Investment Competition Advice

[illumintai]

Thanks all, for so much help.

Apprantly, there is a 10% position limit..

I need a tool to screen out stocks from Europe. Any tools recommendation please ?

Thanks

[atto]

What is your goal? Are you trying to win, do better than half, or what? Your strategy may change depending on that.

[illumintai]

I obviously want to win this.

Can I just ask if anybody might be willing to offer some stock tips in the european markets ? i ploughed most of my assets in to oil firms and the result hasn't been so good. Need to save my portfolio !

Please help

[atto]

Oil companies are well priced in terms of the price of oil, so it's not like you're getting a wonderful bargan. I don't know much about the European stock market, but make some high volatility earnings plays. Risk is your friend, if you're looking for first place. Small cap companies often have high volatility as well.

Are you allowed to short stocks?

[illumintai]

long only.

although I accept efficient market hypothesis explains all future cashflows to be discounted into the current share price, many reports suggest oil price to increase. Is this expectation also discounted into the current share price ?

Surely future profit of oil firms is calculated based on CURRENT oil price.... if I expect the oil to increase steadily in the next 10 weeks, can i expect oil firms' share price to increase by a similar amount ?

Thanks

[jasont]

Illumintai reports simply tell the past, just like charts. They report what has happened and project future price from past performance. Usually when everyone says the market is going a particular direction, the market has a tendency to do the opposite. Especially when it is non traders (such as many economists) predicting so. When everyone is buying, who is left to sell?

Avoid taking the easy trade, which in my opinion Oil seems to be. Making a gain in 3 months when you haven't traded before is more a gamble rather than performance based. My thoughts would be to tackle it from a deviation from the mean or average price. Put up some basic EMA's on the weakest performing sectors for the market you are trading. As you can't trade short, buy the ones that are the furthest underneath the EMA's and gamble on a return to the average or mean price.

[zero_digit]

For latest updates try this one:
http://www.dailyfx.com/

and for basic trades and terminologies visit this site:

Investopedia and Investing basics

[illumintai]

Hi all,

Just an update half way through the competition.

In the first two weeks I portfolio was -27%.

Ever since then I cleared up most of my oil and gas stocks and added the most volatile 2 stocks with 7 financials.

2 most volatile ones were housing companines incidently (not mortgage related) and have been the best performers so far.

Thanks to your advice I am now, although still in negative territory, at -4%

6 weeks to go, hopefully I will end up in the top 10 (currently +15% is on top 10) !

Thanks again.

[BlowFish]

Glad you came back to report on your progress! Good luck for the remainder.