About what every swim costs, The woman is extra
I’m not a fan of Robert Mugabe by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, given the option of dinner with Mugabe or rubbing my ears with honey and sleeping on a fire ant nest, I’d go looking for some honey. So why would I be happy about him making an announcement that whites can’t own land? Continue reading
I remember commenting to a friend before this years challenge started, that if a trader wins the contest I’ll eat my hat… I’ve always said that it’s far more profitable to be an investor, but it seems like Feral Wolf is forcing me to research hat recipes. Can you hang in there until the end of the year Feral? I’m sure many of the other members would love to hear what techniques and strategies you use, even if you just give quite broad descriptions.
Here’s the trades made by Feral Wolf this far: Continue reading
Here we are in May already with the elections done and dusted. Everything seems to have gone as expected, and once again we’ve had a mostly safe and fair election. I’m still proud to be living in a country where you can boo the president and not get arrested. So, since I’m happy, and it seems the investors are happy too, it seems to be a good time to put more money to work for me.
Now where are we going to put it? First things first, if you owe money it’s time to rank it in a list. Not in terms of which one you’d like to get rid of, or which has the highest value, but in order of interest rates, from highest to lowest. If you’re a ludicrous spender, or need a fire pool, your list could look something like this: Continue reading
Ok so I know I’m a little late this month, I was putting my feet up and relaxing. While being eaten alive by mosquitos. Hopefully you’ve seen that the money is in. March was quiet-ish, last years winner qriffin spent a lot of the time in the number 1 spot, before dropping out of the top 10 and vanishing into the ether. Qriffin where are you, come back, jaDEB misses you!
So since I don’t have much interesting news to give you, I’m going to cheat a little and write about someone else’s writing. I saw a finance post on facebook that had received a lot of likes and shares. The title is ‘The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For What You Should Do With All Of Your Money‘ and it’s written by someone called James Altucher who’s been a hedge fund manager, venture capitalist and best selling author and was posted on Business Insider. Great title, but let’s take a look at the content. Continue reading
Another R100 000 has been deposited into your account!
Month two, done and dusted. The market bounced back from a brief correction, and now we have 147 out of 236 competitors showing profit. Qriffin re-entered after some testing and soared up the charts to the number two spot before being overtaken by Sparkz0629. With no possibility for insider trading or performing impossible trades, it has left me wondering why he isn’t a professional trader… Leading by a fairly big margin is Sparkz0629 only holding Anglogold Ashanti. I wonder if he’ll keep backing them again this month.
Shorting shares, a wild ride
The battle for the bottom is currently being won by GAZ who backed the JD group with his R200k. Sadly they’re down 22% since he bought. Perhaps we should have a contest in a contest, see who can get to the bottom, without wasting money of fees of course. The real traders out there know you can make money by picking losers just as much as you can by picking winners. They call this shorting, which is basically lending a share from someone else, selling it, waiting for the price to drop and then buying it back and giving it back to the original owner. Sounds weird, but if you could do it well you’d be a very very rich man. Ironically picking a loser is just as hard as picking a winner, ask all the people who have been shorting Tesla shares for the past while!
OK enough reading now, you have the cash, it’s time to put it to good use. Will you buy more, or will you sell what you have because there’s a big crash coming?
All the best with your investments,
Well that was an interesting first month of the contest. And what a month it’s been for the markets! If you go to the newly colour coded stats page you’ll see a lot of red. Out of the 197 listed portfolios, only 52 are showing a profit, so if you haven’t entered yet, you could come in now and be ahead of the majority of competitors!
As you know, the contest now has selling now enabled. With that, it took about a day for me to confirm that the can is opened and worms are everywhere! Continue reading
Left to right: AMT, qriffin and DGrobbs
It’s been a very interesting first year, with the leader-board shuffling around at a far greater rate than I would have guessed. JaDEB performed some real acrobatics to move from the very bottom of the table to the very top with some brave purchasing of Sibanye gold, eventually settling in 14th place. SaiyanZ found a way to ‘beat’ the game by purchasing only 1c shares ensuring he couldn’t lose any money, and if they went to 2c he would double his net worth. Of course in reality this isn’t possible, and a disclaimer was added to his holdings page after a number of people new to trading asked me if they should do this in real life!
Looking at how some of the shares performed this year, we can see one stand-out loser. Continue reading
Dear Investor Challenge,
I’d like to get rich, how do I do that?
Thanks,
I.M. Gettingby
Einstein apparently said this
Well this is a pleasant change Mr Gettingby. The last guy to write in was trying to lose money. Tough nut to crack that one is. What you want is soooo much easier to achieve. Well yes, of course I can help. It’s really simple in fact. Here’s the only way to get rich in one sentence: Continue reading
Dear Investor Challenge,
Could you help me? My net worth is far too high and I feel like a pack animal dragging my huge wallet around. I need to lighten the load and lose some capital. I don’t really like going to the casino, it’s far too noisy, and if I buy stuff it’ll just clutter up my house. What I’d like to do is get my total worth down using the stock market. I realise this will be very difficult, so at least help me make less than the market average. Do you have any advice?
Sincerely,
Born Winner.
It looks like everyone is enjoying the competition. In May we reached the 300 competitors mark. Not bad for something that’s only been running for 6 weeks. I’ve created a new page to show some statistics as you can see here. Up to now, the most purchased share in Rand terms has been Coronation with over R9m purchased. Next up is the worlds second largest brewer, SAB with over R6.5m and in third Capitec with R5.5m.
You can also see which shares have gained the most in value since first purchase. Aside from the penny shares, the largest gains in regularly traded shares are Richemont gaining 25.5%, Arcelor Mittal at 22.5%, and then CML and Naspers, both at 21.8%. Note that CML has paid a dividend which counts in it’s favour. Continue reading
