It was a very negative start to the year. The major indexes all were down over 1%. It looks like we are headed for a retest of the November lows, but it's a tough call to make with only one day completed into the new year. Several sites are running stock contests this year and I entered two in addition to my annual one. The first is being held by Ragin Cajun over at madstocks.com. Basically, you pick one stock using 2007 closing price as the start and closing price of 2008 as the finish. I chose VMW. The second was a contest specifically for bloggers hosted by sinletter.com and runs through the first quarter. In this one you pick three stocks but the entry price is the highest price the stock hits on 1/1. I chose VMW, HOLX, and CMED. I've also been running my private stock contest for a couple of years now and our picks were due today. I will go over last years results next week, but suffice to say it was a disappointing year. This year we expanded to 4 stocks each in an effort to minimize the impact of any certain stock. Interestingly, we have had a combined positive gain both years so far if stocks were bought equally weighted. Here are the choices of each of the participants;
Joey VMW, HOLX, TASR, GSOL
Rob CCC, XOM, ATVI, KNM
Btuff ASEI, SYNL, TGE, IVN
Paige SNCR, MFN, LMRA, IVN
Doc GDX, NAK, SLW, LIHR
Lionshare AAPL, GOOG, ASTI, AIZ
Some of the others I was considering were OXPS, EXM, BZH, CMED, SOHU, QDEL, ANSS and LKQX.
I am still on vacation so posting will be light the next few days, but look for a regular posting to resume Sunday night.
Good Trading,
Joey
Today VMW has -9.18%....
[Start Sarcasm] Thanks for the update, my platform was broken and I didn't see where it was [end Sarcasm]
This contest is lasts all year.