Stock Picking (Beat Boho) Contest - V2.0

[Boho]

Boho, you do have a trader's mindset .

SP500 only gained 0.44% on Friday. So, nunnun's portfolio did exactly what it was supposed to do ... keep pace with the indexes nunnun is following . That's the beauty of being an index investor.

I was trying to account for his relatively poor performance. Today it's not the rare trader who outperformed the market. It's the typical trader.

 

[ERD50]

I was trying to account for his relatively poor performance. Today it's not the rare trader who outperformed the market. It's the typical trader.

And I suppose that you could find days where the "typical trader" (by that I assume you mean some majority of those in this contest?) underperformed the market. But did you look for those?

Small sample size, volatility, diversity vs lower diversification. On any given day, I'd expect a pretty broad range of results.

But as you have mentioned, this is a multi year contest, and the current leader-board is a function of ~ 8 (?) months so far, not any one day.

Carry on.

-ERD50

 

[easysurfer]

I was trying to account for his relatively poor performance. Today it's not the rare trader who outperformed the market. It's the typical trader.

The reason for the relatively poor performance is right in front of you. Because the SP500 barely changed. Would be time to worry if the SP500 did one thing and the index which follows did something else.

As I was alluding to in the previous post, is as the market goes, so does the index that follows. Some may look at that as a bad thing. But that's a good thing. Outside variables (like a stock picker's lack of skills. ..cough, cough) don't come into play.

 

[Boho]

The reason for the relatively poor performance is right in front of you. Because the SP500 barely changed. Would be time to worry if the SP500 did one thing and the index which follows did something else.

As I was alluding to in the previous post, is as the market goes, so does the index that follows. Some may look at that as a bad thing. But that's a good thing. Outside variables (like a stock picker's lack of skills. ..cough, cough) don't come into play.

By "relatively" I mean compared to the traders in the contest. It's not supposed to be like this. It wasn't even a down day.

 

[easysurfer]

By "relatively" I mean compared to the traders in the contest. It's not supposed to be like this. It wasn't even a down day.

Okay. Think I see what you are trying to compare.

In the contest, have you identified which are traders and which or not? I'd expect there are different levels of activity.

 

[ERD50]

By "relatively" I mean compared to the traders in the contest. It's not supposed to be like this. It wasn't even a down day.

Nothing is like it is "supposed to be". At this point in the game, the trader's (and non-traders who didn't buy the index), should be expected to have normal distribution around the market (or our proxy, "nunnun"). But there is a bias to the downside.

The downside bias is interesting. In theory, it seems it should be just as hard (or easy?) to pick losers as it is winners. I don't think trading expenses account for the delta, they seem pretty low relative to a $1M portfolio. I just find it curious that so many are doing so bad, rather than just average

-ERD50

 

[easysurfer]

Nothing is like it is "supposed to be". At this point in the game, the trader's (and non-traders who didn't buy the index), should be expected to have normal distribution around the market (or our proxy, "nunnun"). But there is a bias to the downside.

The downside bias is interesting. In theory, it seems it should be just as hard (or easy?) to pick losers as it is winners. I don't think trading expenses account for the delta, they seem pretty low relative to a $1M portfolio. I just find it curious that so many are doing so bad, rather than just average

-ERD50

That's a good point about just as hard as picking losers as winners. Not so straight forward.

 

[sengsational]

I spent way too much time writing a scraper for our game. At first, the idea was to make a graph with account value history by player, but there's really not enough data to support that. There kind of is, but the data points would be when a trade happened, so if a player made one trade on day one, their line would start at $1M and end at whatever today's value is...not too interesting. I thought about using the "Corporate Action", since that will have more events, but it appears to be impossible to view others' "Corporate Action" screen.

Anyway, the table below is sorted by value of open investments. I thought that was more interesting than rank since that put's people that are playing (but not necessarily winning) the game at the top.

The table is a current snapshot with a few little things I calculate. The average cash indicates how bullish the player has been throughout the game. The lower the value, the more bullish. Negative here means they've been leveraged. A big positive number means they're not fully invested.

Then we can see how many open positions they have, and the counts for long, short and option transactions. R/T is 'round trip', meaning a buy and a matching sell. So those are closed positions. The unique stock number gives you an indication if the activity is on different stuff or not.

Finally the best and the worst trades for each player. Just for fun.

If there's anything else you'd like to see, let me know; now that the hard work is done, pulling different views might not be that bad.

We can see that since the market has been strong, those that have been leveraged have done the best, but not universally so. One can imagine that if there is a pull-back from the highs, those leveraged players stand to fall precipitously.

It looks like the stock picker award has to go to Totoro_ERF, who, without leverage, and only long trades, has an account value nearing the best.

K$|counts|best|worst

Player|Rank|Value of All|Value of:Open|Cash Balance|Average Cash
exnavynuke|

1​

|

$1,453K​

|

$1,742K​

|

$-289K​

|

$-397K​

|
lawrencewendall|

19​

|

$1,003K​

|

$1,658K​

|

$-655K​

|

$-502K​

|
comsecga|

3​

|

$1,366K​

|

$1,467K​

|

$-101K​

|

$-14K​

|
Totoro_ERF|

2​

|

$1,370K​

|

$1,394K​

|

$-25K​

|

$149K​

|
up98down34|

4​

|

$1,341K​

|

$1,334K​

|

$7K​

|

$161K​

|
DieWurst|

6​

|

$1,255K​

|

$1,255K​

|

$0K​

|

$12K​

|
nunnun|

7​

|

$1,203K​

|

$1,188K​

|

$16K​

|

$12K​

|
cfahey27|

8​

|

$1,155K​

|

$1,151K​

|

$4K​

|

$616K​

|
sengsational|

10​

|

$1,152K​

|

$1,150K​

|

$2K​

|

$33K​

|
nvestysly|

12​

|

$1,117K​

|

$1,113K​

|

$4K​

|

$541K​

|
lbymfreddie|

13​

|

$1,107K​

|

$1,096K​

|

$11K​

|

$92K​

|
Spudd|

15​

|

$1,096K​

|

$1,091K​

|

$5K​

|

$281K​

|
Clone2|

16​

|

$1,079K​

|

$1,078K​

|

$1K​

|

$916K​

|
easysurfer|

14​

|

$1,106K​

|

$992K​

|

$114K​

|

$326K​

|
RISP|

11​

|

$1,130K​

|

$919K​

|

$212K​

|

$58K​

|
trashcan12|

25​

|

$965K​

|

$887K​

|

$78K​

|

$120K​

|
RiskyBusinessC2|

17​

|

$1,051K​

|

$827K​

|

$224K​

|

$686K​

|
kite_rider|

9​

|

$1,154K​

|

$812K​

|

$342K​

|

$760K​

|
BohoII|

18​

|

$1,018K​

|

$783K​

|

$235K​

|

$340K​

|
Fermion1|

5​

|

$1,288K​

|

$690K​

|

$598K​

|

$681K​

|
Fermion|

26​

|

$704K​

|

$440K​

|

$264K​

|

$748K​

|
longshot345kv|

20​

|

$1,000K​

|

$0K​

|

$1,000K​

|

$-0K​

|
MizRosie|

22​

|

$1,000K​

|

$0K​

|

$1,000K​

|

$-0K​

|
Gayl|

21​

|

$1,000K​

|

$0K​

|

$1,000K​

|

$-0K​

|
garyweis|

23​

|

$1,000K​

|

$0K​

|

$1,000K​

|

$-0K​

|

|

Current Open|Long Trades|Short Trades|Option Trades|R/T Trades|R/T-Unique Stocks

4​

|

12​

|

0​

|

0​

|

5​

|

3​

|

8​

|

19​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

6​

|

27​

|

4​

|

0​

|

11​

|

10​

|

4​

|

7​

|

0​

|

0​

|

1​

|

1​

|

4​

|

12​

|

0​

|

0​

|

1​

|

1​

|

3​

|

8​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

2​

|

2​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

4​

|

5​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

28​

|

108​

|

0​

|

0​

|

41​

|

31​

|

20​

|

22​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

4​

|

20​

|

0​

|

0​

|

6​

|

3​

|

8​

|

84​

|

2​

|

3​

|

47​

|

28​

|

2​

|

2​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

3​

|

18​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

10​

|

30​

|

6​

|

1​

|

11​

|

7​

|

7​

|

9​

|

0​

|

0​

|

2​

|

1​

|

4​

|

5​

|

2​

|

12​

|

4​

|

3​

|

6​

|

6​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

3​

|

191​

|

0​

|

0​

|

100​

|

55​

|

1​

|

16​

|

1​

|

0​

|

9​

|

4​

|

2​

|

2​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

0​

|

|

Ticker Stock|Gain Loss|Gain/Loss Percent
FAS|

$208K​

|

59%​

|
SDYL|

$12K​

|

22%​

|
SHOP|

$109K​

|

61%​

|
PII|

$152K​

|

60%​

|
MNKD|

$169K​

|

79%​

|
VWO|

$122K​

|

24%​

|
VOO|

$94K​

|

19%​

|
AAPL|

$75K​

|

16%​

|
IRMD|

$28K​

|

79%​

|
DE|

$23K​

|

47%​

|
BOFI|

$159K​

|

33%​

|
CNCE|

$66K​

|

31%​

|
CAT|

$42K​

|

8%​

|
VTI|

$58K​

|

16%​

|
HRB|

$33K​

|

33%​

|
PEY|

$26K​

|

8%​

|
EDF|

$26K​

|

6%​

|
ANET|

$82K​

|

44%​

|
ANW|

$25K​

|

4%​

|
NVDA|

$249K​

|

28%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|

|

Ticker Stock|Gain Loss|Gain/Loss Percent
SOXL|

$-36K​

|

-7%​

|
FTR|

$-86K​

|

-43%​

|
GIMO|

$-59K​

|

-21%​

|
DB|

$11K​

|

6%​

|
O|

$11K​

|

4%​

|
VEU|

$40K​

|

20%​

|
VTI|

$94K​

|

19%​

|
MU|

$18K​

|

11%​

|
ICON|

$-23K​

|

-70%​

|
GE|

$-18K​

|

-32%​

|
TEVA|

$-163K​

|

-51%​

|
BB|

$-101K​

|

-20%​

|
DE|

$37K​

|

7%​

|
BND|

$-4K​

|

-1%​

|
CLF|

$-18K​

|

-10%​

|
DES|

$-100K​

|

-63%​

|
TICC|

$-1K​

|

-18%​

|
BABA|

$1K​

|

3%​

|
RAD|

$-163K​

|

-26%​

|
ECYT|

$-37K​

|

-23%​

|
CLSN|

$-252K​

|

-51%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|
(none)|

$0K​

|

?%​

|

 

[ERD50]

....

Anyway, the table below is sorted by value of open investments. I thought that was more interesting than rank since that put's people that are playing (but not necessarily winning) the game at the top.

The table is a current snapshot with a few little things I calculate. The average cash indicates how bullish the player has been throughout the game. The lower the value, the more bullish. Negative here means they've been leveraged. A big positive number means they're not fully invested. ...

Finally the best and the worst trades for each player. Just for fun.

...

Wowsers! Looks like a lot of work!

So does this mean that the "trader to beat" (whose name I shall not mention until the end of the month ), has had these trades:

BEST: __ANW _____ $25K ___ 4%
WORST: _RAD ___ $-163K __-26%

While the napper has had:

BEST: ___VOO ___ $94K ___ 19%
WORST: _VTI ____ $94K ___ 19%

Fascinating! 4% is the best of 100 trades?

It's also interesting that 3 of 4 that are living on the edge (using margin) are at the top. Though for an up market, maybe expected?

-ERD50

 

[Boho]

Good work! What I'd like to see would favor me but I'll mention it anyway. The win/loss record for round trip trades. The way I might do it if my programming stills weren't rusty is to make a list of stocks bought and delete duplicates (add all buys of the same stock together). Do the same for stocks sold. If the number of shares of a sold stock don't equal the number of shares of the corresponding bought stock, subtract what's hasn't been sold. Then compare the values. Or however you want to do it if you choose to accept this mission. I'm not sure how often I beat the market with my trades but I know I only lost money on a tiny percentage of my trades.

 

[Boho]

Fascinating! 4% is the best of 100 trades?

4% a couple of times a week with a fraction of my portfolio is really good though, from my rough calculations. I sell fast so there's no time for them to rise much.

...actually I set my sell limits about 1/4% higher and I figured that was good enough for day trades.

 

[easysurfer]

Sensational...the tables are pretty impressive. Thanks!

 

[ERD50]

Good work! What I'd like to see would favor me but I'll mention it anyway. The win/loss record for round trip trades. The way I might do it if my programming stills weren't rusty is to make a list of stocks bought and delete duplicates (add all buys of the same stock together). Do the same for stocks sold. If the number of shares of a sold stock don't equal the number of shares of the corresponding bought stock, subtract what's hasn't been sold. Then compare the values. Or however you want to do it if you choose to accept this mission. I'm not sure how often I beat the market with my trades but I know I only lost money on a tiny percentage of my trades.

4% a couple of times a week with a fraction of my portfolio is really good though, from my rough calculations. I sell fast so there's no time for them to rise much.

...actually I set my sell limits about 1/4% higher and I figured that was good enough for day trades.

Actually, the most telling statistic is summed up in one easy to understand number - the portfolio value!

A second number that might provide some insight would be volatility, or maybe % of days above the market (running cumulative total, not daily performance).

-ERD50

 

[SecondCor521]

Good work! What I'd like to see would favor me but I'll mention it anyway. The win/loss record for round trip trades. The way I might do it if my programming stills weren't rusty is to make a list of stocks bought and delete duplicates (add all buys of the same stock together). Do the same for stocks sold. If the number of shares of a sold stock don't equal the number of shares of the corresponding bought stock, subtract what's hasn't been sold. Then compare the values. Or however you want to do it if you choose to accept this mission. I'm not sure how often I beat the market with my trades but I know I only lost money on a tiny percentage of my trades.

To my black-and-white engineering mind, since the title of the thread is "Beat Boho" and the contest is three years long, the only statistic that matters is whether one's rank at the end of the three year period is higher than yours.

I don't wager, but if I did I would probably put real money on nunnun's rank being higher than yours and more than half of the participants at the end of the contest.

I also would wager that after the contest ends, if you're still around the forum, that you'll find some arbitrary metric that puts you in first place. Number of trades divided by the advance/decline line of the NASDAQ divided by butter production in Bangladesh or something.

Good luck! I appreciate your positive attitude almost as much as I think you are misguided in your rationalizations.

 

[easysurfer]

To my black-and-white engineering mind, since the title of the thread is "Beat Boho" and the contest is three years long, the only statistic that matters is whether one's rank at the end of the three year period is higher than yours.

I don't wager, but if I did I would probably put real money on nunnun's rank being higher than yours and more than half of the participants at the end of the contest.

I also would wager that after the contest ends, if you're still around the forum, that you'll find some arbitrary metric that puts you in first place. Number of trades divided by the advance/decline line of the NASDAQ divided by butter production in Bangladesh or something.

Good luck! I appreciate your positive attitude almost as much as I think you are misguided in your rationalizations.

+1. Boho will probably find a way to explain how only if things were a bit different, he'd be in first or way up in the standings..

Bolded added in quote.

Reminds me years ago, watching a football analyst going over past games in the season. Something like "If such and such didn't happen in game 1, we would have won. Plus if such and such didn't happen in games 6 and 8, we would have won those games. We should be in first place and undefeated!!". Then he laughed and realized how silly the rationalizing was .

There was also a football coach who'd say "We are as good a team as our record shows." End of argument. Nice and succinct .

 

[Boho]

Extrapolation. I'd like to see end-of-contest predictions based on performance in various time frames to date. Last three months, six months, from start, or whatever periods you choose. A performance graph for each player would work. A lot of people here seem to want to ignore useful statistics.

 

[easysurfer]

Extrapolation. I'd like to see end-of-contest predictions based on performance in various time frames to date. Last three months, six months, from start, or whatever periods you choose. A performance graph for each player would work. A lot of people here seem to want to ignore useful statistics.

Statistics are nice and fun to look at. But would be interesting to see what correlation if any with success, or just in hindsight. The predictions you are hoping to see may be elusive.

IMO, goes back to an passive investor mindset vs active investor.

Back in the day, before I discovered passive investing. I remember subscribing to this mutual fund database. Forget from what company. For the most part, the data were the fund rankings and all different data points (1, 3, 5 yr performance history, expense ratios, etc.). I thought I could "figure out" and predict the top performers in the future by looking at patterns and with the help of computer power. Of course, I found out that the data soon got old and not useful anymore. I was better off just saving the subscription money.

That was a long time ago as I think the data arrived in about 6 floppy disks and CD readers either weren't around or too costly for the general consumer .

 

[sengsational]

Presuming we only look at closed out positions, here are the stats for percent winning vs losing trades.

Some players haven't closed out trades, so don't show.

Player|Rank|Winning Trades|Losing Trades|Percent Winners
exnavynuke|

1​

|

2​

|

3​

|

40%​

|
Totoro_ERF|

2​

|

1​

|

0​

|

100%​

|
comsecga|

3​

|

4​

|

7​

|

36%​

|
up98down34|

4​

|

1​

|

0​

|

100%​

|
Fermion1|

5​

|

5​

|

4​

|

56%​

|
sengsational|

10​

|

27​

|

14​

|

66%​

|
RISP|

11​

|

7​

|

4​

|

64%​

|
lbymfreddie|

13​

|

4​

|

2​

|

67%​

|
Spudd|

15​

|

18​

|

29​

|

38%​

|
RiskyBusinessC2|

17​

|

2​

|

2​

|

50%​

|
BohoII|

18​

|

78​

|

22​

|

78%​

|
trashcan12|

25​

|

1​

|

1​

|

50%​

|

 

[SecondCor521]

A lot of people here seem to want to ignore useful statistics.

Like contest-to-date rank.

 

[Boho]

Totoro could very well win the percent winners contest with his one stock. That's fine. We just have to look at the number of holdings to see how much it matters.

 

[sengsational]

I'm doing my best to make Boho look good

This table joins tickers together so should add up to the unique tickers that each player has had active. So for each stock a player has touched, this chart puts it in the plus or minus column.

Again, ignoring open positions.

Player|Rank|Winning Trades|Losing Trades|Percent Winners
exnavynuke|

1​

|

0​

|

3​

|

0%​

|
Totoro_ERF|

2​

|

1​

|

0​

|

100%​

|
comsecga|

3​

|

4​

|

6​

|

40%​

|
up98down34|

4​

|

1​

|

0​

|

100%​

|
Fermion1|

5​

|

2​

|

2​

|

50%​

|
sengsational|

10​

|

19​

|

12​

|

61%​

|
RISP|

11​

|

5​

|

2​

|

71%​

|
lbymfreddie|

13​

|

2​

|

1​

|

67%​

|
Spudd|

15​

|

13​

|

15​

|

46%​

|
RiskyBusinessC2|

17​

|

1​

|

2​

|

33%​

|
BohoII|

18​

|

49​

|

6​

|

89%​

|
trashcan12|

25​

|

0​

|

1​

|

0%​

|

 

[Boho]

Thank you. For the record, I only have three open positions.

 

[ERD50]

Totoro could very well win the percent winners contest with his one stock. That's fine. We just have to look at the number of holdings to see how much it matters.

No we don't. It doesn't matter.

Normally, in any contest, the rules are defined before the contest starts. This one was created as the "Beat Boho" contest.

From what I can tell from the opening posts, this contest is decided by rank, and that is decided by portfolio value. End of story.

You sound like the baseball team claiming that while the other team scored more runs, you should win because you had more strike-outs. Sorry, that wasn't the game. If it was, maybe the other team would have focused on strike-outs instead.

Stop obfuscating and start showing us a portfolio value that rises above nunnun and stays there. That's the only thing that shows anything. You have quite a gap to fill. It needs to be filled with $$$, not excuses/promises.

-ERD50

 

[tinlizzy]

My first thought when this thread started was, Oh Brother. But it's very interesting!

 

[Totoro]

Again, ignoring open positions.

In my case, the closed out minor position was one very early on, two days after I started, and I still have all others (four additional ones).

All of them are up as of right now, so that's still 5 out of 5. The worst current position is up 21%. The best is up 60%.

Full disclosure: I am not finding enough time to screen for new investments the past few months, so it's in passive mode. Especially the two fashion ones I'd like to close out for a better alternative (but not cash).

Also, all these positions are in my actual stock portfolio (same story, not enough time to track).