Handheld G&K Game
The Handheld G&K Game will make its debut on 12/13/99 with $100,000 initial value. The arbitrary amount is chosen so the impact of trading commissions (set to be $8 per trade) is minimal.
In addition to the 4 companies were originally nominated for the Game, phone.com was added. Phone.com is leader in WAP (wireless application protocol) server and browser software, and it represents the wireless web application aspect of the Game. Some thread members have suggested other areas such as SmartCard, MP3 to be considered for the model portfolio. Because of limited knowledge, I'm not comfortable to select companies in these areas at this time. Especially in MP3 area, the fight for standard music format could be another Gorilla game by itself. As the landscape of handhelds changes in the future, companies will be added in or removed from the game. Inputs from thread members are always welcomed.
Finally, the weighting of each company in the Handheld G&K Game is determined according to both factual measurement of market shares and perceived strength of a potential gorilla or king. The actual weighting was decided by following method: I started by assigning 1/6 of fund to each of five nominated companies (Palm/3Com, Psion, Qualcomm, Nokia and Phone.com). Because of its king status in PDAs and its gorilla potential in handheld O/S, Palm /3Com was given heavier weighting by assigning additional 1/6 of the money. Since I was not able to find a way the get daily quote on Psion, the money assigned to Psion went to Nokia since it also owns Symbian (22%). Once Symbian is public traded, I'll sell half of Nokia shares and invest the money in Symbian. So the final selection and weighting of the Handheld G&K Game looks like this:
Palm/3Com (33 %)
Nokia (33%)
Qualcomm (17%)
Phone.com (17%)
I'll use Monday 12/13/1999's closing stock price for the purchasing price. S&P500 index closing number will also be record for the purpose of measuring the Handheld G&K Game performance. An update of the game and recent development in handhelds is planned for the end of this month.
Have a nice weekend,
John |
