As someone who follows contest threads for entertainment, I'll preface saying I appreciate all the work you do in running the contest.Next thing you know, you're going to say that keeping track of the details of individual stocks can help you beat the market? I don't know what this board is coming to. You're welcome to compare the (much better current) performance to my alternative short basket if you wish, as I said in my original post. This one is tracked only on the 'backup' page of the spreadsheet at the bottom below the official entries.As the last trade in TIO was on 11/13/23 and trading was halted, don't see how you can short a stock that has no volume and trading is suspended. I would say that your pick is invalid and outside the spirit of this contest.
In any event, there's no prescription on the market volume or current trading status in the rules, as these sorts of practical considerations and many others (dividends, margin calls on short losses, etc) would make it an even more onerous task to manage the 250 stock picks from our contestants. Just making sure each stock in Russell 3000 seemed to be more than enough of a challenge to judge by this year's entries.
As for the spirit of the contest, I guess I'm the arbiter of that and my view is that like in the real market, the goal of the contest is to do the best you can within the fairly simple, if idealized, rules.
I have to agree with RM here. While we accept the contest is not a simulation of real trading, it seems to me that the opening price ought to be taken after one posts their picks. You explain it yourself regarding closing positions:
Doesn't being able to go back in time and buy before a halt contradict that reasoning? Again, questions about the rules come from a desire to help maintain the appearance of fairness and interest in the competition. Best of luck to the fund managers and the contest managerNo, I can't do that. There can be after hours news like earnings and the last close is no longer a fair price; you could even see cases like MPW today where the after hours price is down considerably (-20% when I looked at one point). It wouldn't be reasonable to let you go back in time and sell before the bad earnings came out using today's close from before the news broke.
Basically the rule is you get the next market close after you post "close my position".
Statistics: Posted by HoldTheLine — Sat Mar 30, 2024 11:21 pm — Replies 157 — Views 28612