Stock Market Game – Yalicoo

The Fed has spoken, and Yalicoo competitors’ returns surged

By Yinon Arieli | September 24, 2007

The monthly competitors returns surged last week after the Federal Reserve has spoken and caused the market to rise sharply (see below for additional information on that issue). kdiddy (with return of 11.4%) succeeded to increase the gap from other players by buying few of last week’s rocket stocks such as the Chinese stock BIDU and the glass designer APOG. The game is definitely not over yet since genibus (9.9%) and boopahs1 (7.3%) are still close to kdiddy and have enough time to take the lead.

The quarterly stock market competition can be summarized with QueenPortfolio question to ChrisMartin at the end of last week:”just curious, what's your plan for leading?” As the quarterly competition reaches its final week, ChrisMartin is placed second with a return of 15.8%. TheTrader, who has been leading the competition almost all the way from the beginning, is ranked first with an exceptional high return of 22.5%!

Going over trading by TheTrader shows an interesting variety of buys and sells; each one of them increased his portfolio return by a small amount, but when these returns are combined they have led to a significant rise in the value of that portfolio. ChrisMartin, on the other hand, has fewer stocks which have yielded larger profits. One of his more impressive gainer is the Chinese-language Internet search provider Baidu.com, Inc. (BIDU), which continued rising strongly during the last few months.

As is the case with BIDU, most of the stocks on the Chinese market have recently increased in value; not surprising, some of Yalicoo's well-informed and knowledgeable competitors have succeeded to profit from this upward trend. Whether the Chinese stock market is rising too quickly or not and how long will this trend persist is still hard to tell but those who follow the activities of Yalicoo's traders may be able to profit from this rise.

genibus, however, with a yield of 13.9%, still has a chance to catch up with the leaders, but it seems that unless something extraordinary occurs this week, the winner is going to be one of the above-mentioned three amazing Yalicoo traders. Stay tuned with me to the Yalicoo competition arena to follow the exciting occurrences of the following week.


5 days of competitions

As Yalicoo community grows, new competitors are winning games. Among last week’s new winners we had victheslick and HKN; each one won two of the daily competitions with impressive returns. We also had new comers who won the second and third places: GlassEye, Cashmoney and mathgeek.

the weekly stock trading competition was very interesting as genibus continues to be one of Yalicoo’s leading traders with a yield of almost 8%! gold, a new player who joined our community this week, was doing very well last week and was ranked second, close to genibus. I’m curious to see what these traders are planning for this week. Following their trades provides an interesting view of the market and the options hidden in it for those who are well-informed and educated.


Last week stock market highlight
The Federal Reserve has spoken; is it good for the stock market?


The Federal Reserve expressed the concern that the housing problems could spread through the rest of the American economy by its decision to drop the funds rate by half a point to 4.75%. The market has responded positively showing it is ready for further growth; the stock market changed its downward trend of the last weeks and started to increase quickly, with the Dow rising more than 3% up in only 4 days.

“Economic growth was moderate during the first half of the year, but the tightening of credit conditions has the potential to intensify the housing correction and to restrain economic growth more generally,” the Fed said in its statement, and increased the ambiguity in the minds of observers as to another potential drop in the fund rate in the future.

Morgan Stanley economists expect the Fed to ease by a full percentage point in order for its measures to have any significant effect on the economy. Richard Weiss, chief investment officer at City National Bank also thinks that half a percent drop is a bad sign. “It’s not unlike an ill person begging for more morphine and they just got a double dose from the doctor - the problem of course with getting a double dose of morphine is, you’re very sick”, he said last week.

It is too early to judge, but the stock market has been mostly positive since, suggesting investors are not worried that “maybe the Fed sees something really bad coming”. That may change in the future. However, nobody knows when and how, and only the future will tell.