Value Microcaps Pick Six Lotto 05

[lentinman]

The rule has been set for PSL6. The three of us spent dozens of hours going over every conceivable angle on it and we are done with it. We will see how it goes in PSL6. If we think it needs to be modified, we will do so - just like we have in the past.

"Len, you wrote in post #1298 that "It is our intention to mimic, with as much accuracy as possible, the real world trading during any 15 week period for the average VMC'er." In post #1301, SSK wrote "VMC PSL Contests were never attended [sic] to mirror a person's portfolio..." Are you guys on the same page?"

You are confusing two different issues.

His comments (as were those of the post he was responding to) were predicated upon a single person - a person who might have been restricted by only 4 transactions. But, there were only 16 people out of 86 that used up all their transactions. 70 people had more transactions to use if they wanted to - yet they chose not to. That means that 81% of the PSL contestants did NOT use all the transactions available to them! And, PSL6 will allow the 16 who did even MORE flexibility.

My comments are (and have always been) predicated upon 86 people with 6 stocks each. That is 516 picks over a 3.5 month period of time. In 100% of the cases of those 516 picks a VMC'er made an honest attempt to determine what stock would outperform for that period - during which they had ample opportunities to trade, freeze, double down, etc. A sample size of 516 is OVERWHELMINGLY large enough to be an extremely good indicator of the group as a whole. The only way anyone could argue that it wasn't a valid representation would be to make the case that huge numbers of picks were made randomly or with no care. In lieu of proof of that (which of course, cannot be done - and would defy all common sense anyway), then I stand by my 30 years as a statistician, that average return in the PSL contests do a very good job of reflecting the AVERAGE VMC'er for any 3.5 month period of time.

Len