The only thing cheaper than talking in forum posts is participating in this free contest.

Register Here

https://www.howthemarketworks.com/register/190211
Password: MagrielsTongue

Gameplay Terms:
* 1MM playmoney
* 25% position limits
* $0 comission trades
* Shorting allowed
* ETFs allowed
* $3 Minimum Buy Price

Objectives:
* To get at least 10 BFI players involved/participating
* Expose forum frauds
* Expose people whose insight is of higher quality than their forum shitposts suggest

Timeline:
Registration Starts: Immediately
Registration Ends: 08/31/2021
Trading Period Starts: 1st Trading Day of July 2020 (July 3)


Interim Discussion:

- We have about 2 weeks until the trading date opens, so lets discuss suggestions for gameplay.

- Any kinks with registration or anything else, post here and I'll do my best to take care of it.

- ETFs are accepted here because they're an available vehicle in the real world, so why not here? Sometimes, you don't want the risk of concentrated equity in a particular stock but it may make sense to make a more generalized play in a sector. Thus, ETFs. Ruling is final.

- I created the contest so I am dictator of rules, but all suggestions will be considered and if rejected, a coherent reason given why.

- People just playing along for fun shall not be mocked nor trolled in the forum for any reason, we've all had shitty years, because the goal is for it to be fun, anyone trolling harmless posters over the contest will be immediately banned, however:

- Failure to participate while otherwise being a big-talker in the threads shall be a badge of fraudulence, insofar as talk is cheap and performance cannot be bullshitted. Posters with a known track record of big talk who underfperform in the contest may be mocked/trolled without risk of the troller being removed from the contest.

Count me in! I am willing to abide by all the aforementioned rules and take any flaming that may come...LETS DO THIS!

Question: What platform/methodology will be used for tracking trades?

The link in the OP should take you to a registration page to register for the contest, which will be tracked there.

Years ago we did a similar thing on UpDown, but that went away. This seems to be a pretty good, fairly simple to do a forum trading contest, the web app is easy enough to understand, etc.

Also, initial cash position is $100K and it won't let me change it, but that's OK.
Scale accordingly.

We have 6 non-cowards signed up for this BFI exclusive fun and free contest.

4 more please to meet objective, which will reset objective to 15 by the start date (of next month).

Also, FAIL:me- 1st trading day is 1st trading day of August, not July.
Muh bad.

Still time!

Curious, will any cowards be signed up?

Also, just a past observation: I participated in one of these about 13 years ago, smack dab in the middle of the bloodbath of October of 07. The guy who was dead last for the first 7 of the 12 months went on to win the ****ing thing...

We have 6 players, which is a good start. No cowards yet. The goal is 10 by opening of trading, August 3.

Feel free to invite anyone who, for example, routinely posts of gains/high performance after the fact, makes regular claims of near flawless insight/judgement/actions ("yeah, I bought it here and sold it there and bought back in again here and sold it there..."), etc.

Added a new user.

Ruling: Portfolios will be public, for other participants to see.

This is a hotly debated topic in market sim games, as it opens the door to certain strategic gameplay that has nothing to do with market edge/insight and everything to do with the game/competition.

Done for 2 reasons.

1) Makes the contest more interesting. You get insight into the participants and can possibly glean valuable insights for your real money portfolio.

2) It makes it more fun. A year long contest of everyone somberly trading behind closed doors is boring. This is also a poker forum, where playing the man and playing your hand is accepted and understood.

When does it actually start?

fyi

This would be trivial to crush other donkey 2p2ers. Should we put up a pool of money for buyins? Has to be something at stake other than forum pride, which can't buy you hookers (they may actually be allergic to it).

No money to play.
Side bets are allowed under game rules but not regulated and exist solely between the respective parties, forum-pride Avatar bets are encouraged.

How does shorting work in this. Does it take into account the interest % per day on some of these hard to borrow names

I'm signing up.

Handle is theMVP'sparticipationtrophy

Edit: OMG I have to learn that platform...

Also, does this use real time data? I haven't done something like this in 15ish years. Last one I remember didn't use real time data and you could arb that making it dumb. I'm guessing these days they use real time data?

I don't know but I will find out.

I guess it's totally possible for someone to be using a RTD platform to arb a playmoney contest- and there would be no way to actually tell- however if someone were so dedicated to this that they were willing to put in that kind of time/effort, they're hereby judged guilty of full blown Autism and belong locked in a treatment facility, even if they ultimately use that strategy to win.

I don't know but I will find out and post the answer here.

I would agree, but 15 years ago the delay was 5 minutes. You didn't have to be smart at all you just had to have a real time feed. I can't imagine that is the way it is anymore. It's crazy how much things have changed in a short period of time.

I'll play. What do I have to do?

Joined

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

Joined. Had to pick a different user name because grizy isn't 6 letters.

Portfolio set. I have absolutely zero insider information to speak of and I have not traded any of these stocks (except one token long term call contract on TSLA more for lols than EV). I have no intention of actively trading for the duration of the contest. This portfolio is what I will end with unless rules force me to do otherwise.

I am not endorsing any of the stocks in my play money portfolio and I have not checked with my employer's potential conflict database. This is strictly for fun (troll?). Notice I didn't bother with fundamental analysis of financial statements of any kind nor did I bother with technical analysis of charts.

I bought:
PYPL: payment processing will grow faster and PayPal has finally started to push QR code payments... that's going to give them a little time to take off before credit card companies can react.

MRNA and AZN: Their vaccines are looking surer and surer bets because all indications are regulators are eager to shortcircuit typical safeguards (and they arguably should) to get economy back working again.

TSLA: because uh... the stock is pretty divorced from reality and the short term catalysts for downside just isn't there. That they still sold out their supply (even if, and that's an if, they had to stuff the channel) in China at the height of the pandemic there bodes well for TSLA. With economic downturns and authorities eager for new jobs/good news, pretty good bet Musk will get even more sweet government subsidies.

USO: basically I think oil prices have hit a floor that's set by breakeven/marginal costs to restart idled wells in the fracking fields in US. There is a couple months window before new supply is brought back online to push prices down again. Too lazy to find specific stocks so just bought USO. Really I got to USO because I couldn't be arsed to get 25% on the 4 stocks above so I ended up with like 8% cash to buy something.

Thanks for offering this.
I have no clue what I'm doing and had to lie about owning a brokerage account to signup, but I hope that's okay and that I can learn how to buy stocks and stuff from participating in this to some extent.

I don't want to say that this contest has been underwhelming thus far, but the fact that the people who have yet to make a single trade are largely winning says alot...

i just got some picks in, so expect me to drop in the standings