Happy New Years!

Happy New Years everyone! It was strange to have the markets closed for four straight days, but I found that it was nice to not have the markets on the back of my mind for a few days. I find that even when I'm on vacation, as a swing trader, it's difficult to have a clean slate and not pay attention. This is a huge advantage for daytraders in the stress management department, as they can just shut it down when they are not feeling up to it. Volume will come back tomorrow and I think there will be some large gaps in the morning with all the time off.
It's hard to expect anything at this point, but I would guess the indices gap higher. I don't think I will be chasing much of anything though, probably just managing my open positions.


So a few friends of mine have had a little stock picking contest the past two years, where we pick two stocks each in the beginning of the year and hold for the entire year. The winner is the person with the highest combined return for their two picks. It is not a realistic contest as you can't sell or lock in profits, but it is lots of fun to see how a pick would of done had you held the entire year. The only prize is bragging rights, which is a valuable prize indeed. Here are the final results for 2006. The numbers behind the ticker are total return, buy price, sell price.

6th. Lionshare -25.57%

JDSU -13.95% 19.36 16.66
AMD -37.19% 32.40 20.35

Poor Lionshare was derailed by semiconductors. He is a techy who is all over this space from a technology perspective, but timing is everything in stocks. Both were up substantially until getting hammered when the overall markets corrected through mid year. It seems like money never rotated back in as the markets turned around and both kept floundering. I am surprised AMD was such a horrible stock for most of the year.

5th. Downtown -11.18%

REDF -3.82% 19.13 18.40
CMED -18.54% 33.23 27.07

I finished a very disappointing 5th, dragged down by an 18.54% loss in CMED. I am surprised that in the year of Chinese stocks that CMED was such a poor performer. REDF had to stage a late year rally to manage a small 3.82% loss. Not to discount my poor performance, but REDF and CMED were up quite a bit after I selected them. REDF was well into the 30's from 19, and CMED into the 40's from 33. A trailing stop would of easily locked in huge gains, but alas, this contest has a forced holding time of a year.

4th. Doc -9.07%

ELN +5.28% 14.01 14.75
VPHM -23.43% 19.12 14.64

4th place begins the group of sub par performers. Doc had a 23.43% loss in VPHM wipe out the 5.28% gain in ELN although it could of been a heck of a lot worse. VPHM was down well over 50% at one point and had a 100% move up from 7's-14's in the second half of the year. ELN got a little spunk in May but was basically flat after June.

3rd. Btuff +26.34%

NGPS +45.51% 27.42 39.90
CKCM +7.16% 21.23 22.75

Btuff had a great call on NGPS nailing a 45.51% move despite a +15% haircut from the top. CKCM was all over the place ranging from over 30 into the mid teens before being taken over for 21.23 a share.

2nd. Paige +102.83%

SVMFF +202.45% 4.85 14.67
RUTH +3.22% 17.71 18.28

Paige caught a 200% move on SVM which helped pad the 3.22% he got from RUTH. RUTH was looking like it was gonna clear the 200sma late in the year but fell apart in the end. SVM was a great call for Paige and Smorg below, and I am extremely happy they both actually held the real thing for all of it.


1st. Smorg +117.64%

SVMFF +202.45% 4.85 14.67
IVN +32.84% 7.40 9.83

Wow. Smorg went with the precious metals and cleaned up this year. SVM is a silver miner that trades on the Toronto exchange and just had a monster year. IVN had a volatile year but had huge move in the fall. It was up over 11 in October and then again in December before pulling back to finish at 9.83. Smorg has been all over a few other foreign mining companies and made a heck of a call on SVM.

Congratulations bud, great job. I'll buy the beer on my next trip up to Toronto.



There are a couple of changes for this years contest. First, I am keeping stock selections to the NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX. Not that I am opposed to other exchanges, but I find them hard to track down with my charting program and I wanted to keep the stocks familiar to my blog readers. Second, stocks must have a share price over $5. Smaller stocks have drastic moves in both directions from a percentage perspective, and most funds stay away from them anyways.

I'm still waiting on a few picks from Smorg for this years contest, but we have most of them in already. I will be posting charts for these tomorrow with further analysis.

Downtowntrader
OMNI and CXW

Paige
LMRA and MFN

Btuff
BOOM and ASEI

Doc
AUY and SLW

Lionshare
DELL and INAP


If anyone wants to throw in their two picks in the comments section, I will recap them next year when I review the contest.

Good Luck tomorrow,

DT