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.