You're exactly right. Some nut will win by pure chance, just like the lottery. There is no skill involved. Now if they said "let's see who has the best risk-adjusted return", that would be entirely different.
One might want to read the rules carefully. From memory: 25 trades per week limit. All orders are MOC. Mid/large-cap stocks only. Basically, a short-term investing contest. No outsized gains from badly marked-up/pumped-up penny stocks, call options, etc. I'd be surprised if the winner were more than 100% gain. If there's little M&A activity during the period, even less. 25 runners-up get 60Gb video iPods. Do you think, because the grand prize is of significant value, insider trading would be prosecutable?
Contest is a farce. Entered a "trade" at 3:30pmEST this afternoon and it's not showing in the portfolio as of 12:15amEST this morning. From what I've heard many trades are lost, some not showing in portfolios, others not showing any record at all.
A rule that would be easy to implement to avoid the lucky dart problem would be that no more than x% of the portfolio can be invested in one stock. At that point, it would be more difficult for the meek to win with his strike of luck.
my buy is showing up the next day. the only problem is i bought when the stock was 4.50 and they credited me for 4.75 the close price. what a lame contest.
My thought on this contest is just buy the absolute worst Performing ( Like the -30%)stocks every day since you get in at the close and hope for some bounce back the next day and implement his strategy everyday.... Wouldn't that be funny if this strategy produced the winner and you got to tell your strategy to the world on CNBC....HAHA That would make all the technical gurus go nuts if this strategy outperformed everyone else.....You may want to diversify this strategy and buy the worst 3 stocks of the day......You gotta figure the ones that drop 30% in a day is an over reaction.... $COSTAverageMAN Let me know how it works out if you got the guts.....Hey just create a second account in the wife's name...I may just do that
No. Insider Trading harms the persons on the other side of the trade. In a paper-trading contest, nobody can be harmed.