can build up a "Stock Portfolio" is to accept payment in Corporate Scrip, which has the shadow trade in such fluctuate due to the situation with the owning corp.  So, if you're sitting on a pile of Ares Scrip and the corp just released some new upgrades for the Citymaster-Series, won a major Desert Wars battle, and is in the Urban Brawl finals, it's time to use that to get Nuyen or a shiny new toy on the black market!

However, another advantage of getting Stock is Stockholder Reports.  Even the stuff disseminated to "Civilians" can have a lot of info that Shadowrunners might find useful.  It also adds more legitimacy to that high-end "Bulletproof" SIN you have as your "Get the frag out of Dodge" back-up.  After all, how likely is a criminal to be a shareholder in Ares, Winchester, Colt, Weapons World?

[Trenchknife]

Frankly, you don't need to be a stockholder to get a look at a shareholder report.  It's Shadowrun folks.  How easy do you think it would be to find on in the matrix?  My opinion, a pretty simple task.

[CanRay]

Yeah, but when you pirate them, you also can't pirate the dividends. 

[Trenchknife]

Yeah, but when you pirate them, you also can't pirate the dividends. 

H A C K I N G

[CanRay]

Go ahead, hack a bank.

Let me know where to send the flowers.

[Trenchknife]

You don't hack the bank.  You hack the stockholders 'email' account and make sure that you place a filter on their system to so you can have their directly deposited money...sent to your accounts.  Course taht's not easy either.  Just sayin' it's possible....just sayin'.   

[Weldûn]

Personally, my approach would be to use elements of the rules.

Buying a Lifestyle
A character can permanently buy a given lifestyle by making a payment equal to 100 months' upkeep. For example, ten million nuyen buys a permanent life of luxury. This sum represents investments, trust funds, and so on that can take care of payments.

So, basically you can create investment portfolio's that will give a return of 1% per month, with relative ease. That's a return of 12% per annum, which is in keeping with long-term investments. And, my preference would be to leave it at that. Why? Because this is SHADOWRUN, a game about maneuvering through the dark and grimy shadows of corporate/international politics. It's a game of professional criminals with hearts of tarnished silver.  That being said...

There could be some fun plot hooks in letting the PC play an investor.

...fair point.

Still, if you want extra detail, I'd ignore the whole 2d6x10% sell off deal and move to Fencing Gear. Keep the base of 30% and just alter the extended test to (10, 1 month). And, just like fencing gear, a glitch attracts attention from unwanted parties, providing some of the plot hooks involved. Hell, if you want just a little more detail, such as the PC actually takes runs to try and tip stock prices a little, award them bonus dice on the roll equal to the amount of karma awarded for the adventure.

Anyway, that's my ¥2.

[CanRay]

Tarnished silver hearts?  Do you know what silver goes for on the open market?  Forget organlegging, silver heart harvesting would pay for bullets, soyza, and beer!!!

[Weldûn]

Tarnished silver hearts?  Do you know what silver goes for on the open market?  Forget organlegging, silver heart harvesting would pay for bullets, soyza, and beer!!!

Hmm, I know I'm getting side-tracked here but let's do the math.
The average human heart weighs 10-12 ounces (approximately 283.5-340.2 grams) for males and 8-10 ounces (approximately 226.8-283.5 grams) for females. Human flesh has a specific gravity of 1.4 while silver has a specific gravity of aproximately 10.5 (10.49, actually, so close enough). Assuming the upper end female/lower end male heart, that gives us approximately 2,126 grams of silver. Assuming that this counts as a raw reagent, a single "unit" of raw metal is 10 KILOGRAMS (Okay, I had to go back to Grimoire for that one, but still). So, it's only about ¥65 per heart. As a side note, heart of Gold goes for about ¥3,900, proving that having a strong moral center is only worth so much in the sixth world. For those who are curious, using Refined Reagents as a guide, gold goes for about ¥115 an ounce.

Now, stop playing the pedant (cue hypocrisy alert) and allow me a little artistic license, will you please? 

[CanRay]

I need to see your artistic license and registration, as well as your union card. 

Which brings us back to the business of doing business.