Stock trading competition - 1 month to learn

[illumintai]

Hi,

I am a second year british univ. undergrad economist.

I entered for a stock investment challenge, available to all UK undergrads, starting from January, lasting 2months.

its an online base, FTSE100, FTSE 250 and bonds, no day trading, short selling allowed.

Its in 2 phase, 1st round is to come in top 20, and complete a report.

Financial reward is so big I feel a desperate need to learn dealing in stocks. Is there anyway to learn this quickly.

To brief about my background - I did compete in several online investment challenges hosted by major banks from which I came top 10 out of more than 1000 students from Europe (the best result was 59% return in a month). But only trouble is, I made the profit from dealing in commodities. Some basic economic knowledge and responding to publicly available information was enough to do well.

As this is stock based, I am panicking.

I want to stay away from in-depth technical analysis (which I have no knowledge of) and concentrate on value investing.

Perhaps identify the mostly undervalued( and heavily beaten) stocks from credit crisis and select the ones that will bouce back in 2months time.

Any advice on my approach, and how I can learn this ?? !!!!!! especially with regards to writing a successful report ?


Thanks,

[OAC]

Try the dartboard approach, it is known to beat most systems.

[illumintai]

Ah, I heard of that.

Editor of Wall street journal, literally created a dartboard of stocks and created a diversified portolio that was randomly selected from where the dart landed.

Last year's winner yielded 20% return. Can I do that in less than 2months using this approach ?

[OAC]

Value investing has no merit in a two months timeframe. You have to pay attention to sector rotation. Sectors, in case you don't know are industrial groups. You want to find the strongest stocks in sectors that are in a cyclical upturn. You can pick these stocks and then let me screen them for their technical merits based on charts. The only problem is I don't know if I can get historical data for FTSE-100 stocks to run in my software. I have to look into it.

[illumintai]

thank you !

Well, first off, where do i get the historical data for UK sectors ?

I guess you are saying i should invest some time in understanding technical analysis. Any suggestions on where I should start ? I have about 2 weeks !

[OAC]

	Quote:	illumintai
	thank you ! Well, first off, where do i get the historical data for UK sectors ? I guess you are saying i should invest some time in understanding technical analysis. Any suggestions on where I should start ? I have about 2 weeks !

I don't know where to get data for UK sectors, may be some of our UK members or other members who trade the FTSE can help you.
Technical analysis can't be learned and be effective in 2 weeks, in my opinion.

Another suggestion that might work for you is to concentrate on a handful of stocks that are strongly affected by various commodity prices. Use your background of pick commodities to give you an edge. For instance if you think oil is going higher, you buy oil companies. I don't know if this is against the rule.

[aiki14]

	Quote:	illumintai
	Financial reward is so big I feel a desperate need to learn dealing in stocks. Is there anyway to learn this quickly. Thanks,

Frankly, No, I don't think there is a way to learn this quickly. You may get lucky, so give it your best effort, but learning this stuff is a long process.
Good Luck