2009 Bloggers' Stockpicking Competition Results: Up 56.14% for the year

Posted by Preet on Dec 31, 2009 | 1 comment

So as the trading year for 2009 has come to a close it’s time to reflect on the results of the 2009 Bloggers’ Stockpicking Contest. My four picks averaged +56.14% for the year. Here is a more detailed recap of the individual picks… (full rankings at bottom of this post)

EDC.us: Direxion Emerging Markets 3X Bull, up 158.66%. This is a triple leveraged ETF trading in the US which seeks to track 300% of the daily performance of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. As I’ve mentioned before, with any daily leveraged ETF you have to be right in direction and path over longer periods of time, and luckily this one worked out.

ENA.to: Enablence Technologies, up 63.33%. This is a Canadian company that manufactures hardware that reduces data bottlenecks between data carrying cables outside your house and your cable modem (in a nutshell). This was all over the place this year, and up until a few weeks ago looked like it was going to end the year flat.

TNA.us: Direxion Small Cap Bull 3X Shares ETF, up 25.37%. This ETF seeks to track 300% of the daily performance of the Russell 2000 index, which is an index of small cap US stocks. Same warning as with EDC up above – direction and path were right enough to get a positive result.

HOU.to: Horizons BetaPro NYMEX Crude Oil Bull+ ETF, down 22.81%. Here is a prime example of how path dependency can really muck you up. The index was fairly close to flat yet the decay really manifested. For those of you still new to leveraged ETFs I suggest doing a search on the right for Leveraged ETF as I’ve written about them extensively.

Compared To The Other Guys…

I finished 3rd out of 9. The average performance of all picks (among all bloggers in the contest) was 34.16%. Interestingly the S&P/TSX Composite was up 32.69% (half way through trading on the final day anyways). The S&P500 was up 26.47%. The best set of picks was up 81.56%, the worst was -9.36%. The single best stock pick was +214.95% (BIDU) and the worst was -70.08 (BCF).

Here is the link to the spreadsheet with all the picks and results.

For the recaps from the other bloggers click on their names below (not all of us have our recaps posted, so I’ll link to their homepages until they are all up to date.):

First place at +81.56%: The Intelligent Speculator

Second place at +68.57%: The Wild Investor

Third place at +56.14%: WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

Fourth place at +41.37%: The Financial Blogger

Fifith place at +35.16%: Quest For Four Pillars

Sixth place at +18.17%: Dividend Growth Investor

Seventh place at +16.05%: Million Dollar Journey

Eighth place at -0.24%: MyTradersJournal

Ninth place at -9.36%: ZackStocks

Ramblings…

Posted by Preet on Dec 30, 2009 | 7 comments

The last week has been pretty eventful:

My personal email account was hacked and a spam email was sent to pretty much everyone in my personal contacts list (730). What is scary about this one was that the email shows up in my sent items folder – needless to say, all my passwords have been changed.

I bought a 52″ TV on Boxing Day – my first Boxing Day purchase that I can remember. I had just bought a PS3 so I figured, might as well get something that can show 1080P! (For all the audiophiles or home theatre geeks out there [Cajun?], I don’t actually want a 5.1 or 7.1 system to complement the TV but rather a 2.1 or 2.0 – any suggestions for a receiver and set of speakers for less than $650?)

I’m in Santa Monica right now with Fiona, visiting my brother and his new wife Yuki. Our parents are down too and the weather is great. However, my mother somehow finds a way to make me eat until I pass out – I swear it’s all HER doing. :)

I’m not back until January 5th, but I’ll make a few posts before then I suspect. If you don’t hear from me by then, I’ve gotten too caught up in the sleep-eat-sleep cycle. ;)

I hope everyone has a prosperous and healthy 2010!

Preet

How Much Are Tickets For The Men's Gold Medal Round Ice Hockey Game in Vancouver 2010?

Posted by Preet on Dec 22, 2009 | 8 comments

With the Olympics coming up, and a slight possibility that I might be in town for the Games I was interested in finding out the prices of tickets for various events (although expecting less than good news). Well, if you were looking for tickets to the Gold Medal round of the Men’s Ice Hockey event you could possibly be looking at $16,500 per seat according to the highest bids on the official Olympics ticket scalping site. Of course, they refer to it as simply the “Fan-to-Fan” section of the ticketing section of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics official website.

Here is the screenshot:

(You can click on the image to enlarge it)

Absurd. The face value of the tickets is $775 each, but organizers have decided to set up this “fan-to-fan” ticket marketplace so people can still try to get tickets. Sure they are hot commodities, and no one is forcing you to pay the asking prices, and if they didn’t set it up scalpers and ticket brokers would do this anyways.

VANOC is collecting 10% of the sale price from BOTH the seller and they buyer. So if someone snags these tickets from the picture above not only will VANOC have collected $1,550 (original sale price for 2 x $775 tickets), they will have collected an additional $6,000 from the fees for providing the fan-to-fan marketplace.

That assumes that someone is crazy enough to shell out that kind of money. Just because someone is posting it at that price doesn’t mean it will sell.

Nonetheless, this is certainly a controversial service. I wonder if it comes with sippy-cups made of unobtanium…

How Much Did Avatar Cost To Make?

Posted by Preet on Dec 21, 2009 | 0 comments

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll know that James Cameron’s latest movie, Avatar, is now playing in theatres. Cameron is known for making some pretty big blockbusters like T2 and Titanic and both of those had large budgets and special effects that pushed the envelope. Avatar is no different. Rumours were that the real cost of the movie, which was four years in the making, was almost $500 million, but more official comments have that number closer to $200 million. I’m pretty sure the real number lies somewhere in between.

The worldwide opening weekend take was about $240 million (US) and my friend took me to see it tonight, and he had just seen it yesterday. This was the same sort of thing that happened with Titanic – lots of people kept seeing it in the theatres over and over again.

We saw it tonight in 3D, which I highly recommend. I’d like to see it again in IMAX 3D to get the full experience, but even in the “regular” 3D it was breathtaking. The story, the effects and most importantly, the imagination behind this picture cannot be described in words. You’ll have to see it for yourself. I don’t think the trailer does it justice, but it’s embedded below (email and feed readers can click here to view on YouTube).

A Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Dec 18, 2009 | 6 comments

If you are new to WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com, every Friday I run a post called “A Lap Of The Blogs” which provides links to articles I found interesting and think that others may want to read for themselves. I also sometimes include some commentary on what’s going on in my personal life and a weekly “racing video” since my former life was in the auto-racing industry. The name “Lap of the Blogs” is in reference to “A Lap Of The Gods” which is an old video series which chronicled on-board footage of the world’s greatest F1 drivers lapping various racetracks from around the world. NOTE: you have to visit the actual website to see the embedded video – it may not appear in your email. Just click on the title of the email to see it…

I was in Calgary on Tuesday and Wednesday but luckily a chinook rolled in and the temperature wasn’t as bad as it has been of late. In Vancouver now until Sunday. It’s interesting how different the general portfolio management philosophy is from province to province. Without generalizing too much, I’m not the only one who has noticed that Albertan advisors are much heavier into commodity exposure and oil and gas plays, and BC advisors seem to have more exposure to OM products (investment funds requiring Offering Memorandums as opposed to Simplified Prospectuses – this means hedge funds, concentrated real estate plays, MIC-like investments, etc.). Anyways…

From Around The Blogosphere

Canadian Capitalist notes that the new HST in Ontario and BC doesn’t seem to mean as much extra burden as bandied about in the media of late.

Big Cajun Man notes that the desire to avoid shooting pool with a rope means men are healthier in general than they’ve ever been. This is definitely worth a read – insightful and very funny!

Jonathan Chevreau notes that two-thirds of Canadians are planning on skipping their RRSP contributions this year. Perhaps one other reason could be that TFSA room is competing for long term savings/investment dollars?

Million Dollar Journey has a post about charitable giving. I, too, do not give the $1 donations at the cashier because I don’t get a tax receipt and I have a budget for charitable giving. I also only give to certain charities. I’d love to give to them all, but you have to draw a line somewhere. It shouldn’t make you feel bad.

Thicken My Wallet talks about Holiday Savings and Holiday Scams.

Michael James on Money no longer believes in recycling mouse traps, he reached his frugality limits on this one.

Four Pillars has a last minute cheap gift guide.

Canadian Financial DIY has a post explaining how to maintain asset class exposure whilst avoiding superficial losses if you have a capital loss you’d like to crystallize.

Ellen Roseman explains that while credit cards can protect you from online fraud, they don’t protect you from not reading the fine print.

This Week’s Racing Video

Why drive on a controlled, closed circuit race track when you can take a behemoth of a car and drive it on public roads? Welcome to the world of hill-climbs… Enjoy!

Big Changes for Cellphone Competition in Canada for 2010?

Posted by Preet on Dec 15, 2009 | 5 comments

You may have heard on the news last week that Globalive has been allowed to offer cellular phone service to Canadians (Industry Canada made the announcement on Friday). Bell, Telus and Rogers collectively lost $2.4 billion in stock value that day.

Globalive is launching a new brand (new to Canada, anyways): WIND Mobile. They just announced on their website that they are having a launch party of sorts tomorrow (today if you are getting the email updates), so one could expect that they will announce their full pricing lineup at that time.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that their plans will look as follows, but note that these are unconfirmed at this time:

Chat: $15 per month
Unlimited WIND to WIND calling (Canada wide)
Unlimited incoming text
100 province-wide voice minutes
50 text messages

Always Talk: $35 per month
Unlimited WIND to WIND calling (Canada wide)
Unlimited province-wide calling
Unlimited incoming text
50 outgoing text messages

Always Shout: $45 per month
Unlimited Canada-wide calling
Unlimited incoming /outgoing text messages
Voicemail

Data Plans
Infinite Mobile: $35 per month (used with any voice plan)
Unlimited internet for phones (tethering too)

Again, these are unconfirmed, and sourced from HowardForums. The pricing might be live on the website if you click here, if not – it should be shortly.

But Wait, There’s More

You may or may not know that Google is rumoured to be bringing out a GPhone – or Google Phone. The latest scuttlebut has it that it won’t operate on cellular service at all, but rather be a data-only device that uses VOIP to operate like a phone. So no voice and data plans, just an unlimited data plan and it will act like an unlimited voice and data device for, presumably, a lower price. Low enough to be game changing. Only question is, does this mean Google will now know even more about you and your habits?

Bottom line – if you are thinking about switching carriers anytime soon, it might be better to hold off until these two players announce their full intentions. You might switch to them, or you might have more clout dealing with client loyalty and retentions for the big three to keep your business…

Stream Videos From Your Computer To Your TV and Get a Free Blu-Ray Player and Playstation 3

Posted by Preet on Dec 14, 2009 | 10 comments

Yeah, so let me explain the title of this blog post with a little preamble.

A few weeks ago I decided to cut down on our TV bill by scaling back the channels and upping our internet package (we were on the very basic of the basic which made streaming videos painful). With all the TV shows you can stream, and an iTunes account for basically everything else, there is not much point in having a fancy TV package.

Of course, to make things more comfortable to watch I wanted to be able to watch anything on the main TV in the living room. My first thought was that there must be a way to wirelessly stream video from my computer to my TV. After doing a bit of research I found that you can indeed buy such devices. They all seemed to be $250+ for wireless versions, and a Windows Media Centre “Extender” was about $350.

After some further research and some guidance from my best friend Andy (who was the mastermind behind my audition video for the W Network!) we discovered that a Sony Playstation 3 can access your wireless network and stream video (and other multimedia content) almost effortlessly from your PC. The only snag was that anything recorded on Windows Media Centre (a Microsoft product) would not work out of the box (but it would on an Xbox, which is also a Microsoft item). I wanted the PS3 as it had a Blu-Ray player, and also is the only console that plays Gran Turismo (my favourite racing game from my video game days).

Best of all, the PS3 was now only $299 for the version with a 120GB hard drive.

I googled and found a transcoder (Tveristy) that transcodes most video formats to a format that can be read by a PS3 – so when you stream something from your computer it transcodes it on the fly and hits the PS3 in a version that will work. Tversity has a free version which does everything you need it to for this purpose.

So, all in all, instead of spending $250-$350 for a device that streams wireless video from a PC to my TV, I spent $299 (+tax) and got that ability PLUS a Blu-Ray player, PLUS the latest gaming console.

I thought I would post that since others may want to look into it. Happy savinggaming!