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TheInflationist Challenge Year End Summary: 2009

1 Comment January 6, 2010 – 12:15 pm |   | Permalink |  Print This Post |

Top Ten 2009 : TheInflationist Challenge

Congratulations to our top ten investors who participated in The Inflationist Challenge 2009. For new readers, we started this site a year ago with the intention of harnessing the collective talent of investors and traders. The rules were simple: everyone started with $40,000 and could trade in anything - long or short.

Our only Rules are:

1. No Day Trading as trades are impossible to verify and are of no value to part time traders with full time day jobs (like us).

2. Trades need to be posted in real time.

Traders annual performance will be summarised year end (See table below). We debated whether to reset our portfolio value to $40,000 at the start of each year (vs rolling over), and have decided to let it roll over from the year before. Starting portfolio value will be recorded at the commencement of each calendar year so that every trader’s long term performance can be measured by the same (percentage) yardstick.

For 2009, David Haselhurst (known as The Speculator in The Bulletin; now in Money magazine) recorded an impressive 278% return! This was achieved trading equities only (on a long only strategy usually based on speculative penny stocks). The problem, though, is that the share price of his picks usually go up as soon as (and not uncommonly before) his stock picks are published.

The Warren Buffett Index (for new readers please read our post on the Warren Buffett Index) recorded a 28.15% return since its inception on 3rd May 2009. We will update his portfolio based on Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Report, and will only include stocks which go below the “official” purchase price.

TheInflationist Challenge 2009 Summary

Note: The Inflationist Challenge is NOT endorsed by and not affiliated with David Haselhurst, The Speculator Column or Money Magazine. All recommendations and stock picks are for entertainment purposes only. Please do your own research.

Note: Our widget has an error recording short positions hence the mismatch in our portfolio value. Our widget accounts for our short JBH.AX position as a long hence the additional $42000 in our portfolio value (plus “profits”). We are trying to fix this.

2009 Summary: Top Ten Investors on TheInflationist

#1: The Speculator

• Portfolio Value: $151413
• % Return: 278.53%

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#2: The Inflationist (Admin)

• Portfolio Value: $92748
• % Return:  131.87%
  

We are net short but this is (hopefully) balanced by our $66k long positions in equities. We will continue with our strategy of arbitrage and take both long and short positions. We look forward to improve our trading by carefully evaluating our trades (I think the first “obvious” lesson would be to set tight stops!)

TheInflationist Year End Summary

TheInflationist Year End Summary 2009

TheInflationist Year End Summary 2009

#3 : Indkitty

• Portfolio Value: $75523
• % Return:  88.8%

Indkitty 2009 Summary

#4: Deardoc

• Portfolio Value: $60405
• % Return: 51%
  

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#5: Mr Magik

• Portfolio Value: $53160
• % Return: 32.9%

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#6: Warren Buffett

• Portfolio Value: $51260
• % Return: 28.15%
  

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#7: BvbFan

• Portfolio Value: $46750
• % Return: 16.87%
  

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#8: trj6911

• Portfolio Value: $44735
• % Return: 11.83%

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#9: scoops

• Portfolio Value: $41574
• % Return: 3.93%

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#10: teresitahall

• Portfolio Value: $40941
• % Return: 2.35%
  

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Join us for TheInflationist Challenge 2010 !

1. Register

2. Go to “My Portfolio” (top column of links)

3. Add stocks (search for stock codes using Yahoo here) - for Australian stocks, add (.AX ie dot AX) as an extension (eg: BHP.AX for BHP; WPL.AX for Woodside); enter the purchase price and quantity.

4. To write an article, click on “Post Article” link on top.

5. For trading indices or commodities, simply click on “Add New” under the “Posts” section in your Author Dashboard (www.theinflationist.com/wp-admin).