up and down - first shorting a banking stock at the wrong time, losing 60k, then covering it, and buying the same damn stock with the remaining money and jumping back up as the banking stocks are moving up.

All ur base are belong to Meredith Whitney! :^)

More like Bernard Guerrero Securities!

heheheheh

Getting killed on it in real life too.  I was "early" on GM, as the traders say :-p

I need to sell all the crap I got so I can go into better sectors and pick up those bargains :) Most of my stuff seems overpriced.

I went with a bunch of oil and gas related stocks and it's doing so so. And since that bubble can burst any time, I might be selling it all shortly and moving into a few different industries :)

But yeah, GM and Ford are risky bets. Sorry to see the mini-dive on it. Who knows, it might pickup by the end of the day.

on my virtual stuff, but on the other I would prefer the oil would go down :) I think it's almost time to get out of it though.

The game has about a 50% success rate at actually executing trades in a timely fashion. It's getting pretty ridiculous.

I tried to cash in on my successful BSC short on Friday, at 10.10. It did trade at 10.10 a few minutes after I placed the trade , but the trade did not go through.

Then it closed at 10.20 and today it's worth 10.30 or something. I can still make money (I shorted at 10.60), but I'm kind of annoyed considering that the game also screwed up the ORCL purchase of BEAS.

By the way, as I've had no response, my plan is to whittle down the difference by selling the same quantity of shares low and buying high over a few days. I think losing money should be easier than making it, but I've never tried to do it on purpose before. We'll see what happens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%29

They only work under two circumstances, one very theoretical and the other very real but requiring some of what you seek to avoid:

A) You have effectively infinitely large pockets. I don't think 100K over 1 year counts.

B) There are underlying trends or cycles in the market or bet you're playing. In that case, either a martingale or anti-martingale might work, depending on whether the effect is a regression-to-the-mean or some kind of trend (higher highs or lower lows). But trends and/or regression-to-the-mean mean that you have to have some idea of the driving force, whether it be fundamentals or as simple as trend-following/momentum.

means you think the stock is going to decrease in value, so you "sell short" it to someone else (the computer in our game) at the current price and then later when it falls you "buy to cover" to complete the transaction. Basically it's the opposite of buying low and then selling when the stock value gets high.

I think, anyway =) There are additional more complicated options not available in the game... lots of ways to lose money in real life.

I did not expect these news myself...

...closely tracks the skymutt play money account, because I'm making similar trades in both accounts.  So while I'm not beating a few of the hotshot daytraders on SwordsCrossed, I'm beating the market :-)

wish i hadn't sold my google shares 2 days ago

last night... Gonna lose my shirt today.

You're not allowed to buy cheap stocks. They go up $1, which doubles your money. :-)

I'm glad he's doing well, but he may want to beware that cheap stocks will fall just as quickly.

Dude, 95 trades? Are you day trading? :)

I was on tilt... google and oracle sliding, I figured I'd recoup it all with a quick strike, then sell after it rose another few dollars.

Serves me right. But looking at the long term I figure I'll at least get even, I bought low in a big-picture sense. Never one to learn my lesson and walk away, I'm buying 200 more shares now that they're even cheaper!

for the time being :) And he probably likes the sweet delicious donuts.

By writing this comment, I'm taking food out of the mouths of children because I'm spending time doing the former instead of doing the latter.

And as I've said many times about this, the fact that we have more and everyone else has the same doesn't really hurt anyone else in the long run, but it is immoral. In 2 days, I've made more money in speculation than than I made IRL last year in wages. Frankly, thats criminally ridiculous. Doing physical labor deserves more compensation than "moving money around in circles".

This by no means implies I feel the same way about investors. People who invest in companies help create jobs by raising capital. I don't have much of a problem with this sort of "work" because it is necessary (but not as necessary as many think) for the economy.

To discourage speculation and increase the importance of labor, I think that taxes should be cut across the board on labor, but increased on short-term capital gains. A very small sales tax on stock transactions would be advisable as well.

for sure!

I think it's just a straight-shot game. I'm not even sure how stock splits are addressed. But no calls/puts as far as I know.

Take a look at the user agreement if you want. The only thing I see in it is that if you post anything in the discussions, they get a non-exclusive license to your posts. That probably means they can use it in any number of data mining/aggregation techniques and sell that info to others.

It was trading $2.50 above JP Morgan's $10 bid on speculation of an even higher bid, AFTER JPMorgan had already raised the bid fivefold.  I thought that was a little rich.  I covered at $11.25 on 2000 shares for a quick $2500 gain :-)

It could all turn on me quickly-- If the market continues to rise, I'm toast, because I'm weighted short.

for last place! Hah, I bet I win!

I'm in. I'm the typical "hands off" long term investor, so I' will probably lose my shirt ;}

to boost you up a bit?

I have to do some research before I make my buys. I guess I have about a year or so to do that.

I can still change the end date and a few other options if any one is interested in playing longer.