PANDA - 23 September 2008 11:14 AM

graphrix - 23 September 2008 06:54 AM

CalGal - 23 September 2008 02:31 AM

I requested a trade on Sunday night (24-hours ago) and it still hasn’t gone through.

Ugh… I know. I had an order open on SDS for $70, but it didn’t go through for two days (yesterday for $66, and now it is up). I agree Investopedia is a joke. We really need to find a new source, and so we can start over with Panda and maybe blackvault won’t get that PM this time. Er, I mean we jeust need to follow what he does. I really won’t exclude anyone who wants to join, and I really wish panda could join.

CalGal, any chance that you have the spare time to find another source? I know we are all busy, but I really don’t have the time right now. I keep saying maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.

No, Panda wants to keep playing in Investopedia. As of yesterday’s close i am at $109,223.29 in my Panda Challenge Account. I am not doing that bad right?

Sorry, but you had technical issues getting into the game. So, you are up $0. If you were in the game that would be a different story. But since you are not in the game, you are not playing. If we can’t see how you are doing, then we don’t know how you are doing. I mean can you see how my puts on FXI are up 75% right now?

PANDA - 23 September 2008 11:14 AM

graphrix - 23 September 2008 06:54 AM

CalGal - 23 September 2008 02:31 AM

I requested a trade on Sunday night (24-hours ago) and it still hasn’t gone through.

Ugh… I know. I had an order open on SDS for $70, but it didn’t go through for two days (yesterday for $66, and now it is up). I agree Investopedia is a joke. We really need to find a new source, and so we can start over with Panda and maybe blackvault won’t get that PM this time. Er, I mean we jeust need to follow what he does. I really won’t exclude anyone who wants to join, and I really wish panda could join.

CalGal, any chance that you have the spare time to find another source? I know we are all busy, but I really don’t have the time right now. I keep saying maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.

No, Panda wants to keep playing in Investopedia. As of yesterday’s close i am at $109,223.29 in my Panda Challenge Account. I am not doing that bad right?

Funny..the namesake of the challenge ISN’T even signed up for the challenge

You’re supposed $9k profit would barely be 4th or 5th in the challenge….so bad..no…but blah

graphrix - 23 September 2008 06:54 AM

CalGal - 23 September 2008 02:31 AM

I requested a trade on Sunday night (24-hours ago) and it still hasn’t gone through.

Ugh… I know. I had an order open on SDS for $70, but it didn’t go through for two days (yesterday for $66, and now it is up). I agree Investopedia is a joke. We really need to find a new source, and so we can start over with Panda and maybe blackvault won’t get that PM this time. Er, I mean we just need to follow what he does. I really won’t exclude anyone who wants to join, and I really wish panda could join.

CalGal, any chance that you have the spare time to find another source? I know we are all busy, but I really don’t have the time right now. I keep saying maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.

I’ll do some research. I thought we could use optionsexpress as recommended by Blackvault, but after I re-read his post I realize it’s only an individual game. I’m slammed at work as well.

I think I’m going to throw in the towel on this one.  This is more frustrating than its worth it.  I’m a day trader, short term investor, long term investor and all depending on the current market situation.  A long term investment can end up being a 10 minute investment for me if the time is right…

I understand the 20 minute delay, which is fine and is still manageable, but when orders take 1+ hrs to execute and now my current options over 2hrs and still pending…its really getting old for me especially in a volitale market.

CalGal - 23 September 2008 11:38 PM

graphrix - 23 September 2008 06:54 AM

CalGal - 23 September 2008 02:31 AM

I requested a trade on Sunday night (24-hours ago) and it still hasn’t gone through.

Ugh… I know. I had an order open on SDS for $70, but it didn’t go through for two days (yesterday for $66, and now it is up). I agree Investopedia is a joke. We really need to find a new source, and so we can start over with Panda and maybe blackvault won’t get that PM this time. Er, I mean we just need to follow what he does. I really won’t exclude anyone who wants to join, and I really wish panda could join.

CalGal, any chance that you have the spare time to find another source? I know we are all busy, but I really don’t have the time right now. I keep saying maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.

I’ll do some research. I thought we could use optionsexpress as recommended by Blackvault, but after I re-read his post I realize it’s only an individual game. I’m slammed at work as well.

There is virtualtrading which allows group, but they don’t allow options.  I relly heavily on options for strategy in trading….but investopedia delays options anywhere between 20 min to 2+ hrs so I end up losing massive potential gains and at the end even end up owing.  So I really don’t care to trade it anyway…

A serious WTF with Investopedia..

So i shorted TRLG @ 28.91 yesterday…I see it around 27.50 today and sent in market order to cover…i get executed about 2 hrs later at 29.01!!?!?!?

WTF!!!!!!!!

optimusprime - 24 September 2008 06:40 PM

A serious WTF with Investopedia..

So i shorted TRLG @ 28.91 yesterday…I see it around 27.50 today and sent in market order to cover…i get executed about 2 hrs later at 29.01!!?!?!?

WTF!!!!!!!!

I know your pain.  I had a put option contract that I placed at around 5.25.  20 minutes later it was around 5.40, an hour later it was at 5.20, 2 hours into it…still around low 5s, then it executed finally at a price of 8.70 or something and retracted to about high 7s.  So i lost on the deal…when I should have cleary gained.

Make best of it I guess…If you want individual practice though…optionexpress.com is your friend.

I’m looking into it right now. I got excited that marketwatch has a game, I even started a new SadPanda game, but no options trading. They suck.

Edit: I will continue to add to this post the games I find. So check here for updates as I will be adding them as I find them.

1. Wall Street Survivor. $100k plus options, but no lock into a game per se. However it looks like it will be known to all how are trades are going, and we can add each other to our buddies list. So far this is the best find.

Graph and I climbed out of the hole, in the middle of the pack now thanks to a nice decline in the Euro.
Not quite in striking distance of the leaders, but much better than bringing up the rear.

A few of us stopped playing since Investopedia took too long to execute trades.

CalGal - 01 October 2008 04:29 PM

A few of us stopped playing since Investopedia took too long to execute trades.

Okay, I didn’t know that.
I don’t trade so it wasn’t a problem for me per se, but I understand where you’re coming from.
Reading the comments, I could tell a people a number were unhappy but didn’t realize they’re longer participating.
Thanks for letting me know

So is there another site we are using now?  I gave up on investopedia for a week, did minor sales today but thats about it.

blackvault - 01 October 2008 07:21 PM

So is there another site we are using now?  I gave up on investopedia for a week, did minor sales today but thats about it.

Feel free to sit it out a little longer so that the rest of us can make up some ground.
Seriously, I had no idea the others had dropped out of the game.
What timing?
My offense had just taken the field and I was about to open the playbook (smiley face)!

I am going fully invested on the Ultra long NASDAQ, DOW and S&P. QLD, DDM, SSO.

If today was the bottom, I will make a killing.

It is a good thing this is play money…

Am gunnin’ for Graphcakes.

I’m gonna join again.

awgee - 21 February 2009 03:16 AM

Am gunnin’ for Graphcakes.

Good luck pard’ he’s got the mojo!

-bix

Can someone give me the password/game name?  THanks!

graphrix - 17 September 2008 02:40 AM

CalGal - 16 September 2008 11:43 PM

Graph, can you dummy down an option order placement so I can understand what you did.
If possible, can you give me one example of the option order and what you hope happens with that order.
Thanks!
 
My husband said he won’t help me because he said I won’t let him live it down if something turns the wrong way (he’s probably right). 

Not a problem… er… well… I will do my best to make it all make sense, but no promises.

Options are essentially a bet, a bet where you can lose all your investment, unlike stocks where you lose only the difference in price from what you bought it at. I will stick with buying options vs. writing options since the game will only allow you to buy them and not write them. When you write options you can lose even more than your “investment” money.

Options are a contract, a right (call) to buy, or (put) to sell a stock. One contract is for the right of 100 shares of the stock. So a contract for the $27.50 strike BAC OCTOBER puts was trading at a price of $1.50, but one contract would cost $150.00. I bought 10 contracts (hopefully) costing me $1500.00.

Lets first discuss trading options, then at a later time I will explain exercising them. A put is a bet the stock will go down, and a call is a bet the stock will go up. So if BAC drops in price, in theory, the value of my put contracts should go up. Lets say BAC drops pretty hard tomorrow and the $27.50 October puts now trade at $2.00. If I sold my contracts for $2.00, I would have sold them for $2000.00, making me a gross profit of $500.00. If BAC runs up tomorrow, and my puts go to $1.00, then I would lose $500.00 if I sold them. Now, if I got greedy or thought that BAC was going to still go down I could wait for another day to see where my puts are trading at and sell them at a later time. If it never goes down and as time passes, then the value of the contract erodes, and this is what is know as time decay. So if BAC stayed at the same price as it is today, the puts would go down in value by the expiration date of October 17th (third Friday of the month). If they were trading at $0.08, then I would just let them expire and lose my $1500.00 plus the commission of the buying trade.

All a call is, is the opposite and hoping it will go up and not down.

I hope that helps, and feel free to ask more questions. It took me about a year of studying before I felt comfortable trading options. So you get a free crash course in a sense if you trade them.

Classic Graph…Classic.

awgee - 21 February 2009 03:16 AM

Am gunnin’ for Graphcakes.

Ummm-m-m, then again, maybe not so much.

So, what is happinin’ in the Panda Challenge these days?

awgee - 15 May 2009 03:23 PM

So, what is happinin’ in the Panda Challenge these days?

I haven’t even looked at it in months. You are still in first +31%, and I am in second at +24%. Good thing Goldman came back, otherwise I would be towards the bottom, but still higher than skekker.

graphrix - 15 May 2009 04:09 PM

awgee - 15 May 2009 03:23 PM

So, what is happinin’ in the Panda Challenge these days?

I haven’t even looked at it in months. You are still in first +31%, and I am in second at +24%. Good thing Goldman came back, otherwise I would be towards the bottom, but still higher than skekker.

wallstreetsurvivor.com Now has options available and group competitions.  If there are enough takers, I would be happy to whoop all your butts…

BlackVault CM2 - 15 May 2009 08:20 PM

graphrix - 15 May 2009 04:09 PM

awgee - 15 May 2009 03:23 PM

So, what is happinin’ in the Panda Challenge these days?

I haven’t even looked at it in months. You are still in first +31%, and I am in second at +24%. Good thing Goldman came back, otherwise I would be towards the bottom, but still higher than skekker.

wallstreetsurvivor.com Now has options available and group competitions.  If there are enough takers, I would be happy to whoop all your butts…

Count me in.

I’d be interested.  You guys can see my plays and know what NOT to do.