What was even more fun was that the old finance.yahoo.com page (which I still miss) would let you create a number of portfolios which you could then track and measure. I made a tech portfolio, energy portfolio, and consumables (low $ retail) portfolio. You could compete in their contest by submitting a portfolio and having it 'ride the charts' and be ranked right up there along other choices.
Way more fun than anything Zynga has ever published as far as I am concerned.
I'm sure I'm overlooking something, but if its possible to beat the market by actively trading stocks, how come a vehicle like this doesn't exist?:
I'll give you $100,000 of mine to invest.
I'll pay you $7,000 up front to manage it.
You can invest the money however you want to.
In exchange I want:
- The ability to get out whenever I want (within 3 months of request)
- An APR on my $100k principal of 1% over the S&P 500
For example, if I stay in for 10 years and the S&P 500 appreciates by 10% (259,374), you owe me an 11% rate of return (283,942). This gives me a "true" return of 10.25% or 0.25% guaranteed over the market. If the market plummets and has a rate of return of -20%; you owe me -19%. Simple.
If the market is easy to beat, all you have to do is take my $100k, invest it in actively-managed mutual funds (the 7k can cover the fees) and keep the spread. Yet nothing like this exists. Why?
And there goes the "0.25% over the market", given that risk has an expense. We then have the answer: tiny investor upside doesn't overcome the risk, and high risk/low reward on the brokerage side means no one would offer it, and no one would buy it even if they did.
Way more fun than anything Zynga has ever published as far as I am concerned.