Foo - Nice stock companies

In school im doing this extracircular thing and we are doing that stock market game. I want to win. I need some semi large or small companies that will be good to invest. I have 500k+ to spend. How many shares, and in what company should I do. Ive already done SBUX so dont say it:D

Invest it all in whatever company makes Monster Energy. Invest the remainder in oil companies, haliburton and any other companies the Bushies endow w/ their patronage.

Follow Danno's advice or my advice in this thread (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=174285). Remember, the objective is not sound investing. The objective is to win a game. Don't confuse the two, and don't confuse strategies for these two very different objectives.

Heh, I remember doing that in high school. Is it stocksquest.com? In the game we played, the game was actually about 15 minutes behind the real market, so you could cheat so easily. Just check how the real stocks did overnight just as the real markets open, and buy a bunch of whatever stocks did good. 15 minutes later when the game markets open, you'll have made a crap load of money...

I've been doing pretty well shorting real-estate stocks this past year...

Rather than looking for "sure win" picks, take a little more time to learn about how the players in the market affect pricing of stocks. Remember the Dutch tulip craze or pet-rocks or cabbage-patch kids, etc? Same thing with the stock market. It's the mental state of the next buyer and what they're willing to pay you for that stock which determine the pricing... learn to get into their heads...

Unfortunately a lot of the existing paradigm in investments come out of the Depression era and is primarily geared towards picking companies with high dividend yields. Back in the '50s, getting a 20-30% dividend was common. Nowadays, good luck getting getting 1-2%.

So I suggest not seeking out "hot tips", but learning various strategies in the stock-market. Then figuring out which strategies will yield the highest profit for any given stock. Any stock is in one of three states, it's going up, it's going down, it's staying flat. You can make money regardless of what it's doing, but you have to select the proper tactic. Do your homework.

The biggest stumbling block is emotional-control, managing greed, ego and fear. The levels and up & down swings of these emotions seems to be in proportion to the amount of real money you have in the market. There are people who win big playing simulations, they know the tactics and strategies like the back of their hand and they've got impeccable timing at getting in and out. However, when they got real money on the line, they freeze up like bambi in the headlights as their account gets smaller and smaller and smaller... suckerzzzz!!! :)

Anyway, be very, very wary of who and what kind of information you learn from people. Implicit with that knowledge will be the results that person has achieved. No one can tell you how to get a result that they themselves have not achieved. If CPAs, stockbrokers and financial-planners really know how to make it big in the stock-market, they'd be retired making millions in their own accounts and sipping mai-tais on the beach. NOT working full-time 8-5, 5-days/week managing OTHER people's millions... heh, heh...

PM'd you more info... ;)

Heh, I remember doing that in high school. Is it stocksquest.com? In the game we played, the game was actually about 15 minutes behind the real market, so you could cheat so easily. Just check how the real stocks did overnight just as the real markets open, and buy a bunch of whatever stocks did good. 15 minutes later when the game markets open, you'll have made a crap load of money...


If only one could do something like that in real life and not have to explain it to a judge in a federal court.

Well... they actually do get away with stuff like that... If the judge didn't overhear you making that deal on the golf-course, you're in the clear... :)

BTW - jschen's right on, these games are short-term poker-matches. They have real-life investment challenges as well where you play with $100-500k of real money. The payoff is really just bragging rights and getting written up on the cover of Barron's and stuff (these guys already have so much money, they couldn't care less about making more, they're probably already using $10k bricks of $100 bills for firewood as it is).

Usually the top-winners each year rack up +200-300% returns during the 2-3 months of the game, but you never see them again. The specific strategy they used was fine-tuned and honed for that particular time-frame only and after that, it's kaput! There are however, guys who place consistently in the top-10 placings with +100-200% returns and they can keep it up year after year. These are the ones you want to follow and learn form... one of them was actually out here recently looking at racehorses... That's his new investment technique... heh, heh...

I did that **** in a math class once in high school. Every cent of my hypothetical funds went to rock shox.

Interest rates are higher, so look at banks and big mortgage lenders. Prices of metals is soaring, copper and steel prices have almost doubled in the last one year, research companies that process copper, aluminium, and Nucor Steel, their profits are very high at the moment. Memory chips companies are making money also, but some are involved in a price fixing investigation right now, avoid Samsung and Hynix for that reason. Look at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), they are gaining market share on Intel. There is always biotech, look at Amgen for a trend.

Horay thanks:D