CAG Stock Trading Competition - Now Live - Enrollment Open

haha today was awesome. My dad's company was inching close to the 30 mark. They were at high 29.97 and consitantly at 29.80 :)
 
[quote name='mtxbass1']The only thing I don't like about this competition so far is that you are pretty much limited to certain stocks and options. Many companies are missing that are traded (MSFT comes to mind). I wish they had other commodities as well, such as precious metals.

Gold is on it's way to $2000 an ounce...[/QUOTE]

I'm able to put in an order on MSFT. Just put in a market order and then cancelled it.

And you can buy the ETF GLD through the sim.
 
[quote name='mtxbass1']The only thing I don't like about this competition so far is that you are pretty much limited to certain stocks and options. Many companies are missing that are traded (MSFT comes to mind). I wish they had other commodities as well, such as precious metals.

Gold is on it's way to $2000 an ounce...[/quote]
MSFT ? I purchased some today. You should be able to "purchase" anything you can get a quote on. I don't know about Gold, but there may be an AMEX ticker for it.

Ooops... Wubb beat me to it.
 
I joined and I know nothing about the stock market, should prove interesting.

Edit: Confirmed, microsoft is there.
 
[quote name='wubb']I'm able to put in an order on MSFT. Just put in a market order and then cancelled it.

And you can buy the ETF GLD through the sim.[/quote]

odd, it wasn't showing up for me earlier. I blame the search.
 
Signed up. I've participated in something like this before, though that was for class and it used Yahoo instead. I'm hoping I can do better this time, as my stocks before did well, then nosedived not long before the deadline for the assignment.
 
[quote name='wubb']I don't think you can do real trading with investopedia.

One choice is a broker like www.buyandhold.com (sharebuilder.com is similar) With that service you pay a monthly fee ($15 IIRC for B+H) and can make unlimited trades. The catch is that your trades are made during their trading windows at the market price. (They basically bundle all of their customers orders into one big ass order as I understand it.) So you can't do a limit order or buy or sell RIGHT NOW. But you can have a few things set to buy every month and not have to think about it.

But for a normal broker - where you put in normal buy or sell orders and pay a commision per order there are a bunch of choices.

Investopedia has an artilce on picking your first broker:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/younginvestors/06/firstbroker.asp

And there are sites that have comparison charts breaking down the differences in fees and services between the major players. Like this one (although this one only has 4...
http://www.fool.com/dbc/tables/compare.htm

I'd definitely take a look at scottrade.com in addition to those.
http://www.scottrade.com/brokercomparison/brokercomparison.asp

$7 per trade may be the lowest out there for market or limit orders.

Be sure to check if there are any annual/quarterly or account maintenance fees.[/QUOTE]


Thanks for all of the help Wubb. Are there any online brokers that you recommend personally or use yourself?
 
I'd probably go with a normal discount broker - Scottrade - to get your feet wet. One great feature is their $0 fee to transfer out so if something about them sucks you can transfer to pretty much anybody else for free. Almost everyone makes it free to transfer in (i.e. they want your money) but most charge a fee to transfer out. One disandvantage with ST is that they don't reinvest dividends back in the stock. It might seem like reinvesting the piddly dividend doesn't matter much, but it can really add up over time.

The best setup is a brokerage that will reinvest all of your dividends even if that results in you owning partial shares. (B+H and Sharebuilder both do that I believe.) However if you aren't going to buy stuff every month B+H doesn't make sense because you don't want to pay a monthly fee when plenty of brokers don't charge a dime if you aren't making any trades.

Don't know if you do anything with mutual funds, but they give you diversification and therefore are less volatile than investing in single stocks. You can also buy ETFs (exchange traded funds) like SPY (S+P 500 tracker) and DIA (Dow tracker) that have holdings in many stocks like a mutual fund but are traded like any other stock. But of course even a mutual fund or ETF that has holdings in hundreds of companies can quickly decline. Look at QQQQ's (tracks Nasdaq) chart over the past 5+ years. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=QQQQ&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

The most important thing IMO is to not panic sell just because something you bought declines. You'll end up performance chasing and buy high then sell low. Not what you want.
 
I use E*Trade... It's usually $12.99 per trade. Cash transfers in and out are free. The site is pretty easy to navigate, and the research tools are useful, too.
 
[quote name='wubb']
And you can buy the ETF GLD through the sim.[/quote]

ETF GLD is a chinese company called golden dragon. This is not the precious metal gold. ;)
 
Holy shit! My dads company keeps going up. They hit $30.40 per share! They usually only get around $25 per share :):):) Great 6/6/6 for my family :)
 
At close of business today (6/6/06), I stand at #1. Woot!

Should I be nervous about the fact that this occurred on 6/6/06? :whistle2:k
 
[quote name='the ender']At close of business today (6/6/06), I stand at #1. Woot!

Should I be nervous about the fact that this occurred on 6/6/06? :whistle2:k[/QUOTE]

Wow, congrats! You're the first one to go into the positive.
 
can we buy stocks on foreign markets or is this just limited to US stock exchanges? Companies like Nintendo are listed in the Japanese Stock Market.
 
Sorry it took so long for me to get in, I had some unexpected stuff come up this past weekend. I guess it was a good thing I started later then the others though. :)

Alright, I parked 50% of my money into Berkshire Hathaway B class (as much as I was allowed) and split 25% into Citigroup and 25% into AMD. I think this will be safe enough for the time being while I come up with a video game themed portfolio. Great thread wubb, this seems like it will be fun.

BTW I was planning on buying my first share of stock soon and I was gonna use Scottrade too. What exactly happens after you buy a stock? I assume they send you a certificate after a few days but everything else would be handled online? Also, would they send me a tax form (1099?) at the beginning of next year?
 
BRK has pretty much peaked. They're stable enough that little 10.50 losses here and there dont really affect it. It's more of a notoriety that you have stock in them. Dont expect to make a lot out of a $3,050 stock any time soon.
 
[quote name='cletus']BTW I was planning on buying my first share of stock soon and I was gonna use Scottrade too. What exactly happens after you buy a stock? I assume they send you a certificate after a few days but everything else would be handled online? Also, would they send me a tax form (1099?) at the beginning of next year?[/QUOTE]

Actually, they won't send you the certificate. That was common (I think) years and years ago, but today most everyone has their shares held in the street name. Trust me, this is the way you want to go. You can probably get the actual certificate sent to you, but there will be a fee and then you have the hassle of keeping track of it, etc.

They'll send you a 1099 assuming you have anything that would need to be reported. If you buy a dividend yielding stock for example. I'm not sure if you buy a non-dividend yielding stock and then don't sell it (so there are no gains or losses) if they'd still send a tax form. Probably not.
 
Ah ok, that makes more sense in a way. I'm not concerned about having a certificate if it means I have to pay a fee to get it. I'll probably sell it after a while anyways. I guess they'll send me a statement or something, I'll read through Scottrade's site once I actually buy.

I am only looking for a few safe stocks to hold my money temporarily. Once I get the time I'll come up with a video game portfolio. BRK and Citigroup were some of the safest stocks I could think of. AMD I think still has momentum from the recent deal with Dell and the recent release of AM2 but they will probably drop once Intel's Conroe hits its stride. That still gives me plenty of time to decide if I want to keep them. Sure, the safest thing to do right now would probably be to keep it all in cash (since bonds aren't available) but where is the fun in that?
 
I think I'm going to use this competition to try and get a better grasp on options. I've always wanted to try them out, and with the possibility of a downturn in the market this might not be a bad time to fool around with some puts, especially since it's only play money
 
Dear lord. If I would've purchased all the stock on my "stock watch list" and kept the stock I actually bought on hold I'd be winning this thing right now.
 
Well it looks like I made a bad call on AMD afterall. 80% of my losses today was from them. :( At least Citigroup made a small gain. I'll hold on a bit longer and see what happens. I might sell and buy some Intel stocks instead.

Can someone give me a brief explanation of options? I'll like to give it a try but I don't really understand it to well.
 
[quote name='basketkase543']I've tryed to buy Nintendo stock for two days but it hasn't gone through yet. It's just showing up as a pending trade.[/QUOTE]


yeah my foreign stock purchase hasnt gone through either, anyone have any clues?
 
Not sure why an order on NTDOY won't go through. Maybe it's volume is too low or something and therefore the sim won't process it?

[quote name='cletus']Can someone give me a brief explanation of options? I'll like to give it a try but I don't really understand it to well.[/QUOTE]

I don't know much about them either. But I'll give it a shot.

You buy a number of option contracts for a stock. Each contract is for 100 shares. A call contract gives you the right to buy the stock at a given price. A put contract gives you the right to sell at a given price. So for calls you make money if the stock goes up, for puts you make money if the stock goes down. The option will expire in some month in the future. On the 3rd Friday I think. So if you have a call option and the stock drops it could simply expire worthlessly and you lose 100% of your money.

I'd give investopedia's article on Options a read for a better explanation.
http://www.investopedia.com/university/options/
 
Thanks wubb. This thread has gotten me to start posting again. I think I had lapsed back into lurker mode without realizing it.

EDIT: Ok I think I just bought a put contract for AMD at $27.50. I would never make a purchase without understanding what I'm doing in real life but this is just play money. I'll read through that investopedia link tomorrow when I have more time.
 
I wish they didn't limit the amount of watched stocks to 15. I like how they track the percentage change from the date you added it - it'd just be great if I could add ALL the stocks I was interested in.
 
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