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 28th, 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.
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 |
 |
| MTW |
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.
The first URL under paragraph 3, is hidden. Drag mouse under the paragraph to find link to article on Amazon.com.
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