Bulba,
Could you possibly post the ranking and returns for all 31(?) participants? I for one would find that very instructive.
I now gather that I'd also find I landed a bit higher than I had thought, if 18th place was down 18.6%, so my -15.25% is apparently slightly higher in ranking than I'd guessed.
FWIW - The backbone of my strategy was 20% positions in each of two stocks I thought might pop exuberantly on reaching important milestones during the year, COR and ELN, both of which also seemed to me extremely cheap at 12/31.
This plan worked like gangbusters for a while in midyear, and principally due to COR I was in and out of first place for a sustained run of many weeks -- anyone who knows my background and how little time I've spent on biotech in the last several years knows how completely laughable that is in this crowd. (With no ability to judge the relevant science, I can at least try to listen carefully to those who can and make some judgments about whose judgments to mimic, then applying some guesses about risk/reward, etc.)
But then the good ship COR ran violently aground on its FDA decision and sank beneath the waves, and I disappeared from the top ten, but then somehow was edging back into it the last couple of weeks, until NBIX (a 10% position) banged into its own FDA rock two days before the contest ended.
So I ended up with one 53% winner (ELN), MLNM up 39%, ARQL up 2.2%, and the other seven losers, four of them more than 40% (including COR at -53%), and still was down only 15.25% overall. Yes, I think you do need to buy a basket! Tricky business, this biotech investing.
I'll make my contributions this week, both to Technetium's charity (being careful to get it doubled) and to Bulba's. |
