MarketWatch Investing Game anyone?

JamesMcD wrote: We don't have to share our entire portfolios, but I'd like to see more sharing of specific stock "plays," with reasoning and a time-horizon given, so we can all watch and learn from each other. We are most of us investing a decent amount of time into this, so it would be nice to get something out of it.

OK, so I will open up a few "plays". (Don't think I can legitimately call them "strategies").

My initial approach was to avoid picking individual stocks. I wanted instead to focus on picking the people and fund managers who were best at picking stocks.

So, 80% of my money is spread around in funds and ETF's. Which I do not intend to trade very often. Each purchase of mine represents several hundred different individual stocks. The only difference between this and real life for me is that I picked more aggressive funds and managers. It's still a strategy that I think I can do pretty well with, but not until the market settles down a bit.

I bought a few things I would not in real life. One of my big funds is a Christian socially responsible fund. Just to see how it did. Did very well, up until last week. I also invested in a marijuana start-up (yeah, I know it's a contradiction), and an Ebola vaccine manufacturer.

The 20% is play money. I bought TSLA expecting to loose, but just felt like owning it. I was wrong- I made money on it (got out right at the peak- I will probably get in again later). I bought some penny stocks- they've done pretty poorly, but I am not paying enough attention to work that game.

I also bought BABA, after the slide after it's IPO. I'm gonna sit on that one, through the Christmas season.

Recently, I've been loosing a lot (like everyone), except for my shorts. I shorted JPM (feels weird shorting the biggest US bank), and I've made some money with that one. I have also shorted the S&P (that feels like being a traitor). But I am making money on that too.

I also have some AAPL (contrary to what I said earlier). That's just riding consumer sentiment.

No big wins or loosers. It was growing steady until this week.

Can't pay enough attention to attempt to do anything about it this week.

A second strategy:

My wife is in 4th. As the market dumped, she moved up the ladder. She was one of the few in positive territory until today.

I asked her how she did it.

She picked a couple of solid stocks, but she bet small. She has less the $50,000 total committed. Played a couple shorts.

So, her positive position had more to do with how much she left in cash then how much she put in the market.

Interesting.

I also have 2 teens in the game. If I figure out their strategy, I will share it.

Anyone ever figure out a teen's strategy??

I'm currently in HL, which has lost me a ton of money, HIMX, which at one point made me a ton of money, then lost more. ARO, which has lost me a ton of money but will ptobably rebound.

BCRX made me a ton of money. UNICY made me a huge amount of money. That was what brought me from last to first that one day.

I got out of both of those too early.

I've been in probably 15 others, but none did a whole lot.

I'm very similar to what SVreX did. I have the vast majority spread way out in funds and ETF's. I picked three actual stocks that even though have been down the last couple days, I still believe will be worth more than I bought them for in a year.

My biggest gamble that I didn't trust my gut and bought anyway was NSC. If I would have waited a week to buy it I could have got it a hell of a lot cheaper. It may go my way or it may not.

Sunk all of it. It'll be interesting to see if any of my stuff rebounds. Gold is strong right now.

This is all so volatile it's hard to even know what to do. I've had almost a 20% swing in the last 24 hours. I'm up 6.22% for the day, with the same stocks that destroyed me yesterday.

SVreX wrote: Who is Jonathan Joye? I'm impressed! You are whooping us. You actually made 7.49% today?? Wow.

Don't read too much into that I jumped into an Ebola-hype stock, eagerly awaiting the moment to bail (hence asking how to make a "sell" floor for a stock! I don't want to set it wrong and end up accidentally setting a ceiling and bailing on it too early). It's down double-digits today but still up 117% since I bought it. Everything else is a groin-kick. Most of it is up a percentage point or two today but still averaging about 5% down since the game started.

I need to diversify and get into some funds instead of individual stocks, but I'm waiting on some of them to rebound a little so I don't take such big losses. I don't know if I'm doing this right, LOL. I picked a few steady auto sector companies (Alcoa, Borg-Warner, GM) and a number of big defense industry names. Defense companies are in a market that will never go away, and they have captive, guaranteed income in the form of gov't purchase contracts. So why the hell are they all down 5-10%!?! Same with Tesla, I bought some before the "D tweet" started the hype machine. I thought the new Model S is a pretty good car, but the hype machine bubbled it before the reveal, tanked it before the actual info of the reveal and it's now worth less than when I bought it. It seems that a lot of the day-to-day or week-to-week fluctuations in the stock market have absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the actual company and it's products.

Here's one of mine which didn't go well.

EPUSX.

It's a mutual fund at Euro-Pacific Capital, which is run by Peter Schiff:

"The EP Strategic US Equity Fund (EPUSX) attempts to provide capital appreciation and income over a long-term investment horizon by primarily investing in U.S. domiciled companies it believes are benefiting from increasing international sales in attractive overseas markets."

You can see that this thing has been more or less bouncing off of an upward trending lower boundary for the last two years (actually longer, if you follow it further back in time), and the top of my red line stops exactly where the game started. I got into this on the first day the game started thinking it was a slam dunk for a nice 5-7% profit. I mean, the fund had been doing the SAME THING for YEARS, so surely it would be bouncing upwards in first few days of October, right? NOPE. You can see what it did. It plummeted past the lower boundary trend-line, and I got out after losing $8k or so.

Is there a lesson here beyond "market sell-offs disrupt long term trends"?

JamesMcD wrote: Is there a lesson here beyond "market sell-offs disrupt long term trends"?

That's what pretty much the entire market did.

Well, the lesson is: Don't worry about 1yr returns in real life. Over a long term investment, performance like the last week really doesn't matter much.

"Virtual Stock Exchange is experiencing technical problems, please check back."

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

If my strategy is to buy a E36 M3 ton of something on a short at openand sell 5 minutes later, this kind screws that up...

I hope real trading software is more reliable.

DILYSI Dave wrote: "Virtual Stock Exchange is experiencing technical problems, please check back." AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! If my strategy is to buy a E36 M3 ton of something on a short at openand sell 5 minutes later, this kind screws that up... I hope real trading software is more reliable.

I've never seen Fidelity go down in the 5 years or so that I've been using it.

I have seen my real "money" decrease by about 2k in the past week though. Which is scary considering how little I have.

Really wish I had some liquid cash right now, I'd be buying like crazy.

SVreX wrote: A second strategy: My wife is in 4th. As the market dumped, she moved up the ladder. She was one of the few in positive territory until today. I asked her how she did it. She picked a couple of solid stocks, but she bet small. She has less the $50,000 total committed. Played a couple shorts.

Good strategy since it was known fairly early it was going to be a "how little can you lose" game. Heck, I could have bought one single share of something and still had right at 1mil of net worth...

WTF now i'm in 3rd? I haven't touched a damn thing since last week. My stocks give me that much of a swing.

mtn wrote: I have seen my real "money" decrease by about 2k in the past week though. Which is scary considering how little I have. Really wish I had some liquid cash right now, I'd be buying like crazy.

Yes (only 5 digits) and yes.

Swank Force One wrote: WTF now i'm in 3rd? I haven't touched a damn thing since last week. My stocks give me that much of a swing.

WuTang is up to 6th while my named one is getting hammered by Ford & AMD.

Guess i'm 2nd now, closing in on James pretty quick.

mtn wrote: I have seen my real "money" decrease by about 2k in the past week though. Which is scary considering how little I have.

With my real money, I decided to sit on the sidelines for a bit shortly after I posited it a few days ago in the thread. This feels way too much like a bubble to me.

Also, really mad that i dumped one of my stocks at the beginning of the game for a couple pennies gain.

I could be riding the Ebola Train with James. I had a HUGE amount of shares, and they've jumped almost $4 in the last week.

I haven't had any time to play :(

That's the same reason (well, that and lack of funds) that has kept me out of the real market other than retirement-y things like Roths, IRAs and 401s..

Right now my IRL retirement plan looks a lot like an episode of Live Free or Die

'Sup, dudes?

Don't get too cocky if you're holding Apple stock, they've just done a thing again, so strap in tight!

I don't hold Apple stock.

I have clothing, metal, and drugs.

^I knew a guy like that in university, I should have followed his lead!