Phoenix Union Pick the Winners Competition 2014!

This is designed to be a 3-6 week long competition to see which Math Technology student can make the most of a $100,000 investment portfolio using the Investopedia Website. 

I have already set up the game, my game title is PhxMathTech2014.  You can search phx and find it.  At the bottom of this post are the settings of the game which I can modify if needed but I think these should work.  Please note that the game is over on May 18^th.  Students can print out their standings in the meantime but the game will end at that time. 

To access the game:  PhxMathTech2014

www.investopedia.com

 “continue to site”

 Simulator

Simulator drop menu –login

create new account *no need to subscribe to newsletters

‘my home’

Add/edit games

Join a game

Search

PhxMathTech2014  is the game that I set up. 

*When you search the results show at the bottom of the screen

Once inside, click “Trade” tab to begin buying and selling stocks

*Students can look up tickers at http://finance.yahoo.com

  

Obviously there are many ways to approach this including levels of engagement.  Below are the 7 rules of Wall St. according to Sam Stovall. 

Table of contents from 7 Rules of Wall st.  by Sam Stovall
*it should be noted that Stovall is the Chief Investment Strategist at Standard & Poor’s which I believe is a division of McGraw Hill.  This is his latest book.  I’m not sure that it is still in print, copies of his older books which are not in print fetch hundreds of dollars per copy.  I read this book in 2 days; it’s not very difficult. 

The textbook Financial Algebra’s 1^st chapter will be a pretty big help in interpreting stock data as well as some basic analysis such as smoothing techniques (simple moving average).   Some concepts that might be explored by students could include the following: 

Momentum (let your winners ride)

Value (apply p/e ratio, rank a set of stocks by price/forecasted earnings)

Sector Rotation (work by Sam Stovall, but has a wealth of knowledge on the internet. 

See:  10 Basic Sectors:  http://biz.yahoo.com/p/s_conameu.html

And Industries of the Sectors:  http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/ind_index.html

Dogs of Wall St [or the DJI] –buy low sell high

ETFs—there is a wealth of information about investing in ETFs (electronically traded funds).  There are over 5,000 ETFs that do everything from duplicate Stovall’s indicies to follow metals, producers, specific sectors.  Some of them are leveraged so they move wildly up and down.  Others minimize trading expenses (which are taken from the gains). 

Rebalancing—a very important but boring trading topic for retirement planning.  See anything by Jack Brennan or Bogle’s earlier work.  It’s the idea that you hold more bonds earlier in your life but gradually work to a heavy ‘income’ based portfolio as you reach retirement. 

Mutual Funds—another very important topic for retirement planning.  Every mutual fund has a ticker which can be tracked on finance.yahoo.com.  Students can explore the prospectus of these funds to compare expense ratios etc.  *note that mutual funds are closed at the end of the day so they do not change value as frequently as regular stocks.  This may also become a factor for your afternoon classes because the markets close early by west coast standards. 

Types of assets and rebalancing—an important topic to think about, linked to rebalancing the main assets are cash, equities and income. 

Currency

Commodities

At the conclusions most students will find that its best left up to the professionals and the market is hard to beat.