There's a stock picking contest in the Investing section, and everybody's supposed to try and pick 10 stocks - 5 longs and 5 shorts, or something close to that?
Will have to go back and double check the rules
It's an interesting contest in so many ways, with the inclusion of multiple picks including shorts, and then there's been the chance to see what everybody else here at 2+2 has picked.
Everything's so much easier in life when things are on a heater
Had such great luck with my stock market picks this year - although would have done very well just sticking with a DJIA ETF too ... is the market up something like 25% this year? The market maybe hasn't had a year this great in the past 20 years, since the dot-com boom?
Guess it's one thing to try and pick exceptional companies who stand a good chance of possibly outperforming the market when the market is already outperforming itself several times over
Haven't actually had the greatest luck this year with trying to outperform the market in the times when the market was in a bit of a lull, like in the last 3 months of the year. So am feeling very unsure about how much risk should be trying to take to improve my gains in the next year, if next year maybe turns out to be a slow one after this year's big one?
There was hardly any risk at all in putting money on Facebook when everybody was so upbeat about the Trump tax cuts being enacted this year. But with them not set to go into effect until 2019, and with so many companies already with high valuations - maybe much more of a challenge to try and make money in a year where there's a chance things may be kind of flat?
There were two things that seemed like they might have promise for 2018 - can't seem to find the article where first saw this graph, but it looks like some people feel gold might be in a good position to rebound next year, if everything else stays a bit flat? Guess that would have to include cryptos though, so not sure about the chances of that??
So precious metals might be a potential 'long' - and then maybe a potential 'short' is maybe retail? Was reading that lots of people feel retail may continue to struggle because of the trend towards more online shopping, and because of heavy debt and rising interest rates. Guess a short of Sears in the middle of April this year would have done about as well as a purchase of bitcoin in October at around $4k, with like +300% gains ... or more? Is there any chance in the world Sears finds a way to recover and not go bankrupt this year? So maybe is there a chance there to make like 700% gains on SHLD, or something like that?
Shorting's a little scary, when there's always that chance of uncapped losses. It's quite frightening to look at Sears' graph from February to April, and try to imagine how that would feel if the same thing were to happen again, while short.
The contest starts in 2 days, but guess am mostly worried about what to pick for my real portfolio with the real $ in it - ugh, not so easy
Anyways, will be heading out to the airport early tomorrow morning, and won't be home until maybe 10pm or 11pm Toronto time, so tomorrow should be kind of a long day - should get to bed and try to get some rest ...