Trader’s Narrative

In his last Stock Trader TV video, Tony Oz shared some tips on how to win the CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge and mentioned that he was creating a separate website called WinDaMillion for videos he would be making dedicated to the CNBC contest. He has put up his first video now and not only does it have tips and tricks but it also has 6 stock picks:

And Tony also signed up for the contest himself (just before it closed on April 7th). Here he discusses his performance since April 2nd (bold is my emphasis):

I finally entered the contest on 4/2/2007 and for the first week I had a return of almost 20% - all that in just four trading days as the market was closed on Friday. I find it very interesting that in just four trading days, I was able to pass 96% of the participants. In case you didn’t know, this contest has been going on for 24 trading days so far. I also wonder how high I ranked for the week, I mean, was I even close to winning the $10,000 weekly prize? Unfortunately, CNBC doesn’t tell us that. It just gives an overall standing since the inception of the contest.

If you’re not all contest-ed out, TheStreet.com started theirs on April 1st: Beat The Street. It is a bit different from the CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. There are 6 rounds. Each one consisting of 60 days and having a $100,000 USD prize money. But the biggest prize is that each of the 6 winners will actually get to have an interview with Cramer! And if you don’t win the prize money you have a pretty good chance of getting a consolation prizes like: ActionAlert subscriptions, Cramer books, and something called ‘Jim Cramer autographed bulls’ (I’m assuming they’re plastic schwag and not livestock).

The trick to winning stock trading contests is to read the rules and to adapt your strategy accordingly. From what I’ve seen, ‘Beat The Street’ has less stringent capitalization requirements than the CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge - so go for the small and microcaps that can pop!