Eileen's picks

Week One Recap

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Confusion with a touch of frustration best summarizes my first week with the competition.

From the start it wasn't clear whether or not placing BUY limit orders constituted committing cash or not. The rules were silent on the subject, my Strategy Lab Open portfolio gave me conflicting information (on the BUY Wizard the answer was yes; on the rules compliance feature the answer was no) and I received no response to my e-mail question to an obviously-overwhelmed-by-questions service@marketocracy.com.

Because in real life when managing a trust for the benefit of future generations I would never risk making purchases simply because of a calendar date, I decided that non-participation in the Open was preferable to over-committing in a market environment that looked so problematical to me.

By Friday two of the BUY limit orders I placed on Monday had in fact triggered -- at least according to my "open orders" page which lists them as filled. Ambiguity still rules because they have yet to appear on my portfolio page.

Another source of confusion was how stocks are rated by style. Morningstar lists AMX as large growth while Marketocracy has classified it as large value; BAM is classified large growth by Morningstar but mid-cap value by the competition. Because the approach I use to manage investments is extremely dependent on diversification, I've decided to use Morningstar classifications for my decision-making as I do in real life.

Today brought clarification that participation in the Open is still possible in spite of the unresolved limit order question, and the delight of reading a number of the blogs of other participants.

There is no question that a challenging and informative few months lies ahead.