15th Of The Month Portfolio Ⅰ
OK, new tradition, monthly this time. Fantasy portfolio: you are free of debt and have $10,000 to invest. Make it as complicated or as simple as you like, using any instrument(s) you like. Post it here. We’ll figure out what you own at close of the New York markets on 15th October. Then every 15th of the month, we’ll tot up what our portfolios are worth, and in exactly one year we’ll cover all our shorts and sell everything else, and compare the cash we have. We’ll waive transaction fees. With me? This is only fun if multiple people play, so please play.
The standard mcgees.org prize is a banana through the U.S. mail. This will be awarded to the virtually-richest person on 15th October 2010.
Also, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, so I will probably lose.
My proposed portfolio:
I’d put $10,000 on account at a broker.
I’d short:
$5,000 in gold [Edit: NYSE GLD]
$5,000 in Google (GOOG)
Then use the $10,000 to buy:
$3000 in a DOW Jones index fund (say, IYY)
$7000 in Iceland Kronur currency
This is possible, right? As I said, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Play. S’il vous plait, or even if it doesn’t. I don’t want to be the only one playing; I’ll be lonely.
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21 Responses to “15th Of The Month Portfolio Ⅰ”
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October 9th, 2009 at 15h51
I wouldn’t short google until it hits $600 again. shorting gold is not a bad bet, but you need to pick a specific ETF or gold fund to short. not sure how one could short ingots
October 9th, 2009 at 16h14
Well, yeah, I actually was kind of thinking about shorting ingots. Or bars, as it were. Shiny metal in a vault. I know the capital gains sucks on it, but I don’t understand futures enough to be comfortable. Upon reflection, I know a lot of serious coin collectors, so I could theoretically borrow some scrap (poor condition Krugerrands or whatever), but really I was thinking about GLD. That I didn’t spell it out should tell you something about my sophistication.
Your fantasy portfolio, please?
October 9th, 2009 at 16h35
Coin collectors can be really weird (surprise, right?) I was talking with a coin dealer friend-of-a-friend at the friend’s shop. The conversation went something like this:
Joshua: [some comment about silver quarters I owned]
FOAF: Nah. Give me $1000. I’ll take a 20% commission and be back in an hour with $800 face in pre-1965 [silver] coins.
Joshua: How?!
FOAF: That’s why I’m a coin dealer and you’re not.
If you think this is weird, don’t get into stamps. Ask me some time about speculators buying Prexie sheets of 100, tearing them up, and sending them, tens of thousands at a time, to be slabbed by PSE. When this market was hot, I sold all my Prexie sheets. For huge gains. I think I got $150 for a sheet of Millard Fillmores (I paid $30 or something.) Didn’t declare a dime of it. Or, you know, a thirteen-cent stamp of it.
October 12th, 2009 at 22h14
I found myself in the same boat. And, of course, what I meant was pre-1965 silver coins — mostly dimes and quarters, probably. Junk silver, but still silver. And, yes, I’m still regretting it.
October 12th, 2009 at 22h08
Regarding the friend of a friend coin dealer. I must say I am sheepishly (& probably foolishly) intrigued by that $1000 for $800 face pre 1965. That is the sort of thing that tends to excite me, having been away from coin and stamp collecting for so long. Anyway, I am glad that the opportunity did not present itself to me because if I took it up I’d likely regret it and if I passed it up I’d likely regret it.
October 12th, 2009 at 22h43
Josh – I might want in on this game just for fun, but I know next to zilch about investing. Can I just buy stocks that intrigue me? Would that work for this game or be too boring?
October 14th, 2009 at 16h09
No, not too late. So, game on.
Just from Marketplace osmosis, I wouldn’t have thought to touch Ebix right now with a pole of any length. But then, it seems you know a lot more about what you’re talking about than I, so, this should be fun. 
FWIW: I read your third entry as “Q” the first time and thought you were buying Qwest, at which point I was completely bewildered (as that hasn’t been on my radar since the dot-com crash), then I realized the letter didn’t have a little tail on it.
October 14th, 2009 at 15h29
too late? forgot to check “notify me”
$2500 EBIX
$2500 SEP
$2500 O
$2500 QQQQ
October 14th, 2009 at 23h38
Now it’s getting really fun. Like, writing software to graph it all fun.
Also, I am arguably not a patriot by buying Kronur. But I figure, either that has to skyrocket, or I’ll take another $7k and buy the whole country. :-/
23 hours, 22 minutes left to join the pool.
October 14th, 2009 at 23h38
Well, no, right? However long until the US markets close. Be quick, y’all!
October 14th, 2009 at 23h08
Me too! Me too!
Midnight post = hasty decision.
$5000 JASO
$2500 NOK
$2500 DIS
Not much good reasoning behind it. Just curious. Will this do?
October 15th, 2009 at 09h09
Oh, BTW: I’m reinvesting all dividends & capital gains.
October 24th, 2009 at 15h03
Damn, forgot to do this, didn’t I? Sorry. I didn’t establish how we’re handling fractional shares. We’ll do them to two decimal points (if anyone complains, we’re playing with $1M apiece). So, at the close of 2009-10-15:
Jason owns:
Amal owns:
Joshua owns:
And obligations of:
Someone wanna check my math?
November 26th, 2009 at 04h44
I’m late doing so, but I’ve posted November’s scores, which are:
#1, Jason: $10048.55
#2, Amal: $9839.38
#3, Joshua: $9130.15
You can still join. Here for details.
March 18th, 2010 at 01h18
I am such a loser. Another 15th has passed. I’ll try to do this tomorrow.
March 18th, 2010 at 12h45
According to my google finance tracking, i’m at $11,412.35, but some $52 or so of that total is floating in cash even after I accounted for reinvestments. Either way, I’m up somewhere between 11.7% to 12%.
Would be higher (O is up almost 30%, SEP some 21%, QQQQ some 11%.) but EBIX is sluggish after the 3:1 split despite high institutional ownership and solid financials (~30% EPS increase year over year, good free cash flow). My only concern with them is 2009′s annual filing shows goodwill and intangibles accounting for 120% of their net assets, a bit of a red flag that wasn’t there before and shines on doubt their ability to pay their debts in a crisis.
Best of luck to all. Let’s make some fake money!
March 18th, 2010 at 12h51
According to my google finance tracking
Are you doing that manually, or is there a way to put together a portfolio that is tracked automatically?
Do you want to do the calculations for Amal and me as well?
Or, you know, be my financial advisor IRL?
March 18th, 2010 at 13h12
Are you doing that manually, or is there a way to put together a portfolio that is tracked automatically?
Google Finance allows you to enter your portfolio of stocks, including specific transactions that record date, price, number of shares, comission fees. It then automatically adjusts totals for stock price changes, splits and reverse splits, etc. But it’s still very beta and *sometimes* records your dividends and capital gains–but not always. So I manually calculate my dividends based on number of shares, then enter reinvestment transactions manually with a note that it’s a dividend reinvestment.
There may be a better system on Yahoo finance, but I haven’t looked into it.
Do you want to do the calculations for Amal and me as well?
If you follow what I did, it should be easy to make google finance portfolios for your and Amal’s current holdings, but I’m not sure how to track currency using it, nor is it useful in tracking your short positions, I think.
Or, you know, be my financial advisor IRL?
Despite having a 60% overall return on my equities and a 20% return on my mutual funds IRL, I’m only beating the Dow by 6% in the past 24 months–not enough to apply for a financial advisor position just yet
But, if you want to know what’s on my mind right now, I’m looking at fidelity’s new markets bond fund (FNMIX), Matthew’s India (MINDX), various energy master limited partnerships, and various high dividend closed funds trading on a discount to their NAV. I would also like some exposure to Latin America but not sure where best to get it yet.
I was looking at The Motley Fool’s new fund (FOOLX) for some time, as I think they’re pretty good stock pickers, but they’ve got big exposure to China, directly through Chinese companies and indirectly through non-Chinese companies that operate there, such as Yum Brands. This makes me uncomfortable, as my personal experiences in China and subsequent readings about their hidden debt and government-driven false economy make me think China’s a big bubble that will eventually burst should the Yuan become revalued, the US dollar weaken, or hidden small government debt default, or–heaven forbid!–the combination of all three.
I think you could, with luck, time the market and ride the Chinese growth wave, but I’m not up for it.
March 18th, 2010 at 13h13
Guess I’m not so good with the italics tag. lol.
March 18th, 2010 at 13h20
Fixed.
October 15th, 2010 at 16h33
I am up 34.7% after one year. That’s about double Warren Buffet’s expected target. Final total: $13,472.59
Sadly, my real world investments are only up about 18%. Should have turned fiction into fact last October 15!