thepupil Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 AAMC HCI NGVC ONVO PII SFM TFM TSLA UVE VJET Hurricanes , groceries, 3D printing , and those cool ATV's on steroids are the keys to my basket Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hielko Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 CRM VEEV TXTR STPFQ DDD TWTR NQ VVUS QCOR VJET I'm guessing the average short portfolio posted in this thread must be doing well so far in 2014: Ticker Start price now return CRM 54.86 50.76 -7.47% VEEV 32.33 18.7 -42.16% TXTR 29.95 17.76 -40.70% STPFQ 0.55 0.31 -43.64% DDD 94.19 44.8 -52.44% TWTR 67.5 42.62 -36.86% NQ 16.06 11.16 -30.51% VVUS 9.41 5.06 -46.23% QCOR 55.19 80.4 45.68% VJET 43.33 14.57 -66.37% Average -32.07% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepupil Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 AAMC +6% HCI -22% NGVC -48% ONVO -35% PII -8% SFM -27% TFM -25% TSLA +40% UVE -17% VJET -67% Hurricanes , groceries, 3D printing , and those cool ATV's on steroids are the keys to my basket decided to have a look at this. -20% average, 80% hit rate (negative absolute performance). Looking at the baskets i bet a lot of people are doing much better. - Hurricanes (HCI + UVE) doing well on the short side, still think there is more to come - Groceries (NGVC, SFM, TFM) also doing well, think that's pretty much played out, starting to see GARP write-ups on TFM and WFM, SFM is still probably expensive - 3D printing (ONVO, VJET), did well but i think borrow would've hurt you a lot here in the real world - Cool ATV's on steroids (PII), down a bit Losers: AAMC, TSLA EDIT: Russell -0.4% and SPY +4.7% over time period 1/3 --> 5/27 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatientCheetah Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 It's almost June now, should we make this quarterly or semi-annually? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 BBRY BBY BH CBRL FB GME HLF MJNA NFLX TWTR My picks are doing pretty well so far, Just FB and NFLX losing money. BBRY -4.84% BBY-33.16% BH-14.11% CBRL-8.08% FB+16.03% GME-24.89% HLF-19.14% MJNA0% NFLX+9.92% TWTR-54.80% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wachtwoord Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 1. DDD -46.0% 2. CZR -15.6% 3. CSGP -10.9% 4. JASO -1.9% 5. MU +31.6% 6. NFLX +11.5% 7. SHLD -20.0% 8. SPWR +3.6% 9. TWTR -51.5% 10. UA +14.9% 11. YGE -45.5% Not quite as good -11.8% on average versus rkbabang 's -13.3%, thepupil's -20.3% and Hielko's -32.1% :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 Why don't we just compile all the picks into a Google Drive spreadsheet? It's easy to pull real-time quotes into such a spreadsheet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Here are the standings as of August 5: ItsAValueTrap -45.07% Orange -25.97% Hielko -25.91% watsa_is_a_randian_hero -22.54% thepupil -20.75% Frommi -13.58% Edward -12.48% Constructive -7.94% watchwoord -7.50% Rkbabang -4.89% enoch01 -3.03% Racemize -2.20% txitxo -0.36% Otsog -0.29% deepValue 0.17% JEast 1.11% Zorrofan 1.24% compoundinglife 3.93% longinvestor 12.02% Congrats to Orange, who is in the lead. Many people (such as myself) did not strictly meet the requirements of this contest or chose stocks that weren't trading. Orange: Check your private messages? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Here is the Google spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1niama3CrEor43OvdXeF99SrhaLoRdGNdJ052WVZ3JY0/edit?usp=sharing Anybody can edit it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hielko Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Seems like that negative 10% alpha goal isn't that hard :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Ack, there are some data errors in the spreadsheet. The average underperformance is around -9.16%... so a little short of 10%. But the year ain't over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepupil Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 On my phone so not sure if spreadsheet is up to date but it looks like valuetrap (Glenn) wins and longinvestor loses. Well chosen names! ;D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepupil Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Oh and a personal takeaway from this is the two worst performing shorts in my basket were those I had on in largest size in real life (TSLA and UVE). Conviction weighting shorts is a tough thing to do. Most of the good short sellers I know are more or less equal weighted and diversified. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Here are the standings by my calculations. Congratulations to Orange! Orange -68.94% ItsAValueTrap -53.97% Constructive -48.09% Hielko -31.12% watsa_is_a_randian_hero -23.44% Edward -18.40% txitxo -16.30% thepupil -15.03% watchwoord -12.44% Frommi -11.15% Racemize -7.56% Rkbabang -6.85% deepValue -4.75% JEast 3.42% compoundinglife 3.46% enoch01 8.57% longinvestor 13.08% Otsog 13.64% Zorrofan 15.10% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
constructive Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Congrats Orange, great picks! After being in the middle of the pack at midyear, I'm surprised to come in 3rd with a 100% hit rate. If only my short positions performed as well in real life... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepupil Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 whoops, read this wrong on my phone. nice job orange, value trap and constructive. as a group, these results are actually pretty spectacular and would be the envy of the hedge fund community. 68% of participants made absolute returns on shorting in a year the S&P was up nicely and the russell was more or less flat. In the real world borrow costs and portfolio management likely would have led to different results (I know it did for me at least!!!). But still, good job Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
compoundinglife Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Nice job folks! Thanks for putting the spreadsheet together Glenn. Should we start a new contest for 2015? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest longinvestor Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 Bringing up the bottom of the list, I suck at identifying short ideas. At least in a 1-year time frame. However, I will be tracking the long term track record of my short ideas to see if my thesis is correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 Nice job folks! Thanks for putting the spreadsheet together Glenn. Should we start a new contest for 2015? I think it's easier if we go on Motley Fool CAPS. It tracks stock performance including dividends. It's somewhat more realistic because you can't trade really small stocks with low liquidity. http://caps.fool.com/ Here's my CAPS account: http://caps.fool.com/player/glenn12345.aspx In retrospect, I think it's somewhat obvious what the best strategy for this contest is: -Companies that will likely go bankrupt -Frauds -Stocks that are expensive to borrow -Shorting real companies like TSLA, fancy supermarkets, etc. etc. is a trap. -To a small degree, you need to short crazy stocks if you want to be #1. A guaranteed 30% loss across your entire portfolio will not put you in first place, even though -30% is a pretty good performance. If you simply pick the 10 most-expensive-to-borrow stocks, that basket will likely underperform the market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottHall Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 I work at TMF. The key to winning at CAPS is "red thumbing" OTC crap and leveraged ETFs. My coworker was the king of the game for years and used this strategy with great success. I have an account, too, but I seldom update it so it's gradually gone from 99+ to 96. Also, because accuracy is counted for your ranking, scorebank like crazy when you're +5 on a pick... if you're not in a contest like this, anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsAValueTrap Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 I work at TMF. The key to winning at CAPS is "red thumbing" OTC crap and leveraged ETFs. My coworker was the king of the game for years and used this strategy with great success. I have an account, too, but I seldom update it so it's gradually gone from 99+ to 96. Also, because accuracy is counted for your ranking, scorebank like crazy when you're +5 on a pick... if you're not in a contest like this, anyway. That's mostly what I do on CAPS. That, plus I short whatever stocks are the most expensive to borrow according to Interactive Brokers. And I have some ways of easily finding frauds and stock promotions. CAPS is more challenging because you can build score faster if you have 200 ideas rather than 10 ideas. Also, it won't let you short a lot of the OTC BB and Pink Sheet scams. You can't short the ticker symbols that show up in your Spam email folder for example. At the end of the day, I do think that it's really, really easy to find awful stocks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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