And the winner is…

Congratulations to BigBoySam for winning National 1st place, just $591 in front of 2nd place and finishing with a portfolio value of $61,439.

This was not an easy market to trade in with a lot of volatility and uncertainty in the market. 

For this Game:

• The All Ordinaries (XAO) was down -7.99%.
• The best performing sector was Telecommunications up 4.86% followed by IT up .04%.
• The worst performing sector was energy, down -12.84% followed by consumer discretionary and financials both down over -10%.
• The top stock was SOL - Washington H Soul Pattison & Co up 43.06% followed by VOC - Vocus Communication up 40.16%.
• The worst performing stock was TRS - The Reject Shop down -61.14% followed by KGN down -46.25%.
• Only 10% of players finished in profit with the average portfolio value being $46,726.
   

We asked the top players about their Game plan…read on to discover what they did. 

Please remember, the strategies that the winners employed are not necessarily the same strategies they or you should employ when it comes to investing real money.

NATIONAL 1ST

BigBoySam - Sam from NSW
Portfolio: $61,439

1. Have you played the Game before?  This is my very first time.
2. How many hours a day did you spend on the Game? I spent around 30 mins each day, just checking on rises and falls and only on the stocks I invested in. 
3. How did you select your companies? I checked the patterns of rises and falls and selected companies that I thought were vulnerable to a rise and selected them.
4. What was your Game plan? My plan initially was to hold and then sell stocks before they fell, to maximize my profits, but that only lasted for the first few weeks of the Game. If a stock or category of stocks was not improving or performing well, I would sell them and look to select other companies I thought would perform better. This was a very bold plan on my end, but it continued to work. As I was quickly gaining short-term profits, I also chose to sell to lock in those profits. After selling some stocks I would even go back and buy the same stocks I sold previously, this was sometimes due to creeping regrets or impatience, which I have learnt from this Game, could be a bad habit. By the end of the Game, I deliberately held only one stock, because I wanted to keep my portfolio value at the highest it could be with little risk of loss. 
5. How did you handle the market volatility? I handled the market volatility comfortably by sticking to my plan of holding my stocks until I thought it was the right time to sell, for example, I would sell to maximize my profits and before they had a major fall.
6. What if any charting Software did you use? I only used stock charts generated through google searches.
7. What was the biggest lesson you have learnt? That stocks can be very volatile during certain situations...This heavily affected my stocks in the end and dropped my portfolio total by a huge margin. 
   
   I would like to wish everyone good luck in the future and remember, patience is major key.

View Sam's portfolio

NATIONAL 2ND

Kingsmoney - Stephen from TAS
Portfolio value: $60,848

1. Have you played the Game before? Yes, couple of times.
2. How many hours a day did you spend on the Game? Not much, I just kept an eye on the companies I chose.
3. How did you select your companies? Mostly from the 'Stocks on the move' in the Game dashboard.
4. What was your Game plan? Buy & hold, mostly mining & resources companies, all under $5, I chose ones that had a better price 6 months to a year ago.
5. Did you stick to your plan?  Mostly, until the last day. Everything in my watchlist was red on the last day, I should have sold everything.
6. How did you handle the market volatility? I didn’t pay much attention to it, however in mid-October when the market dropped I sold everything to lock in some profits & started again. I managed to pick some good stocks & my portfolio kept growing.
7. What was the biggest lesson you learnt? If you’re in the lead or close to it at the end of the Game, sell everything. I almost blew it on the last day when I kept trading in a sea of red, my portfolio dropped quite a lot so I consider myself very lucky to finish 2nd, so BigBoySam you owe me several beers.

View Stephen’s portfolio

NATIONAL 3RD

Planning abc - Les from NSW
Portfolio value: $60,211

1. Have you played the Game before? Yes I have played the Game before…with various results.
2. How many hours a day did you spend on the Game? Time spent varied according to what day it was and what was happening in the market. Before the Game started, I did some research on looking at what companies might offer some upside potential. Following the market is a daily part of my normal routine. During the Game, I spent at least 30 minutes a day putting in buy or sell orders when needed and at the end of every day I did a couple of quick scans to look for likely trading candidates for the following day.
3. How did you select your companies? I looked for several things including shares that were breaking out of congestion on the charts and were fundamentally sound, companies that might rise in price on a good earnings announcement and buying on dips in price close to important support levels. From a fundamental view point this was the first time I used the Stock Doctor tool.
4. What was your Game plan? My strategy consisted of two parts.
   For the first part of the Game it was a company earnings reports strategy, with buying shares a few days before the earnings announcement was due, looking for a positive bounce in price, then selling after holding less than a week. This had a few quick wins and losses and probably made 50 per cent of my total returns for the Game.
   My second strategy was to buy companies that were breaking up in price from a support level or congestion, put in a trailing stop and then watching how far the trend would go before being stopped out.
5. Did you stick to your plan? Yes, until the market began moving, with two large down days in a row in early September which put me on alert to be a bit cautious. Soon after the market retreated sharply…I changed tack a lot and concentrated on the gold sector for shares to buy.
6. What if any charting Software did you use? I used Incredible Charts software for end of day scans and looking at charts. I made good use of the ASX watchlists which shows profit and losses. I also used the Stock Doctor website and information for the first time and found it very helpful.
7. How did you handle the market volatility? I kept losses to a minimum where possible, traded less often in smaller positions and stuck mostly to the gold miners.
8. What was the biggest lesson you learnt? Never give up. Stay the course your trading compass has set, as you never know what will happen next in the market. At one point in time I was down 5 per cent and at different times the Game leader was up by more than 30 per cent. You can’t predict what will happen next only prepare for the possibilities. The tumultuous nature of the market at times was certainly difficult to ride out and a bit of luck near the end of the Game also helped.

View Les’s portfolio

League Winners

Under10 League Winner - The Baxons

What was your motivation to create a league?
We created our league to support each other and see if we could rise to the top. We also wanted to try out the league feature and learn more about each other’s investing strategies.

Did you find that it helped you both?
Being in a league did help with organization and motivation. It is good to have someone that is on the same journey.

And anything else you think would help other players? 

• Don’t let emotional investing get in the way of your normal strategies. 
• Don’t give up, as the sharemarket is always changing in someone’s favour. 
• Sometimes the best thing to do is actually do nothing and just wait it out.
• And most importantly, have some fun!

Over 11 League winner - BFF2701_2018s2_Fri13

What was your motivation to create a league? 
The league was created as part of our...equity markets subject activities where students practiced trading on ASX Sharemarket Game platform to have the real exposure to different types of orders, investment strategies, behaviour finance which they had been studying during the semester.

Did you find that it helped you as a group?
The league helped students to track their trading performance against other group members. As the league creator, I could check their trading and remind them about what needed to be done along the way. More competition created motivation for students and kept them excited about trading every week when they came to class. 

The company list has been updated for the entire Game period: 2 August - 14 November

Want to keep learning - see our previous newsletter for tips on what you can do.

See you in 2019
The Games Team 

Webinar 1 recording

Game on with Stock Doctor 

 

Webinar 2 recording

Smarter Game strategies

Webinar 3 recording

Reporting season update – the good, the bad & the ugly

Webinar 4 Recording

Six secrets of successful sharemarket investing


 

 

Where to from here? – A post-mortem

As the ASX Sharemarket Game has come to a close, no doubt you all have mixed feelings. 

Some will be excited about what lies ahead; others will approach the future with trepidation particularly in the current volatile environment, many are probably suffering from exhaustion. All these feelings are normal and will no doubt raise their head at some point in your investment journey. 

Now while there can only be one winner of the Game, the reality is we all win in this excellent learning environment. So what next? How do we take the learnings of the game and use them to apply to real life? Let’s look at some lessons the market has taught us over the past three months.

Learn from the lessons of your investing past. Now the Game is finished look over all your wins and your losses. This may seem obvious, but do more of what worked, and less of what didn’t. The market is very generous at teaching us lessons from our mistakes. Our trick as investors is to learn from them.

Record your thoughts for making decisions. The above task would be futile unless you recorded why you bought every stock you held in the first place. Knowing why you carry every stock is an essential step, because if you don’t see why you bought it, you will never know when to sell it, and further you will never learn from that decision.

Have a clear investment strategy ready to go. Before you make your first buy decision using real money, you need to have your investment strategy mapped out and ready to roll. Having a clearly defined strategy will save you a significant amount of time, effort and stress. This is particularly the case when there are broader market sell-offs. Without having a strategy to help you block out the noise and make decision when they need to be made you are relying on luck. Not a great long-term strategy I’m afraid. 

Never take your eye off the ball. Often the reason why investors fail in the long run is not the strategy they employ. Instead, it’s the failure to stick to the strategy with discipline that is the issue. Taking your eye off the ball, especially in tough times like now, will lead to portfolio neglect and perennial underperformance.

Investing in quality businesses is the best way to achieve outperformance over the long-term. If you are serious about creating long-term prosperity, then you need to ensure that the vast majority of your funds are invested in quality businesses. While the lure of a short-term gain may seem enticing, avoiding capital killers like GSW and BLA will be an essential part of your long-term performance. Investing in great businesses that are financially healthy will give you the peace of mind that you can succeed in the long-run.

Important: Lincoln Indicators Pty Limited (Lincoln) ABN 23 006 715 573, as Corporate Authorised Representative of Lincoln Financial Group Pty Ltd ABN 70 609 751 966, AFSL 483167. This communication may contain general financial product advice. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.  Our advice has been prepared without taking account of your personal circumstances. You should therefore consider its appropriateness, in light of your objectives, financial situation and needs, before acting on it. Before acting on any advice, you should consider the appropriateness of the advice and we recommend you obtain financial, legal and taxation advice before making a decision. Please refer to our Financial Services Guide (FSG) for more information at www.lincolnindicators.com.au. If our advice relates to the acquisition or possible acquisition of a particular financial product, you should obtain a copy of and consider the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) at www.lincolnindicators.com.au before making any decision.