Have $100,000 USD to Invest
In my class, we are entered into a simulation to test our investing abilities. The top 10 I believe will get bonus grades. I didn't do well on my midterms so I need those marks.
What should I buy and how many stocks?
1/3 spread out over blue chip stocks.
1/4 in biotech/healthcare realm.
1/4 in small cap tech
the rest in oil and just hope for a rebound.
disclaimer: i don't know anything about trading persay.
loled at your disclaimer, +1 SB If your trading you probably want to stay away from blue chips seeing as they're mature companies and do not fluctuate as much as a small or mid cap stock.
Just throw it all in penny stocks! Disclaimer: Do not put it all in penny stocks
Disclaimer made me lol.
ONLY b/c this is paper money. USE leveraged ETFs , you have no downside. This project is a far out of the money call option- you won't get punished for blowing up your 'fund'.
If they have to be stocks, screen using finviz for badly beat up names and throw money small cap energy. russian stocks, chinese media etc.
please understand that is a TERRIBLE idea with real money.
This is a terrible idea in general, real money or not. With the amount of volatility in the markets right now, beta slippage from daily rebalancing on leveraged funds will kill his returns.
Well the time horizon is likely 4-5 months so it will be very hard to set yourself apart from the pack unless you take extremely concentrated positions. You will either be in the top ten or not in the top 10 . Playing it safe will likely not get you in the top ten so I would agree with UTD in regards to oil, except just putting it all on oil. The worst that happens is you don't get a grade boost. Study a little harder, college is not that hard.
One caveat, it would help to know how large your class size is and if there are any requirements to see the rules that everyone is playing by. If there are twelve in the class disregard everything I just said and put it in 20-30 positions and you should follow the market.
$T May Call 32/35 spread... all of it. You'll either double up or flop, but you've only got like ten weeks left in the semester anyway.
10 positions, look at small caps, pharma, oil, TTT, risky shit that you wouldn't do with real money.
the theme is be contrarian, because you have the biggest likelihood to win and win big.
FWIW, this would not be my answer if this was actually your money and not fake money
I would just short the market. If the market is up, you'll lose anyway, but if the market is down, you'll win because most people will just be long the market.
Did any of you would be investors look into VLO as suggested around $45?
3x levered ETFs are also decent if you want to either win or lose really badly
Are you graded only on gross returns or is there a sharpe ratio aspect of the scoring? If there was, that would impact the possibility of using some of the above strategies.
$LL
I bought a lot of stocks that Warren Buffett owned including the BRK A and BRK B. Its been 2 days and I gained $7000 so thats a good start.
if you buy NUGT on the open tomorrow or if you can trade pre market do it then and you'll bring in a decent haul for a days work. But you didn't hear this from me...
double post
If he followed you, he could have secured a 40% return if he sold at the top of $13.70ish.
Huh. I wonder what other nuggets of information you hold.
So you essentially ignored all the advice in this thread and bought the same stocks as every other retard in your class. Brilliant..
How did you establish a long position in BRK.A with $100,000?
Returns are pretty much completely random in that short of a time span. Like Aggmonkey said, leveraged ETFs are the way to go (TNA is 3x small caps, EDC 3x emerging markets, UWTI 3x crude).
After doing a few of these semester long virtual competitions in school, investing organizations, etc., you learn that 9 out of 10 times the person that wins made a few huge bets that ended up going right. Awful practice for real investing, but it may get you that extra credit.
What do you guys mean ETFs?
ETFs are structured, synthetic products that are made to as closely track the underlying - index, basket of assets, commodities and bonds. For example, Nikkei rose 30% yoy, so if you bought a Nikkei225 ETF your payoff would be ~30%. I would suggest longing US banks (Wells Fargo, Goldman...), as fed rates are imminent with jobs growth (Timeframe ~3 months). However, if you're looking for a quick return, try high yield funds in Japan. Some US-based REITS in japan offer up to 30% dividend, although that certainly guarantees destruction of capital. But if timeframe is short, I think it's a good idea.
A neat trick would be to mimic stocks in the portfolio from the best performing hedge funds. Interestingly, majority of the top 10 best performing hedge funds hold mostly healthcare stocks.
You are so fucked.
$VRX
If Salix falls through they still make $365mm from it, and I'm sure they're already looking for another one just in case that happens.
Is this marketwatch? You can cheat...
Good advice above to play risky as there is no downside, and it's an all-or-nothing proposition. Top 10 out of how many?
The proper strategy for this really is different from real investing. DickFuld also has a good point that you should bet away from the crowd as you may lose anyway if you go with the pack. If it's Top 10 out of 1000 I would do something pretty far out, if it's out of 50 I might be a little more reasonable.
Presumably you can't sell options in your sim? That would be free money...
Lever up long QQQ or IWM and buy deep out of the money puts.
The likelihood of one of your classmates being able to pick stocks worth a damn is pretty slim so if you even come remotely close to tracking the market you'll probably win by a wide margin.
VFH, VHT, TJX, FII, CECE, EXA - raising rates exposure, recessionary protection, and small cap long term upside
Dude I just gotta repeat what everyone else has been saying....IT'S FAKE MONEY...this is your chance to dick around and make the super risky bets that you can't with your real money....have some fun with it and you'll probably come out pretty well off
buy out of the money calls on 3x levered ETFs, maybe one of them that tracks oil? also look at the TVIX
almost won my paper money fund in college doing^^^^ of course I was too hungover one day and forgot to dump the calls after a 3x increase. Then blew up the fund
So, go all out on TVIX?
one important thing: are going to be graded for your total return or risk adjusted return??? in addition, I've had classes in which the total return was not the most important, but the reasoning and justification of your strategies. You should ask your professor about how is he/she going to grade your investments.
Exactly. If the marks were allocated like 90% Strategy/approach, 10% absolute return - I'd focus more on delivering a solid strategy.
But if it's 100% marks on return, it depends on your risk profile. How many marks out of 100% do you need? If you're in the situation whereby you need top marks or you're fucked, I'd say go big. i.e. no need for too much hedging.
How do they define the top 10? If its the most profitable, then just buy the riskiest shit you can find. Load up on a bunch of out of the money options, leveraged ETF''s, micro/small cap, in that order as allowed. Its fake money, so make a splash! However, if your judged on the quality or soundness of your asset allocation, ignore everything I just said.
Just put all your money into IPOs. If it is market watch you will make a ton
In all seriousness, I would check the rules of the trading site. I remember a couple of years back I had a similar challenge in one of my classes. You could make trades after hours (i.e., before the market opened the following AM) and the price you would purchase the shares at was the previous day's closing price. Essentially you could take advantage of huge overnight moves in stocks to guarantee yourself gains. This may have just been a glitch in the trading platform, but it helped me beat the rest of my class my a VERY significant amount and earn an A on the assignment (much to the professors disappointment).
(deleted, double post)
How many classmates are you competing against? If you just need to place top 10/(20-50) you could probably get by with just sound investing, if you need to place top 10 out of a lot you need to deliberately increase your risk, ie leveraged funds or high risk companies.
F***, I just lost 32000$ today. I think I just need to earn 20% to qualify.
go long and short on indices futures at the same time, and flip them intra-week... (Repeat) Won't make tons, but at least you're hedged
I bought 200,000 of TVIX at 1.98. Its at like 1.79 now. I lost more than $40,000
So.. that's $396k. Effectively, you've leveraged on your entire portfolio by 8x on VIX?
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