The Pick Up

     After a substantial loss last week, due to my poor selection of Exchange Traded Funds, I went back to the drawing board to figure out a plan to cut my losses and return back to positive figures. My decision making this past week, in my eyes, was extremely positive and I was able to apply my knowledge of ETF’s, to cut my losses within just several hours of trading. Moreover, I understood that more than a third of my competitors only invested in JNUG and NUGT and as the share price continued to fall, my opportunity to reach my goal became more than realistic. In addition, as the competition end became closer and closer to its conclusion, my only hope of being able to hold my position in the race was now or never. With my eyes set on one goal, of cutting my losses bit by bit, I first chose a stock that would have made me thousands, if I knew the ETF market well enough a few weeks back.

     Both NUGT and JNUG were mutual funds that increased in share value as gold went up in price. As ETF’s, JNUG and NUGT had inverse shares that increased in value as gold was down, I visited the Direxion website, to identify the inverse ticker symbol, and it was entitled DUST. DUST was a bear stock, which as mentioned before increased in share value as the gold commodity lowered in price. As gold continued to fall, I invested in DUST at a value of about 50 dollars a share, and after just two hours the value had already increased by over one dollar. As I invested my entire buying power into the ETF as gold was plummeting once again, my earnings for that day were through the roof. I was not only able to cut my losses, but end in positive figures through one single trade. This action made me more confident in my abilities in the stock market game, and pushed me to make one more timely investment during the end of the week.  

     Week 6 was slowly coming to a close and gold had finally begun its rise after a week and a half of negative figures. I spoke to Manoj about what to do with this expected gold rise, and he pointed me to one stock that he believed looked promising. The company is called Gold Standard Ventures Corp (GSV), a metal exploration and gold mine company who focus on projects within North Central Nevada, who are currently based in Canada. Some factors that pushed me to purchase this stock were firstly the appointment of a new Director for the company, Bruce McLeod. The CEO of Gold Standard Ventures Corp explained how the appointment of Mr. McLeod, was beneficial to their company, as he brings in a strong engineering background to the company. In addition, GSV has increased its share value by 116.83% from March 2016 and investors believe it will continue to rise. They had set a price target of 3.84 dollars a share, making the company worth about 263 millions dollars or more. I believed these predictions would be realistic, with the appointment of a new director, which for many companies has done justice in the past. I purchased the share at 2.30 and by the end of the day it hit a mark of 2.36, earning me over 2000 dollars and placing me closer towards my goal.

http://www.benchmarkmonitor.com/2016/10/04/active-stocks-to-watch-gold-standard-ventures-corp-nysegsv-capital-one-financial-corporation-nysecof-fiat-chrysler-automobiles-n-v-nysefcau-facebook-inc-nasdaqfb/1898006/ 

http://presstelegraph.com/2016/10/07/worth-watching-could-gold-standard-ventures-corp-change-direction-after-todays-huge-increase/ 

     With only two significant trades made in week 6, I believe my earnings were beyond expectations. I now understand the relationship between Bear and Bull ETF’s, through experiencing it first hand through investments this week. With this learning in my mind, I now have another strategy under my belt that will assist me significantly for the final three weeks of the stock market game. Despite my fall last week, I was able to recover and pick up where I had left off, which I am extremely proud of and hopefully will continue to do. My goal once again is within reach and I will fight for those two spots, to get to the top 20 for the stock market game. 

The Great Downfall

           The 6^th week of the stock market challenge for finance has just concluded, and for the first time throughout the race I have ended the week under the 100 000 dollar standard. After 5 weeks of positive total gains in the challenge, my collapse was out of the ordinary, as my continual method of analyzing and researching have been extremely successful. For the week of October 3^rd, market talk within our classroom was surrounded around gold ETF’s, exchange traded funds, specifically Direxion NUGT and JNUG. These two investment funds were similar to stocks, but are a combination of several gold mining companies that are averaged out through daily gains or losses and are traded parallel to other stocks in the NYSE. News erupted when both stocks dropped by over 3 dollars in share value, as over 30 competitors in the challenge had traded off these two ETF’s for the past 5 weeks, leading to significant gains. Losses for my peers were much more catastrophic than any other stock dropping due to the nature of the ETF's. Both JNUG and NUGT were a 3x Bull stock, meaning gains and or losses were 3 times the value compared to a regular share, and with a 3 dollar drop, losses were upwards of about 30% for several competitors. Fortunately, the losses for a third of my peers was a significant turning point in the race for me, as it lifted me over 15 spots to the top 25 of the group. It pushed me to take greater risks to continue to hold my ranking, but as it came down to steadily increasing my net worth, I failed miserably.

            As JNUG and NUGT decreased significantly on Tuesday, I realized my opportunity to increase my net worth considerably had just opened up. With the substantial losses to my classmates, I was not only close to my goal, but was on the brink of achieving it. My strategy was to purchase JNUG, as I predicted it would bounce back as the days rolled on during week 6. As one of the most commonly traded ETF’s in the world, I came to the conclusion that purchasing a stock like this, with its unique quality of 3x Bull, would provide myself leeway in the top 20 for any mistakes that may occur in the final few weeks of the challenge. The choice was further certain as Mr. Whalen explained the reasoning behind the drop in JNUG and NUGT during the week. He explained how news on the two ETF’s had shocked investors, resulting in a share value drop for the two exchange traded funds, but he explained how the news was actually in favour of the two stocks and prices would rise back up by the conclusion of week 6 and or beginning of week 7. Therefore, with a reassuring insight on the decision I purchased the ETF at a price 11.20 around 12pm on Wednesday. The choice at first was correct as the share value slowly increased to a peak of about 11.80 around 3pm, which sat me 16^th with a net worth of over 108 000 dollars. With the 5% overall gain for the day, I was extremely proud of my decision and chose to continue to hold the stock as I was confident the upwards trend would continue for the next couple days back to where the ETF previously traded at, about 14-15 dollars. To prevent any losses, I added a limit sell order to the holding at 11.25, to insure I would come out of the share with a preferable gain over a loss. Unfortunately, the sell order hit its mark and I only came out with a couple hundred dollars that ranked me 19^th at the end of the day. The result was not in my favour, but I had to settle for a minimal gain as I had finally reached my goal.

           

         The final day of trading had approached for week 6 and the market as a whole seemed very unpromising, as it had been on a decline for the past few days due to many stocks dropping in value. Both JNUG and NUGT had hit 4-month lows and seemed to be in no shape and or possibility of investing in, until 12pm Friday afternoon. Both NUGT and JNUG had begun to rise quite rapidly mid day, and its sizable increase made me eager in revisiting both ETF’s as tangible options in making profit to resettle myself in a comfortable position in the race. After dropping to under 11 dollars a share by midweek, NUGT rose to peak of about 12.30, which at the moment seemed to be the delayed rise Mr. Whalen had predicted on Tuesday. As Friday was a school holiday, I chose to utilize my previous strategy of collecting research on the exchange-traded fund to give me evidence to support my decision. I came across an article from Investor Place, written by Tim Biggam, who states that gold, especially NUGT had finally showed some stability after several days of losses on Friday morning. He also explained how investors who are bullish and are looking for short term; considerable gains should look at NUGT. This article alone, pushed me to purchase NUGT as my mindset was extremely similar to the opinion of the author. My purchasing of NUGT would only be a short-term order and after several thousand dollars in gains I would bow out immediately, which seemed to be a levelheaded choice as the share value continued to rise. The stock similar to JNUG rose to its peak after 20 minutes from the time of my purchase; earning me over one thousand dollars and placing me top 20 once again. Sadly, just like Wednesday afternoon the share value collapsed, hitting 11.80, earning me a loss of over 7.25% on the day, and placing me 33^rd in the challenge.      

http://investorplace.com/2016/10/direxion-shares-exchange-traded-fund-trust-nugt-gold-gld/#.V_wKNlzycaE 

            From this experience of buying and selling exchange-traded funds, I have learned as well as experienced the volatility of 3x Bull ETF’s. I understand that despite the high risk of investing in these types of stocks, they are one of only a few methods in which investors can grow their portfolio in a short period of time. This lesson in my perspective has been the most significant in my journey of investing in stocks as it has provided me a new option to reach my goal in the limited time I have left, 25 days. I strongly believe I can reach my goal of top 20, and using my new knowledge of ETF’s, specifically gold ETF’s, I will work towards recovering my losses and earning profit that will lift me among my competitors.

Making Moves

           5 weeks in the virtual stock challenge has just passed and in my perspective I strongly believe progress is being made. From a slow start to a halt in the race, my goal of ranking top 20 among the 87 competitors seems to be slipping out of my contention. Despite many obstacles and a large sum of failures, week 5 resulted in myself climbing the ranks immensely as well as earning a net worth that I have not yet matched in both my past and current stock market games. My ability to execute the lessons I have learned in past weeks into strategies along with my success in collecting and analyzing research on companies was the turning point to my gains in the past week.  

            My week began with substantial growth from a familiar company, EA Sports. As mentioned in previous blog entries, EA had recently released several sport games that increased sales significantly and more importantly their share value. As expected, as Tuesday September 28^th, one day prior to the release date for FIFA 17, came around share value increased by over 2 dollars from 83.50, a jump of about 2.2% per share. Analysts from various sources continued to assure investors they were certain the stock would continue to rise after its 2 dollars jump on Tuesday and placed a hold rating on the stock. Personally, at the moment I believed the share value would drop in the next day as in my past history, the majority of companies I have invested in after their peaks plummeted. Utilizing my past experience I was correct, and the share dropped by over a dollar, which would have been unfortunate if I continued to hold the stock. Therefore, with my 2.50% growth over the first two days of week 5, my confidence in taking risks grew and so did my net worth to all new high. 

            The next company I invested in was Amazon (AMZN), one of the largest e-commerce website around the world. I chose to first look at Amazon as it made headlines several times on MarketWatch.com as well as through our stock market recap done by Naomi. She discussed how e-commerce has taken over, and Amazon is looking at providing luxury clothing on their stores in the near future, which will soon be accessible for the entire global population. To reinforce my confidence, I came across an article published in Investorplace. The writer discussed how Amazon has been extremely successful in not only creating a strong platform, but also more importantly developing a new experience for online shopping with features such as music and video to engage consumers. Moreover, he also examined the past financial earnings of Amazon and their positive transition from annual losses to strong quarterly gains, three out of the five of which had hit record levels. Finally, the major point to take away that pushed me to invest my entire buying power into the stock, was that e-commerce is just getting started. The potential for this market is vast and currently Amazon is one of a few companies that are in control and are growing day by day. Within several hours, Amazon did not let me down; they increased by 10 dollars on Friday, a 1% increase that earned me several hundred dollars starting off Friday with a boom…it was just the start.   

http://investorplace.com/2016/09/3-reasons-amazon-stock-amzn-1000/#.V_Gk9lzycaE

            During Friday morning, my entire buying power was invested into Amazon.com, but I realized, despite their share value increasing significantly I was not able to make higher gains compared to stocks that are set at lower price. I reflected back to last week and the lesson I learned about how stocks at inexpensive prices were more profitable as they tended to make large gains or losses. Although Amazon continued to rise I chose to put the lesson I had learned in week 4 into action through two timely investments. The two stocks I invested in were Seadrill Partners LLC (SDLP) and Manitowoc Company Inc. (MTW), during the final hours of Fridays trading. Just like any other stock, I inspected the reviews both companies were receiving from analysts around the world, and both looked promising. Both shares were expected to go up in the coming fiscal year and their stock graph from the early hours of Friday were in an upwards momentum that persuaded me to purchase the maximum amount of shares possible to amplify my profits. To reassure I made profit, I set a limit order to both investments at a price a few cents higher than the currently traded price. This strategy was very successful as once a significant amount of profit was made for the stock, I was able to bow out immediately with no delay.

SDLP

http://theenterpriseleader.com/analyst-research/seadrill-partners-llc-nysesdlp-rating-set-at-3-67/164101/

MTW

http://reviewfortune.com/2016/09/19/analysts-the-manitowoc-company-inc-nysemtw-stock-is-worth-5-21/

        Week 5 ended with many successes that have motivated me tremendously to continue this trend of climbing up the ranks. I will continue to implement the strategies that have worked for me this week as well as continue to communicate with my peers to find stocks that will earn me substantial profit leading to growth of my portfolio. I believe this is just the beginning, and despite a delayed start to my progress, I can see my goal in the horizon and I will continue to work for it for next 30 days.  

A Stand Still

           The 4^th week of the stock market challenge was filled with several ups and downs, dropping me in the same position as previous weeks, but ranked in the bottom half of the group. Continuing with similar strategies, I hoped to have made greater gains through investing larger amounts of money into stocks. With these risks, came either rewards and or consequences and for the majority of the week, the outcomes were unpleasantly not in my favour. Despite another obstacle during this journey, I knew I had a stock in mind that was certain to rise in the later days of the week. I was determined to rise back to, from where I fell, and that’s exactly what I did.

            To begin with, Pier 1 Imports was a major loser in the stock market game for me personally this past week. After hitting a 52 week low a few weeks back, I was positive the stock would rebound and a few of my peers in my class believed the same and insisted I invest in the company for my own benefit. Before I invested, I implemented my strategy of analyzing the company and reading the opinions of several investors on the position and future outlook of the company in the upcoming days. Several headlines roared that Pier 1 Imports would rise to about 4.50, which at the time was significant when the stock was barley above the 4-dollar mark. In addition, during the second half of trading on Wednesday the stock began to rise significantly, which insisted I buy the share to earn a large sum of profit. The one article that was the deciding factor to my purchase of several thousand shares was from equities.com. This article had mixed reactions on the stock of Pier 1 hitting a 52-week low, and explained how investors from around the world could see the company in two different perspectives. It explained how investors who are “bearish” would outlook a negative downward momentum for the stock and sell their shares as soon as possible. The second viewpoint they presented was that investors who were “bullish” strongly believed the stock would rebound and bounce back up to its median price range. Personally, I was optimistic about the stock and took the risk. I wanted to be bullish and take on the risk head first, which in the long run was the wrong choice as it pushed my farther away from my goal I set at the start of the competition.

http://reviewfortune.com/2016/09/21/analysts-pier-1-imports-inc-nysepir-stock-is-worth-4-58/

https://www.equities.com/news/pier-1-imports-inc-pir-hits-new-52-week-low-during-september-12-session

            A major gainer for me during week 4 was once again EA Sports, whose share value increased by over one dollar over the span of Friday from 83 to 84 dollars. This new 52-week high, was beneficial for me as it recovered my losses in the past days from investments such as Pier 1 Imports, and put me above the 100 000 dollar standard. As mentioned in my post last week, EA had released several new games and had one game being released in a few weeks that had a great sum of excitement and high hopes that would drive sports fanatics around the world crazy. Before I invested my entire buying power into this stock, I chose to once again collect research to reinforce my confidence in this share, and as you may know by now I was not disappointed. Dozens upon dozens of articles were “all in” for EA, dropping an average price target of about 87.04 dollars per share that won me over. Moreover, articles explained how EA over the years have earned double digit growth in their share value, about 18% over the span of the fiscal year of 2015. In addition, analysts from Reuters all ranked EA as a stock to either buy and or hold for the coming weeks, as they are enthusiastic about the stocks potential growth due to the newly reconstructed FIFA 17. Finally, through my past experience EA Sports has been a positive share I have invested in and without a doubt my overall percentage gain for the final day of week 4 was about 1.25% within just 4 hours of holding the share.  

http://reviewfortune.com/2016/09/21/a-look-at-analyst-ratings-summary-electronic-arts-inc-nasdaqea-linear-technology-corporation-nasdaqlltc/

http://www.profitconfidential.com/stock/electronic-arts-inc-fifa-17-could-send-ea-stock-soaring/

http://www.newsoracle.com/2016/09/14/worth-watching-stock-electronic-arts-inc-nasdaqea-2/

            As week 4 had come to end, filled with a roller coaster of emotions a lesson I am taking away from my experience is to invest in stocks that are priced 15 dollars or lower, to maximize the amount of money I earn over the next 40 days of the challenge. Last week I had learned that the amount of money made by a stock is determined by the overall percentage gain and the amount of shares owned. If a share were worth less, an increase by about 10 cents would be more significant compared to a stock that is worth 85 dollars, an example being EA Sports. During the past week, I faced the negative aspect of this, as Pier 1 Imports stock dropped 5 cents from 4.20. As I owned over 20 000 shares, a decrease of 5 cents resulted in over a thousand dollars in losses, which compared to a 10 cent loss in EA, was extremely significant. Therefore, with this new lesson under my belt, I can convert this knowledge into a strategy that will assist significantly as I work my way up both financially and among the rankings in the stock market challenge. The race is still on.   

Steady Progress

    Week 3 of the stock market challenge for finance, for me personally, fell short of expectations significantly. With the high hopes of narrowing down the gap from the top 20 group, my inability to go “all in,” was the contributing factor to my downfall in the challenge. Exercising my strategies from weeks 1 and 2 of collecting research on companies who were predicted to make gains as well as strategies learned in class, I was able to prevent major losses that others did not oversee during week 3. One of several strategies learned in class that I was able to implement in the challenge was enabling a stop order for many stocks I purchased and or short sold during the past week. A stop order is setting a price for a share that will automatically sell the stock if that said price for the share sinks to and or rises to, depending on the scenario, either buy or short sell. This ability to set a constraint to your loss, prevented me from falling under the 95 000 dollar mark in the challenge, therefore giving me the opportunity to increase my overall net worth. With that said, I was able to earn approximately 1652 dollars during the five day week, a substantially larger sum compared to both weeks 1 and 2, combined, at only 120 dollars.

     The first stock that I had invested in several times throughout Wednesday was Lazard Ltd (LAZ). To begin with, I came across this company during the early morning, and found an article published by the Globe and Mail announcing that Lazard had acquired an advisory boutique called Versus Partners, a Toronto based company. Lazard, an investment bank company, in the past year has made significant moves in the banking industry through their wide range of foreign financial services. Their services have earned them 2.4 billion dollars in revenue over the course of 2015, and are expected to increase revenue by a substantial amount acclaimed by many analysts. With the acquisition on Wednesday, Lazard expects to expand their financial advisory services to Canada, which I believed at the time would gain the interest of many investors, thus resulting in a spike in their share value during Wednesday and Thursday, which was exactly what occurred. The stock over the course of Wednesday and Thursday rose from about 35.50/share to upwards of about 37 dollars by mid-day on Thursday, therefore raising my net worth and placing me in the top 25 at one point during the week.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/newsletters/streetwise-and-rob-insight-newsletter/mega-merger-mania-is-back-weve-forgotten-all-its-woes/article31889474/

http://www.themarketsdaily.com/analyst-actions/company-price-target-watch-lazard-ltd-nyselaz-2/192654/

     The second major stock I invested in throughout the week was Entertainment Arts, most commonly known as EA Sports. As a sports fanatic, I was confident that the share value for the stock would increase at any point during week 3, due to the releases and pre order release dates of Madden 17, NHL 17 as well as FIFA 17. The common trend I observed for the company, through examination of their stock graph was that their share value, the majority of the time, increased significantly from October to late December. With this trend in mind, I also knew that EA had created new game modes for both NHL and FIFA, with FIFA also having a new game engine known as Frostbite. With this knowledge, I continually was persistent in buying and selling stocks during week 3, which unfortunately resulted in a substantial loss. Moreover, even with the addition of the stop order strategy learned in class this week, my net worth slowly began to drop over the course of Monday and Tuesday. My optimism in regards to the share value slowly deteriorated as my net worth plummeted to about 98 000 dollars by end of Tuesday. I made the decision to hold off on any EA stock purchases on Wednesday, as I had found a new company, Lazard Ltd, which seemed to have positive hopes going forward for the next couple of days. As my net worth slowly began to rise back over the 100 000 dollar mark, I chose to take another risk on EA sports and purchased about 300 shares, which slowly became 500 to about 2400 shares, as the share value skyrocketed. As the value of the share went from about 80 dollars to about 84 dollars by Thursday, my inability to hold on to the stock despite its fall in the early stages as well as take the risk of purchasing a substantial sum of shares prevented me from capitalizing on the rise in their share value.

 

     The lesson I have learned this week, is the idea of risk and reward. If I am able to take risks in the market, my ability to earn more money and make stronger outputs of total gains per day will become more significant and influential in the long run of the challenge. With this experience in mind, I strongly believe my ability to earn more money and boost my rankings will follow through as the weeks go by, therefore assisting me tremendously as my goal to reach top 20 continues on.      

A Rough Start

      The well-anticipated Mr. Whalen stock market challenge begun on August 26^th 2016, with a very rough start for myself. A well-rounded group of competitors shooting for the top spot in the 70-day challenge, stood in front of me with a tough task ahead. With past experience in the contest I came into class with several stocks in mind to invest in, that in the past have earned and lost me a great sum of money. The strategy I came forward with was to lead off with an optimistic start to push my peers to take risks to fight for the top spot in the early running, using my past experience as an advantage. I came to the conclusion that my goal in the stock market challenge was to come Top 20 amongst all 80 competitors from various classes.  As several peers have invested their money into stocks in the past as well as Mr. Whalen who has been extremely successful in the past with stocks. This goal I believe is realistic and attainable, if I am successfully able to accumulate the proper strategies and take several risks that lead to significant rewards (total gains).

      Day 1 was a roller-coaster of emotions, several hours into the challenge, a stock called Direxion (NUGT), had earned me several thousand dollars to put me in top 5 in the challenge, as gold was rebounding from a quick loss in the first few hours of the market open. Unfortunately, the stock plummeted from 24.03 to about 22.90, which not only lost me all that I gained in the first few hours, but also in addition put me in the hole of about 4000 dollars. As I was not able to get to a device as soon as possible to minimize and or eliminate my loss, my positive ambition to start the challenge on a high note collapsed in front of eyes. This tremendous loss pressed me to reconsider the strategies to execute and reach my goal of top 20 out of the 80 competitors in the challenge, which I begun to brainstorm for the next few days. 

      As the days rolled on, I had also begun to read more articles from various reputable sources including MarketWatch, in addition analyzing stock graphs as well as studying the trends of certain stocks. Several articles that I came across that looked promising was about a pharmaceutical company called Sunesis Pharmaceutical Inc. Analysts from various companies had estimated several sums that put the stock (SNSS), in an optimistic light. They estimated Sunesis would grow in the next quarter by about 26.7%, not to mention that the company believes they will grow significantly in the coming years, about 116% per annum for the next 5 years. As these numbers are not supported by the past trends of the company, I researched more into why these numbers exist and are relevant. What I found was that Sunesis at the end of the second quarter had begun new stages of advancement in two of their new therapy drugs called vosaroxin and SNS-062. They project the release of the vosaroxin drug to European markets in 2017, which will consequently increase their revenue and therefore their share price inevitably in the future. As I was able to attain this knowledge prior to my peers I was able to put in a significant amount of my buying power into the stock several times during the duration of Thursday and Friday, which increased my net worth significantly as the share value increased by about 9%. 

http://www.newsoracle.com/2016/09/08/what-are-analysts-report-about-sunesis-pharmaceuticals-inc-nasdaqsnss/

http://scibilitymedia.com/sunesis-pharmaceuticals-inc-nasdaqsnss-sufficient-cash-remain-afloat/


https://www.equities.com/news/sunesis-pharmaceuticals-inc-snss-jumps-8-99-on-september-09

       I have learned that understanding and becoming knowledgeable of what is happening with companies and global markets is a major asset to the success in this challenge. I believe if I continue this strategy of compiling information and implementing my effective methods of buying and selling stocks, I will be able to set myself up for success and create a realistic opportunity for me to attain my goal. Overall, from 64th on Wednesday night, to 31st on Friday night I was able to make substantial gains and cut my loss to a positive figure. 33 spots in two days, not the start I intended, but the progress I envisioned.