Tuesday, May 5, 2009

WeSeed - The Pretend Stock Market



I consider myself a pretty financially aware person compared to most people my age (a necessity of a large loan payback and a limited source of funds) but when it comes to stocks and bonds and securities... I'm essentially clueless. On Friday Kim over at Little Miss Fortune introduced WeSeed.

For where I am right now (net worth ~ -$34,500) I'm not in a place to be "playing" the stock market. No matter how clever you think you are there is no way to guarantee results in the market, especially in this economic climate. In my opinion I see most market investments akin to a really intense poker game - even in you have all the skillz, you may still not get the right hand - oh, and there's no bluffing on the exchange floor.

Since realistically it's too soon for discussions about money managers or whether you should go with an independent broker, choose an off shoot of your banking institution, or elect to fly solo, this is a great chance to take a shot on my own on WeSeed.

Signing up is easy and you can choose a pot size to begin with, I went with $10,000 which seemed more realistic and manageable than the $1,000,000 option.

Beginning on Friday, I ended up with 4 pots of $10,000 because you can make and manage several portfolios. As far as I can see this works in real time with the real stock market, so you're testing your own stock smarts with every "buy" or "sell." I don't believe it has every single public company available for your stock purchase, but it's a good start.

WeSeed is great because it's not some theoretical algorithm about your potential chances when investing, it give you immediate satisfaction or disappointment as you see your stock prices rise and fall. You can take your time to do research or just jump in and buy buy buy! (guess what I did..) If you're a little gun shy there are tons of resources on the site to introduce you to the market.

I had a few basic guidelines I went along before making my choices. Each company either:
1) is a company I know and love and/or I know it had a profitable report and is likely to continue doing well this year
2) is a company in a failing industry affected by the current global situation (Chrysler pork chop anyone?) which will almost definitely rebound in the future,
OR
3) is a company that makes crappy cheap food or goods which always becoming high demand in a recession (check out Crunch Bars circa 1930).

Below are my portfolios, you'll see I've been doing amazing, but I can't take all the credit, the market had a really good day Monday (Look Mom! I learned! I wouldn't have know that before!). Beside the name is the profit I've made so far - keep in mind I have different numbers of shares for each company. General Mills I have 9, Sara Lee I have 900 between the two portfolios.

Portfolio 1 - general
GAP Inc (GPS) $141.00
Kraft Foods Inc (KFT) $19.80
Sara Lee Corp (SLE) $215.00
Tyson Foods Inc (TSN) $62.70

Totals $438.50

Portfolio 2 - Junk
General Mills (GIS) $1.94
Kraft Foods Inc (KFT) $98.00
Mcdonalds Corp (MCD) $13.50
Sara Lee Corp (SLE) $230.00

Totals $343.44

Portfolio 3 - Electronics
Apple Inc (AAPL) $271.80
Research In Motion Ltd $37.80

Totals $309.60

Portfolio 4 - Green Things
Whole Foods Mkt Inc $720.00

Totals $720.00

Total Totals ===== 1811.54! In one day!*

That's 4.5% of my $40,000 investment!

I'll keep you updated in the future, I'm sure they'll move up an down over time, but it's good to know I made some super choices on my first go around.

Would you try this out?

*Results not typical.

2 comments:

  1. I'm down 25G's today (although up 10G's overall). That makes me happy it's not real money! (Although I wouldn't mind a free million to start with!) - Little Miss Fortune

    ReplyDelete
  2. Times are tought today! I thnk I've lost at least half of any of my earnings, and now i'm trying to buy up some cheap stocks with any leftover cash. That million would be great... maybe I should have started with that!

    Oh well, the more you have, the more you have to lose!

    Thanks for checking me out LMF!

    ReplyDelete

OSAP Repayment
Final Goal Date: Sept 2009

Started: May 2008
Finished: JUNE 2009!!

$8200
-$8000
$0 .


TD Line of Credit
Final Goal Date: Sept 2012

Started: May 2009
Finished: ??

-$34000
Only $33,326 to go! .


$12000 in Emergency Savings
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Started: Jan 2008
Finished: ??

2.4k
-0
$12000 in savings .