Day 9/10 - Happy Thanksgiving!

My returns are still strong, up 33% after 8 days of trading, but it wasn't enough to propel me past the 3% mark.

I took the holiday break and on Friday the stockmarket surged creating new highs. My feelings are still that the rally is most likely tied to weakness as opposed to new purchases . Monday will be the litmus test to see if this rally will be sustainable.

My market trading tactics will most likely remain the same. There will be more aggressive buying and selling in the currency market, but I will still look to follow the trends. At this point the dollar is strong. Sunday night will give us the best indicator.

Day 8 - Slammed by dollar rally, top 3.5% of traders

Yesterday afternoon I committed a cardinal sin, I walked away from my Euro currency purchase without any from of risk protection beyond my soft stop of 2%. Today I was slammed by my decision and had to dump my long Euro positions in a reactionary fashion.

This is unfortunate because yesterday I was worried that this type of event could happen and did little to protect myself in real time. With the limitations of the game staring me in the face, it becomes even more evident that some fundamental tools are missing that I have taken for granted over the years. It also makes me realize how labor intensive the game is compared to real trading.

This disappointment comes in the face of my best standing in the game so far ever, top 3.5%, top 15,000 traders out of 300,000. This makes me feel very well vindicated. My next step is to refine my approach next week after taking a two day hiatus. Tomorrow there will no trading, because of Thanksgiving, so enjoy yourselves, and Day 10 will have a lot of mixed messages, plus currency trading will shut down around the world Friday evening.

I am on the right track, for that I find some solace in my trading approach.

Day 7

Someone once told me you can have everything you want, but not all at the same time! This is my current situation in the game. My currency returns in my "Winning portfolio B" are now at 57% but I am dismally behind in my stock picks. This weekend I will try to rebalance my stock portfolio to kick my returns into high gear, while maintaining my aggressive trend following in the currency markets.

Today's stock market posted modest gains after a lot of volatility, the hope is that the shorts will continue to cover their positions into the holiday weekend and that we have seen the bottom of the stock market. If that is the case then bargain hunting is in order.

I have an old article about new president's and the stock market that I wrote four years ago when Bush and Kerry faced off, I will look around and see if I can find it to post in the coming weeks.

Day 6 - Top 6.8%

My "Winning Portfolio E" is moving like gang busters! It is now in the top 6.8% The tremendous boost by the bailout in the Citigroup added to my profits plus some very solid currency buys. I am still frustrated how I was kicked out of the Euro trade last week, my euro holdings would have been significantly stronger.

This goes back to my core philosophy about trading, there has tobe a hedge on. My losses would be a fraction of what they are if I had the choice to use options to protect my positions, possibly next year we will see options finally added.

Another mistake I keep making is actively keeping track of the various portfolios. Each one is tailoored on varying phiosophies and I have to become better at allocating my currency trades evenly among each one. This morning I discovered that I had not put on the same Euro trade my "Winning Portfolio C" and that costs me a $10-13K boost in that account. I executed the trade regardless, because the fundamentals are still there, but I am concerned about the Thanksgiving holiday.

While I am on average a trend following-swing trader I am intelligent enough to know that there are multiple factors coming into a holiday like this to consider. My long time wisdom has taught me in the futures market a long weekend typically forces the trend followers to take profits so they are not caught unaware on the following Monday, but there are two trends that I have to be conscious of:

First the overall trend of the stock market is bearish - does this mean that the shorts will be exiting the market to drive the price up or does this mean the short term bullish counter-trend buyers will leave the market in droves forcing the market down - I tend to believe the latter.

Second the over all dollar is weak, but the banks are getting large cash infusions from the federal government to stay afloat, could this portend a stronger dollar, since the weak dollar that Bush has foisted upon the American people has had little impact on improving our lives, if that is the case will the banks be buying up dollars this weekend forcing the Euro and the Canadian Dollar to lose their most recent momentum? At the same time America is banking on printing money in order to bailout the economy.

Who knows what will happen this weekend! I may have to exit my positions first thing tomorrow morning to keep the little profits I have made.

Day 5- Some Redemption

I survived the first week of the game! While I didn't win the week, at least one of my accounts "Winning Portfolio E" increased my rank to 47,600. It has definitely been an uphill battle, but my buys in the Euro and Canadian Dollar gave me returns ranging from a low of $9 to a high of $40,000.

These trades played a significant role in my interim successes. Next week my focus is to concentrate my weak portfolios in one sector, metals, hold on to my 52 week lows, and aggressively increase my forex activity, while at the same time I will not miss out on the free $60,000 CNBC bucks by answering the not so trivial "trivia" questions.

Day 4 - Technical Difficulties and Forex Success

Early this morning CNBC emailed everyone and told them that they were having technical difficulties, but it didn't really matter for me. My biggest technical difficulty has been the tanking stock market.

My 52 week low strategy has officially lost me $174,000 to date. This has driven me back down into the 98 percentile.

My other accounts are doing okay and maybe as a glimmer of hope my purchase of the Canadian Dollar has pushed me to $38K in profits in the game. It's got me thinking maybe I should just stick with what I'm good at ;)

In my portfolio B account my Canadian Dollar Position has me up to $50K a 50% return on my $100,000 investment in just four days.

Tomorrow is the end of this week's contest and I definitely will be missing out on getting the MLB All Star Game Tickets.

Out of my five accounts my best rank is 156,000. Tomorrow I will be posting screen shots of my final weekly positions and returns.

One week down, nine more to go. To make the blog more robust I will also be adding the names of the stocks I picked and wil lconsider what my next move will be based on the analysis.

Day 3 - Ranking increased

My ranking increased, I went from the low 300,000's to the mid 200,000's today putting me in the 56% group. A leap from the 96% group I was in on Tuesday. But I have to kick myself for making two mistakes.

This is a game and since it is a game there are "cheats" that can automatically improve your ranking. You can invite people to the event and you can answer questions about CNBC. If you answer questions on CNBC you will automatically get $12,000 CNBC bucks daily. That's $60,000. If you did no trading your account would e up 6% just by answering the questions.

Plus with the unlimited number of people that you can invite you can make a tremendous amount of CNBC bucks.

I haven't been doing either and that has already put me down $36,000 since the inception of the game. Tommorow that changes.


The second mistake is buying cheaply. In one of my portfolios I bought nothing but stocks at 52 week lows at around $2-3. While when they move on the upside there is a lot of potential to make a lot of money, the continued weakness of the stock market is having a disproportionate affect on their standing.

Basically the weak are getting weaker, hmm. Trend following 101, I should slap my own hand. At the same time, the game side of me sincerely believes that if I can hold them until they rebound the rewards will be tremendous.

The question is will they rebound in a nine weeks or is the weakness here to stay?

Crystal ball anyone.

Day Two

Dismal!

My strategy of picking companies at at 52 week low have produced the desired affect of exposing me to volatility, but unfortunately in the wrong direction. My rank is down in the 3oo,ooo's.

My currency picks in the Canadian Dollar have proved fruitful, while at the same time my picks in the Euro are backfiring against me.

The reality of the situation is that two things are currently bugging me:

1) My swing and position trading background is proving detrimental to my currency spot trading for the game. I have had to readjust my time frames from my usually daily and four hour outlook to looking at the five minute and the hourly chart.

2) Entering and exiting trades on an end of day basis is becoming cumbersome. There is the down time of the pending allocation, so it makes it difficult to enter and exit quickly.

Of the strategies discussed yesterday the 52 week low is the most promising. If the markets had gone in my direction I would have had some phenomenal returns based on the number of stocks in my holdings. I will stick with that strategy and attempt to make a composite portfolio of my best trading decisions in the coming weeks.

It's been a rough two days, but let's keep treking along. I look forward to seeing what the most popular stocks in the game will be come Friday. Have to keep my eye on the grand prize.

Day One

Today was pretty frustrating. My internet connection with the CNBC site began to drag during the day. It made it difficult to confirm my orders were going in and I had to constantly refresh the page.

On the bright side I was able to narrow down the stocks I was interested in trading based on a specific set of criteria I had developed over the past few weeks.

1) Stocks with 52 week Highs and Lows
2) Stocks with a share price under $10
3) Stocks with strong institutional buyers
4) Stocks that have been up after their Friday earnings report
5) Stocks that have crossed the 50 day MA

With all of these personal criteria I still had to make sure the stocks fit the contest criteria of $500 billion dollar market capitalization, exceeded the $2 per share rule, and were listed as approved stock on CNBC's site.

My goal is to 100% attempt to find fast moving, inexpensive shares that have the ability to double or triple over the life of the contest, but have little downside risk.

I have taken positions in both the Euro and the Canadian dollar, but I have yet to tackle the use of the ETFs. Ideally I wish I could be good at everything, unfortunately it's beginning to look like I may have to leave the ETFs off or convert one of the portfolios to an EFT only strategy. The only lament I have with the ETFs is that we cannot short them, based on my limited findings today.

So we are off to the races. This weeks contest ends on November 21st. By then we will see the favored shares for trading and the first winner of the contest. Tonight and tomorrow I will be re-evaluating my currency trades and I may take a more active stance when it comes to buying and selling, depending on the weakness of the dollar in the weeks to come.

Putting out the challenge to other trading gurus

While I don't consider myself a trading gurus others look at the fact that I have put out several books, seminars, and videos as proof. In fact I consider myself a true student of the markets. I give the markets my all and by teacing I am reminded of the fundamental mistakes to avoid.

In that vein I have decided to enter the CNBC challenge. While my expertise does not include stocks, I believe trading is trading, whether it's ETFs, Forex, or Commodities. This contest will give me the chance to prove it and along the way I may have the opportunity to win a few prizes and ultimately pick up the top prize of $500,000.

In the mean time I have put ou a press release to let the world know what I am doing and hopefully cajole some of the real trading gurus out there to take part in the contest. It would be exciting to see many of them pit their expertise against the market with zero risk, except the potential blow to their egos ;)

How this blog will work:

1) We have three days until the contest officially starts. At the close of the NYSE around 4:30PM EST I will post my experiences for the day.

2) At the end of each week I will let everyone know my rankings in Forex and Stocks and ETFs

3) On Sunday evenings I will talk about what I will do differently, if anything, in the upcoming week.

Some realities of the contest for me:

1) Technology is my weakness. I am definitely afraid I will make more mistakes just getting up to speed on the Think or Swim platform and learning the FXCM execution interface.

2) I have a steep learning curve when it comes to stocks, while intellectually I know what I will need to do to pick stocks, the execution will become difficult while I try to get up to speed on using my Trade Navigator platform to look for my criteria

3) I still have to speak and trade my own account.

My goal is to win the contest and any suggestions when it comes to stocks will be much appreciated.

Post on the blog how your experiences are going as well, to date I think this will be the largest number of contestants that this game has ever had.

See you on the trading screen!