September 28, 2007 — So after 1 year, my Fantasy Stock Portfolio returned a little over 150%, which was enough to capture 1st place. We used the MarketWatch game. At first I had no competition among our friends in our private game, although Conor(and his risky day trading in the subprime market) spiked at one point and finished around 80%. I lucked out thanks to a hot tech market and picking some of the best companies in that. Not a single pick lost money(though this is lucky).
My primary investments that I held for the duration of the game were RIMM and AAPL. I also held MSFT and HPQ for the duration, though in smaller quantities. I dabbled with maybe 2 or3 other stocks. I made a bit on GOOG but thought the volatility was too much and while I can clearly see the untapped markets for RIMM and AAPL products, I think AdSense is nearing saturation. HPQ has impressed me the past few years with their well designed products(which I own a few of) and I think they can be the AAPL of the PC world. MSFT makes so much money, has brilliant people, and the new Office 2007 rocks(even if I’m not too impressed with Vista). 360 is also a great product. MSFT is not gonna fall anytime soon.
Besides those, I had some boring non tech investments. My strategy with investing is simple. I know tech well, so if I’m going to invest in something that is riskier than Indexes or CD’s, it’s going to be what I know best: tech. And I buy and hold for the long run. Partly because it makes sense, partly because I like doing things that don’t take much time. And trading is a hassle.
I’m mostly proud of the fact that my returns were high while I maintained a good Sharpe Ratio and I didn’t carry a whole lot of risk.
How did my real portfolio do? Pretty much mirrored my virtual portfolio. Except the commas and trailing zeros were very, very much different. :(
If someone had given me $1,000,000 a year ago, I would be writing this from a tropical resort right now. Instead, I’ve earned enough to maybe splurge on the fries when I order my next hamburger. But it’s all good because I don’t need much money to do what I love. And because I’m totally going to win the lottery soon.
Note: I imported this post from my original Wordpress blog.