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.