Stock Picking (Beat Boho) Contest - V2.0

[Boho]

Is "Today's change in value" not updating normally or am I just forgetting how it worked?

 

[Boho]

Sell-offs by people fearing third quarter reports affected me in recent weeks and I don't always research deep enough to deal with that for this contest so I'm on another brief hiatus. Here are end-of-month results.

 

[Boho]

How much DRAD do you hold? Down 27% today

It began rising significantly on Thursday and rose 15.19% on Friday. I found this part of yesterday's conference call interesting. It's summed up with Matthew Molchan's statement that "markets don't always work exactly dynamically with your result." That's why I trade.

Larry Haimovitch

...I'm sitting here in amazement at people trashing your stock with what amounts...to be less than 4% [profit loss] and your stocks down 50% or whatever? Any explanation.

Matthew Molchan

We certainly had a lot of calls there could have been a little confusion on the information of exactly [what component of the business was impacted] I mean that's obviously why we're giving these details today...I think there might have been concern that the dividend was not going to continue on but we absolutely plan to keep the dividend stable as we move forward. So markets don't always work exactly dynamically with your result so we're a little surprised too Larry.

Larry Haimovitch

Jeff and Matt in retrospect do you think you might have positioned this news development in a different way, you 8-Ked that rather than press released it. There wasn't a lot of information, now the impact is even smaller than any of us thought. So I think the stock acted badly in a time of great uncertainty when, oh my god, maybe they lost 30%, 40% of their business here, without people understanding that it's relatively unimportant. That's not zero, but it's relatively unimportant to you.

Matthew Molchan

Well I think that there was – obviously the timing was not perfect. We realized with this notice written on the end of September, we realized that we had to – we had a call coming and we had to formulate all of the information and to be able to present it in such a way, could we have guided out sooner in retrospect we probably could have. But we felt we want to do a thorough job, so that when we meet today with all the information we can deliver clearly the impact on the business on a go forward basis.

Oh, I just read "You may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to Seeking Alpha"

So, https://seekingalpha.com/article/41...chan-q3-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript

But it had numerous mistakes. I fixed the more relevant ones above.

 

[Boho]

It looks like both the rankings list that we've been posting monthly and my (everyone's?) Performance History isn't being updated properly. I checked in two browsers. The account value on the My Home page still seems to get updated regularly and hopefully properly. To get another player's account value I think we have to click History next to the player's name on the rankings page and look in their gray Investor Profile box for the value.

 

[easysurfer]

It looks like both the rankings list that we've been posting monthly and my (everyone's?) Performance History isn't being updated properly. I checked in two browsers. The account value on the My Home page still seems to get updated regularly and hopefully properly. To get another player's account value I think we have to click History next to the player's name on the rankings page and look in their gray Investor Profile box for the value.

Are you taking into account the * about the rankings? Here's the blurb from as of this posting.

I think clicking on History next to the person gives a more up to date value. The rankings don't get updated until overnight.

 

[Boho]

Are you taking into account the * about the rankings?

Yes. I've been comparing my account value to the value in the rankings page. The rankings lag more than one day. You can see here how the value hasn't changed for too long:

 

[Boho]

And the rankings look different than they used to. There's always a bunch of blanks. Mine isn't blank so you'd think it's up to date but it's not.

 

[ERD50]

It began rising significantly on Thursday and rose 15.19% on Friday. I found this part of yesterday's conference call interesting. It's summed up with Matthew Molchan's statement that "markets don't always work exactly dynamically with your result." That's why I trade.

...

But taking advantage of markets that "don't always work exactly dynamically with your result" seems to be something that is extremely difficult to do with any consistency.

The game seems to be in-line with that so far. Stock pickers hitting the top/bottom rails, and probably scattered across the range. The diversified buy/hold players seem to be doing pretty well.

-ERD50

 

[Boho]

Stock pickers hitting the top/bottom rails, and probably scattered across the range. The diversified buy/hold players seem to be doing pretty well.

-ERD50

I don't deny that's what tends to happen. This is just my own little battle against the norm. I don't care about other traders failing.

 

[easysurfer]

Yes. I've been comparing my account value to the value in the rankings page. The rankings lag more than one day. You can see here how the value hasn't changed for too long:

Looks like some lag might be due to weekends. But do see that some lag longer like you show.

 

[easysurfer]

But ... lag or no lag, shouldn't make a difference in the standings .

 

[Boho]

But it looks like they have something to fix and now we have to hope they don't introduce a more significant bug.

 

[ERD50]

I don't deny that's what tends to happen. This is just my own little battle against the norm. I don't care about other traders failing.

But you are the one who is failing!

-ERD50

 

[Boho]

But you are the one who is failing!

-ERD50

And when I was winning I was winning. That was the contest too you know. And neither snapshot alone matters much.

 

[easysurfer]

Looked but really couldn't find a definition of the Performance History screen.

 

[ERD50]

And when I was winning I was winning. That was the contest too you know. And neither snapshot alone matters much.

Except the most recent 'snapshot' is the cumulative effect of your trades since the start. That is the snapshot that matters the most.

But I agree they don't matter much. As I said before, the players who are not diversified are very likely to see a lot of volatility. Some will be positive, some negative. But so far, the buy/hold broad indexes are doing reliably well. As I would expect.


-ERD50

 

[NW-Bound]

Of course active investors either beat the market or trail it. I do not participate in this contest, and only visit this thread occasionally.

I think it is more exciting when the market tanks, as in 2008. Everybody lost, and whoever lost the least won.

 

[Totoro]

As one person said:

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked.

It's been high tide the past five years at least. Lots of naked swimmers, possibly including me.

 

[ERD50]

As one person said:

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked.

It's been high tide the past five years at least. Lots of naked swimmers, possibly including me.

Despite the rising tide, ~ 1/3rd of the swimmers in this contest are underwater (negative, not just below the 'tide/benchmark').

-ERD50

 

[sengsational]

But it looks like they have something to fix and now we have to hope they don't introduce a more significant bug.

I was curious about their math, so I had developed a spreadsheet to paste-in the basics from the investopedia web site, then do my own math and pricing.

Just now I plugged in the holdings and got pricing from yahoo and their total came out the same as the account value on the portfolio page (well, $0.05 different).

When I look at the performance history, it's wrong. It doesn't agree with what's on the account value page. Also, the value there stays exactly the same for an entire week.

I think I see what's going on here. My performance history doesn't change unless there is a transaction. In my case, I get dividends, and when one of those hits, then the history updates. But as the prices of the stocks change, the history doesn't seem to reflect that.

 

[nun]

Except the most recent 'snapshot' is the cumulative effect of your trades since the start. That is the snapshot that matters the most.

But I agree they don't matter much. As I said before, the players who are not diversified are very likely to see a lot of volatility. Some will be positive, some negative. But so far, the buy/hold broad indexes are doing reliably well. As I would expect.


-ERD50

Yep, an indexer checking in again and still in 7th place. I have literally done nothing apart from 2 initial buys. But it's pretty hard to lose money in this market so I'm amazed so many are under water. When things tank I expect my buy an hold strategy to put be towards the back of the pack only for me to recover a few years down the road.

 

[SecondCor521]

Yep, an indexer checking in again and still in 7th place. I have literally done nothing apart from 2 initial buys. But it's pretty hard to lose money in this market so I'm amazed so many are under water. When things tank I expect my buy an hold strategy to put be towards the back of the pack only for me to recover a few years down the road.

Thanks for being in the contest. I would have invested pretty much the same way as you did, so it's informative for me to watch.

Regarding your last sentence, that is a common belief that I think is not accurate. I think that even in a downturn an indexing buy and hold approach will still be in the top 1/3 to 1/4 of participants in any contest like this.

 

[nun]

Thanks for being in the contest. I would have invested pretty much the same way as you did, so it's informative for me to watch.

Regarding your last sentence, that is a common belief that I think is not accurate. I think that even in a downturn an indexing buy and hold approach will still be in the top 1/3 to 1/4 of participants in any contest like this.

Well let's hope for a crash so we can see....wait a minute........

 

[easysurfer]

Well let's hope for a crash so we can see....wait a minute........

That's what I'm counting on in the contest .

 

[Totoro]

Yep, an indexer checking in again and still in 7th place. I have literally done nothing apart from 2 initial buys. But it's pretty hard to lose money in this market so I'm amazed so many are under water. When things tank I expect my buy an hold strategy to put be towards the back of the pack only for me to recover a few years down the road.

In general, when things tank indexers outperform even more.