Ohio waitress wins CNBC stock picking contest

cute fuzzy bunny

cute fuzzy bunny

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Ohio waitress wins CNBC stock-picking contest - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com

An Ohio waitress and welder with no prior investment experience won the CNBC stock picking contest. The first six contestants were disqualified for cheating in one manner or another.

CNBC announced the winner about a week later than schedule, in a very basic manner.

The winner says her methodology was to buy stocks in companies whose products she used a lot, like WD-40.
 
We should invite her to join the forum!
 
cute fuzzy bunny said:
The first six contestants were disqualified for cheating in one manner or another.
CNBC announced the winner about a week later than schedule, in a very basic manner.
Click to expand...
Business Week was all over CNBC like a wet blanket and actually ran an article about the possibility of this woman winning the contest. How long has that been dragging out... a month? Six weeks?

No such thing as bad publicity-- this one's going into the Marketing Hall of Fame!
 
Yeah the stats were final in late may, but I think the article said the winner wasnt scheduled to be announced until July 8?

I guess they had to bring in some experts to analyze how the 'winners' might have cheated and scuttled the top people.

One of the things thats always seemed to ring true to me is that in a lot of "skill areas", some of the stuff is really obvious and makes a lot of sense...then you learn a lot about it and figure you can take an angle on something...but you cant...then your learning matures and you know what you do know and dont know and can be very effective. But that middle ground is a danger zone, where you know enough to really screw yourself if you're not careful, but not enough to know your limitations.

"Beginners Luck" indeed.

I think it was Peter Lynch that suggested buying stocks in products you're familiar with? and of course Warren Buffet who allegedly wont buy a stock in a company he doesnt understand.
 
Yes, that's right investing in what she knows something about - that's my philosophy most of the time, anyway, thanks to Peter L.

Did I read right - WD-40? because she was a welder and used it....
 
Let's face it, this says something about the world of investing....It's pure luck.

This lady, a financial cavewoman with respect to all the investment wizards out there using expensive sophisticated software, beat them all by throwing a dart in the right spot.

I'm guessing if this had been a brain-surgery contest, there would be no chance someone who had never touched a scalpel would have even been in the top 99.99% of potential winners.
 
retire@40 said:
Let's face it, this says something about the world of investing....It's pure luck.

This lady, a financial cavewoman with respect to all the investment wizards out there using expensive sophisticated software, beat them all by throwing a dart in the right spot.

I'm guessing if this had been a brain-surgery contest, there would be no chance someone who had never touched a scalpel would have even been in the top 99.99% of potential winners.
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You hit the nail on the head there. :)
 
retire@40 said:
Let's face it, this says something about the world of investing....It's pure luck.
Click to expand...
I'll agree it says something about the world of short term [-]investing [/-] speculating. [-]Speculating[/-] Investing contests are silly because they last a few weeks. Heck, you could find the greatest investment ever and the odds of it moving up over the span of a few weeks is just about nil. To me, investing results don't mean anything unless you are talking about results over a period of about a decade or more.

If this had been a brain-surgery contest with a ten second timer and a butter knife for a scalpel she might have won.
 
cute fuzzy bunny said:
I guess they had to bring in some experts to analyze how the 'winners' might have cheated and scuttled the top people.
"Beginners Luck" indeed.
Click to expand...
From the Business Week article CNBC's Easy Money :

"How could traders exploit CNBC's glitch? According to several participants, the technique was relatively simple, but not obvious to all participants. A trader could go to the CNBC Web site and select a number of stocks to buy, but hold off on executing those trades. If you made the selection before the close of regular trading at 4 p.m. EST and left your Web browser open, you could execute those trades after hours and still receive the 4 p.m. closing price. For example, if a company whose stock closed at $20 a share rose to $25 in after-hours trading, you could buy the stock at $20, even though it was already worth 25% more (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/8/07, Slide Show: "How to Game CNBC's Stocks Contest"). "
 
Too bad we cant do that in real life.

Anyone else wanna vote for the formation of the new cnbc brokerage firm?

You'd think that these brilliant media guys would have covered all those sorts of angles...

Shoot...I should have checked my Kaiser coverage to see if they cover removal of the tongue from the cheek thing... :(
 
So, previous stories have shown that monkeys can beat analysts at picking stocks.

This contest shows that someone with no market experience can do well picking stocks.

Obviously, we need a final round now... waitress versus monkeys. No holds barred.
 
I think she should start an investment newsletter based on her approach
 
Nords said:
From the Business Week article CNBC's Easy Money :

"How could traders exploit CNBC's glitch? According to several participants, the technique was relatively simple, but not obvious to all participants. A trader could go to the CNBC Web site and select a number of stocks to buy, but hold off on executing those trades. If you made the selection before the close of regular trading at 4 p.m. EST and left your Web browser open, you could execute those trades after hours and still receive the 4 p.m. closing price. For example, if a company whose stock closed at $20 a share rose to $25 in after-hours trading, you could buy the stock at $20, even though it was already worth 25% more (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/8/07, Slide Show: "How to Game CNBC's Stocks Contest"). "
Click to expand...

Let's get her hooked up with a mutual fund, and give her $50 million or so to work with, and then see how smart she really is..........:D
 
I think CNBC is already pretty darn embarrassed about the whole thing...now you wanna make her into the next Peter Lynch? ;)
 
I agree. The contest illustrates that you shouldn't waste your time watching Mad Money and Squawk Box. Oh yea. Don't trust any systems that CNBC uses. They may have gaping holes in them. Kramer is right 47% of the time, just slightly behind my quarter.
 
cute fuzzy bunny said:
Too bad we cant do that in real life.

Anyone else wanna vote for the formation of the new cnbc brokerage firm?
Click to expand...

Hedge funds did do it!! At least for awhile, this is what Spitzer busted the mutual fund industry on a few years back.
 
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