Chris Lau - Seeking Alpha

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

How To Save Your Portfolio: TradeFields

Seeking for Alpha is the only way to truly differentiate oneself from the masses and the herd.


Taken from seekingalpha's web site, 'Alpha' is a finance term referring to a stock's performance relative to the market; it's used more loosely by fund managers to describe beating their index - so every stock picker is essentially "seeking alpha."


The first step of surviving the stock market is to not lose money. As easy as it sounds, anyone invested in stocks or mutual funds, for that matter, will know that "waiting it out" or holding something "for the long term" does not constitute as a strategy for protecting from losses.


Taking decisive steps, and learning by doing, goes a long way. On a stock simulator app on Facebook, tradeFields is one way to take practice steps. 


In the last few weeks, my performance improved from months of "loss" to a gain of 20.10%:


Account Information
Short Balance
$3.00M
Long Balance
$355.35K
Available Cash
$8.66M
Spendable Cash
$8.66M
Account Value
$12.01M
Return:
20.10%


Holdings as of November 22 2011:

LONG POSITIONS
Company
Buy Price
Qty
Last Price
Market Value
Gain ($ | %)
GILD
$38.29
4,865
$38.76 ($2.50)
$188.56K
$2.28K
NVDA
$14.92
8,173
$15.04 ($0.41)
$122.92K
$966.86
ORCL
$31.00
54
$29.71 ($0.20)
$1.60K
$69.91
PANL
$44.62
988
$42.75 ($1.41)
$42.23K
$1.84K
THRX
$21.04
1
$21.78 ($0.26)

$0.74
SHORT POSITIONS


Total Long:
355K

Company
Buy Price
Qty
Last Price
Market Value
Gain ($ | %)
AAPL
$396.86
13
$375.57 ($6.56)
$5.43K
$276.79
FSLR
$42.44
29,565
$40.83 ($2.70)
$1.30M
$47.66K
GRPN
$22.71
891
$20.20 ($3.38)
$22.46K
$2.23K
LNKD
$71.88
2,891
$68.69 ($1.31)
$217.03K
$9.22K
NFLX
$70.96
2,085
$70.70 ($3.77)
$148.49K
$542.10
NVTL
$5.45
1
$3.00 ($0.14)
$7.89
$2.44
OCZ
$7.41
149,206
$6.08 ($0.15)
$1.30M
$199.14K



Total Short:
$1.7M


The positive return was accomplished in a number of ways:
  1. Short solar energy
  2. Short Netflix
  3. Short LinkedIn
  4. Short Groupon
  5. Long large cap technology
  6. Long pharmaceutical and health care
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