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Biotech / Medical : 2023 Biotech Charity Contest -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: technetium who wrote (198)	12/24/2023 11:21:50 AM
From: technetium	Respond to of 233

A few weeks ago a contestant raised what they considered to be a serious error in the reports. They did not say (but probably thought) that if something like this is in the weekly output report, does it mean that we should be skeptical of the announced winners at the end of the contest? I think in this case, it’s a matter of a misunderstanding of what the report was saying, rather than an error in the spreadsheet. (And I think the accuracy of the final results will be pretty good.) To be specific, a contestant noticed that the XYZ stock company had finished the last week at $10 / share, and the end of the current week it was $11. The percentage change of XYZ for the week is pretty easy to calculate: (11 - 10) / 10 = 10%, which is how any stock table in a newspaper would record percentage change in any value. A 10% gain in not to be sneezed at, but is unlikely to garner attention. But the report actually calculated that it was a top performer for the week with a reported 20% change, enough to land it in the top 5 discussion. How could this possibly be right? If you could look at another stock, the ABC company who went from $1 to $1.1, which is an equally big percentage change of (1.1 - 1)/1 of 10%. But unless they asked about ABC specifically, they are unlikely to see what the percentage calculation used by the report would say. In this case the report writer figures that ABC is a 2% increase, and almost certainly not going to make the top five winners for the week and be reported on. What’s going on is that the report % change is always the change in a stock as a percentage of THE ORIGINAL PRICE at the start of the contest. It turns out that both ABC and XYZ happened to start at $5 a share and had a very divergent history. Just why this method is used now was discussed at some length in the middle of last year’s contest. We had been using the “newspaper” percentage change calculation to rate individual stock performance. Week after week the “winners” list selected stocks that had lost a lot of value, in one case only a few tenths of a percent of their original price. This stock could often have a huge newspaper percentage change, but they couldn’t possibly make that much of a difference to our contest, as they amounted to a small amount of actual cash. What matters in how much money a particular price change made (or lost) for the portfolios. That is NSHARES * (THISWEEK - LASTWEEK), which varies depending on how many shares a portfolio bought in the original allocation at the start of the contest. If you want to make that a portfolio independent percentage, replace NSHARES with ALLOCATIONFRACTION / ORIGINAL PRICE, and take out the portfolio dependent part (the allocation fraction) which is (THIS WEEK - LAST WEEK) / ORIGINAL PRICE. That means that you could safely ignore a stock that has lost a tremendous amount of value since the start of contest that doubles in price, or worry about missing the move in a stock of adding 50% of its original price to a stock that had tripled in price since the contest start, which would only increase by the less imposing 12.5% using the newspaper “percentage”. I have tried to in each report at least once when discussing the percentage change in a stock price to say that the number is the change in price compared to the original price, or price at the start of the contest or some such. However, it is not at all unreasonable for anyone to just pass over these words and assume that the percentages were the more “obvious” calculation. Next year I intend to have a column that gives both kinds of percentages, though selecting the big movers only using the percent change against the original price. This might cause some initial confusion, but it would be educational to see how the two numbers varied.

To: technetium who wrote (198)	12/24/2023 12:01:53 PM
From: ErikOtto	1 Recommendation Recommended By Steve Lokness Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 233

Thanks so much technetium for running the contest. Your efforts are much appreciated! It really is a great way to learn from the market and it forces you to focus on company fundamentals. I will see if I can recruit some more participants for 2024 this week. The adage"It's not over until it's over" has been quite true for this year in general and with the extreme moves we've seen in recent weeks it's way too early to declare victory. If it's looking good around Thursday I will post my desired charity. Also thanks to all who participate. I enjoy the intermittent commentary and every year I find it interesting to look through peoples picks, trying to find diamonds on the rough. Happy holidays everyone!

To: technetium who wrote (198)	12/24/2023 5:43:25 PM
From: A.J. Mullen	Respond to of 233

As the person who hadn't paid attention to fact that you had reported the % increase was the increase over the original price, I must apologize for my unnecessary question. Thank you, for both keeping the scores and for your excellent commentary. Ashley

To: technetium who wrote (198)

12/29/2023 5:31:21 PM

From: technetium

1 Recommendation

Recommended By
Lance Bredvold

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 233

And the winner is, drumroll please: ERIK OTTO!

(Unofficial) final report:

Well here it is. The end of the contest.

Congratulations to ERIKOTTO’s first place finish with a portfolio value of $139,870.47! He was ahead of second place ALONER by $18,597.00. In fact this year six portfolios out of fifteen made it into the black. And the only change in the top seven rankings was BLADERUNNER scootching up to fifth place (and into the black) for the year, thanks to it being a good week for JSPR! (No surprise there I guess.)
It says “unofficial” because though althoug all the built in sanity checks in the spreadsheet are glowing “green”, I usually want to poke around looking at various individual calculations before I feel like saying “that’ll do spreadsheet” and let it range free.

Thanks again to everyone for taking part.

More commentary to follow.

Report Time Ranges
					*From*	To
				Recent	12/22/2023	12/29/23
				YTD	12/31/2022	12/29/23
Index Portfolios’ Performance
				*Symbol*	*Recent P/L*	*Recent %*	*YTD P/L*
				^IXIC	$175.61	0.1%	$43,423.11
				^NBI	$1,871.45	1.8%	$3,737.21
				^SPSIBI	$1,885.55	1.8%	$7,627.64
Share Performance
*Recent Performance*						*YTD Performance*
	Top Five			Bottom Five			Top Five			Bottom 5
Symbol		P/L / Initial Price	Symbol		P/L / Initial Price	Symbol		YTD P/L / Initial Price	Symbol		YTD P/L/ Initial Price
AVTX		179.4%	DNTH		-18.8%	INZY		305.7%	APTA.L		-97.6%
JSPR		55.7%	NAUT		-17.8%	STTK		210.0%	ACRS		-93.3%
PSNL		32.1%	OMER		-15.9%	MOR		176.5%	RGTPQ		-92.3%
STTK		23.0%	INZY		-15.2%	LIAN		149.7%	TCON		-88.2%
EYEN		22.1%	CRIS		-9.4%	CABA		145.4%	ALVR		-86.7%
Average and Median Portfolio Performance
	*Recent P/L*						*YTD P/L*
	Avg.	Median					Avg	Median
	$3,563.03	$1,742.02	RAJU_BIJLEE				-$7,310.53	-$15,188.33	ARTHUR RADLEY
Top Seven Portfolio Performances
*Top Recent Performers*						*Top YTD Performers*
Contestant (Prev. Rank)			Recent P/L	P/L vs. ^SPSIBI	YTD P/L (Rank)	Contestant (Prev. Rank)		YTD P/L	vs. Top Portfolio	P/L vs. ^SPSIBI	Rec. P/L (Rank)
1 - BMAZ001 (15)			$19,289.04	$17,403.48	-$21,445.44 (9)	1 - ERIKOTTO (1)		$39,870.47	——	$32,242.83	$2,894.55 (5)
2 - BLADERUNNER (3)			$9,640.21	$7,754.66	$2,554.73 (6)	2 - ALONER (2)		$21,273.39	$18,597.08	$13,645.75	$1,633.02 (9)
3 - ARTHUR RADLEY (9)			$5,437.61	$3,552.05	-$15,188.33 (8)	3 - STEVE LOKNESS (3)		$21,070.07	$18,800.41	$13,442.42	$2,241.40 (7)
4 - RKRW (11)			$4,754.13	$2,868.58	$19,290.81 (4)	4 - RKRW (4)		$19,290.81	$20,579.66	$11,663.16	$4,754.13 (4)
5 - ERIKOTTO (6)			$2,894.55	$1,008.99	$39,870.47 (1)	5 - A.J. MULLEN (5)		$7,094.79	$32,775.68	-$532.85	$588.95 (12)
6 - DEW DILIGENCE (14)			$2,778.58	$893.03	-$39,246.31 (15)	6 - BLADERUNNER (7)		$2,554.73	$37,315.74	-$5,072.91	$9,640.21 (2)
7 - STEVE LOKNESS (2)			$2,241.40	$355.85	$21,070.07 (3)	7 - JACK HARTMANN (6)		-$4,185.80	$44,056.27	-$11,813.44	$940.75 (11)
Top Portfolios’ Contents
*Top Recent Performance Portfolio (BMAZ001)*						*Top YTD Performance Portfolio (ERIKOTTO)*
Symbol (Rank)	Current Allocation	Value/Total \| ROI	YTD Stock P/L	Recent Stock P/L	% Current Price Change for $1,000 P/L	Symbol (Rank)	Initial Allocation	Value/Total \| ROI	YTD Stock P/L	Recent Stock P/L	% Current Price Change for $1,000 P/L
AADI	10.0%	2.0% \| -84.2%	-$8,420.64	$39.09	63.3%	CABA	15.0%	26.3% \| 145.4%	$21,810.81	$908.11	2.7%
ACRS	10.0%	0.8% \| -93.3%	-$9,333.33	-$12.70	150.0%	DAWN	10.0%	4.9% \| -32.2%	-$3,215.61	-$199.81	14.7%
AVTX	10.0%	23.0% \| 80.6%	$8,055.56	$17,944.44	5.5%	FULC	10.0%	6.6% \| -7.3%	-$728.02	$645.60	10.8%
BCAB	10.0%	3.8% \| -70.2%	-$7,018.18	$278.79	33.5%	ICVX	5%	7.1% \| 98.5%	$4,924.43	$100.76	10.1%
ELYM	10.0%	9.4% \| -26.4%	-$2,643.05	$217.98	13.6%	INZY	5%	14.5% \| 305.7%	$15,285.71	-$761.90	4.9%
GTHX	10.0%	7.2% \| -43.8%	-$4,383.06	$128.91	17.8%	LIFE	10.0%	4.6% \| -35.6%	-$3,561.64	$273.97	15.5%
LIAN	10.0%	31.8% \| 149.7%	$14,972.07	-$167.60	4.0%	OCUL	10.0%	11.3% \| 58.7%	$5,871.89	$1,138.79	6.3%
LRMR	10.0%	14.0% \| 10.2%	$1,016.95	$653.75	9.1%	PDSB	10.0%	2.7% \| -62.3%	-$6,234.85	-$272.73	26.6%
PDSB	5.0%	2.4% \| -62.3%	-$3,117.42	-$136.36	53.1%	PRQR	10.0%	3.8% \| -46.5%	-$4,648.65	$216.22	18.7%
PIRS	10.0%	2.2% \| -82.5%	-$8,250.00	$234.62	57.1%	URGN	15.0%	18.1% \| 69.1%	$10,366.40	$845.55	3.9%
PRQR	5.0%	3.4% \| -46.5%	-$2,324.32	$108.11	37.4%