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%:
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Account Information
|
|
|
Short Balance
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$3.00M
|
|
Long Balance
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$355.35K
|
|
Available Cash
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$8.66M
|
|
Spendable Cash
|
$8.66M
|
|
Account Value
|
$12.01M
|
|
Return:
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20.10%
|
Holdings as of November 22 2011:
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LONG POSITIONS
|
|||||
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Company
|
Buy Price
|
Qty
|
Last Price
|
Market Value
|
Gain ($ | %)
|
|
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:
- Short solar energy
- Short Netflix
- Short LinkedIn
- Short Groupon
- Long large cap technology
- Long pharmaceutical and health care
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