CNBC's Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge

This-! I just dumped a bunch of my own real money into BAC..... (Bunch = north of 8 grand).
I fancy it for long term - it only needs to get back to 18 or so and i'll be happy with that....
not gonna happen by november mind.
 
haha yeah man not a chance. we're all competing against people who do this for a living, including hedge fund managers and Chartered Financial Analysts, but I just figured I'd put it out there and hopefully help give people a taste of trading and mutually educate each other a bit.
plus it's fake money, so it's perfect.
 
kind of wack they determine the winner by % return. you could dump all your money into some penny stock and make like 1000% return, but not much in a real capital gain.

if you interested in this stuff, go to www.updown.com

you start with $1 million and are automatically enter into a contest every month where you can win real money. plus you can trade ETFs and shortsell, and do stop and limit orders
 
They judge the winner by % return? Then why does the leader board have them listed by order of portfolio amount?
 
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use mod powers to delete those 2 posts to erase evidence. everyone uses insider trading, just don't get caught
 
My economics teacher entered this, he shorted some company, I cant remember which but jumped up like 69 gs, he also invested in a ton of penny stocks, which may be a cheap strategy but its a damn good one.
 
I'm glad I saw this thread, interesting contest. Games like this are interesting, in that there is absolutely no regard for the whole risk/reward trade-off that confronts every investor. In regards to what TechnoPotamus said a little earlier in the thread, we have jobs and there is still BOATLOADS to learn. I just graduated last year and now work as an equity research analyst and thought I knew a good bit about investing but it only took a couple minutes of getting smacked around by some seasoned portfolio managers to know my place on the totem pole.
I think the top players in this game will easily have returns in excess of 1000%. There's no reason why one wouldn't have 5 different portfolios utilizing 5 separate completely ridiculous strategies. I expect to have one, maybe 2 portfolios with adequate returns (+300% maybe) while the others will probably crash and burn terribly. But why not? There's no real risk.
My thoughts: If your looking at buying midcaps and large caps (from wal-mart to netflix to whatever), while they are companies most of us all know, they will generate modest returns or losses at best (-50% to 100% let's say). Which is fun and all - nothing wrong with that. But money is probably in distressed securities, micro caps/penny stocks. Stuff that I wouldn't never dip my own money in, but why the fuck not? what's there to lose? Just go, make a new account and move on? We're not in a raging bull market at all, so just going long on big name equities won't get you far "competition wise" in this game. Shorting a certain stock gives you a maximum return of 100% at a time, and the timing has to be spot on. In addition, looking for "value" and what not won't get you very far. You have 2 months to win. Some may not believe in it, but i think having the ability to read charts will get you far(ther) in this game. Looking for companies with great earnings that are ready to "break out" as we would say. Google "technical analysis" and read a little about price movements and volume, it gets very deep and complicated, but it could prove quite lucrative. Knowing a little is better than nothing at all. Just my thoughts. Best of luck and take chances!
 
I am in this contest myself and I think they are fun, however I do not think it is good for learning finance. The winners of contests like these always have a ridiculous return for making extremely risky bets - bets they probably would not make with real money. Successful investors think years down the line, not 10 weeks like how long this contest is. If a hedge fund manager told me he made 50% return during a 10-week period, I would run without looking back, because with that strategy he could lose 70% the next week.
As for my strategy for this contest - trade small-cap stocks and hope I hit a goldmine (for those new to finance small caps are more volatile and more likely to experience the swings necessary to be at the top of this comp).
 
yes, i know, I'm a retard. I was thinking of 100% return on a 20.00 stock vs. a .01 stock...

I wasn't thinking about it from the standpoint that in both scenarios you're investing the same amount in each.

 
No problem- just joking a bit. But yes, portfolio performance is the ultimate measure for this contest. Drop a bunch on aapl and it moves a couple bucks? You probably won't do well. Drop a bunch on a growth stock that moves from 10 to 75? You're guaranteed to do well. The trick with contests like these is create all 5 portfolios that they allow you to and make sure they are risky as shit/you would never actually do this in your own life. That way hopefully one or two of your portfolios will do well while the rest will get destroyed. With fake money there is no reason to not 'go all in' with what you have a small inkling will do well.

To anyone looking for help- the equities world is very tough to jump into, you need to know what you're doing a lot more so than currencies. Spend a lot of money on a currency you think will rise fast, or you think is doomed (short euros) - not sure if they allow you to short currency in this game though.
 
There are a shit ton of stocks that are unavailable in this game.

Also, I learned today that this game is no fun when the entire market crashes...what a shitty day for stocks.
 
Yeah not a good day today. I was going to sell my aapl when it hit 430 because that seemed like the trend as sure as shut it drops 20 in the last hour
 
Today was not a very good day... the downturn looked to be lead by financials - with Moodys cutting BAC, wells fargo, and citi's ratings. Here's something you can use: ETFs, which can follow indexes, groups of stocks, commodities, bonds, currencies.
More specifically, in today's market, the use of INVERSE ETFs would have been the ticket. For example, a Dow inverse etf tracks the dow jones where if the index is down 1%, the ETF will be up roughly 1%. Now I haven't played the game yet so I don't know its available, but today I would've been all over 3x inverse ETFs. These not only inversely track the performance of whatever that ETF follows, but multiplies the returns (or losses) by 3 times. My favorite has always been, and especially in this market is FAZ, a 3x financial bear (inverse) ETF tracking financial stocks. NOTE: I don't know this game, but I always close this position at the end of the day due to "daily rebalancing" which for simplicity let's just say it lessens returns.
We can look at today's biggest gainers on yahoo! finance. What do you see? Inverse ETFs and stocks with prices
 
I don't think you can. I've been trying to short currencies and couldn't figure out how to do it. If they allowed shorting this game would be so much easier.
 
well corn took a fucking huge tumble. I guess this is what you get when you play a game you know nothing about. I just made a second portfolio and invested everything in HP.
 
lol i was up a bit yesterday and now ide have been better holding onto cash. nothings making me money except GR which made me a decent amount but everything else in the portfolio has lost me money.

its crazy though that the leaders are at just 1.2ish million. nucking futs.
 
yeah the leaders actually dropped yesterday. After day one they were at 1.2+, yesterday at 1.16+
 
my proshares ultra short fund is making me money.

just about the only thing that is. lololol

dow down 500 FAIL

S&P down 370 FAIL
 
This was actually a really interesting thread to read on peoples opinions. Sucks that I'm Canadian and can't dabble with my piggy bank
 
pretty much all of mine ended down for the day except for GR.

I did make about 10k today though, by buying/selling a volatile stock during highs and lows. So now I have 1 million and five thousand dollars. lol.
 
hedging? going long in equities with etf shorts? i honestly dont mean to sound like a preachy bitch,, i apologize, but big money in this time horizon isnt made diversifying. put it all in one position (equity side). if it turns down reverse the position if possible or go to cash. FAZ, as mentioned lastnight, wouldve made about 100k today. eggs in one basket in this fantasy. just offering my thoughts..
 
I had all the money I could (250,000) on FAZ. went pretty high but ended slightly lower. Didn't make 100k-- you can only put up to 25% each.
 
I have one stock-- YOKU-- that is up 16% today. To bad I bought the stock prior to it's extreme decline. I'll need it to raise to about 18% just to get back to even on it.
 
quad post post-whoring, what!

I'm up $16,563.86 for the day...i know weak sauce in the grand scheme of thigns but feels a lot better than the last two days.

Stocks that are killing it for me:

AKS steel (hit a 50 week low yesterday, bound to go up)

YOKU (up 24% like whoa)

Netflix (rumors yesterday that they were partnering up with Amazon, and announced today that they're partnering with facebook)
 
Those doing really well for me are:

YOKU, AKS steel holding, AOL, FAS, Red Hat, Walter Energy, and Arch Coal Inc.
 
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