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JustForFun7

05/06/07 11:51 PM

#1304 RE: Knowledge is King #1303

5,000 avergae trading rule

When DANLC / KIK came flying out of the gate in PSL5, I think I made some snide remark about buying your own shell company and entering it in the contest. However, KIK's last couple of posts ring true to me.

As a compromise, could we consider having the wild card entry not have to comply with the 5,000 average trading rule (like it is exempt from the no pinkees rule and the must have earnings rule?). At least then you could have an avenue for people to get these low volume unkown stocks in the the game and getting some exposure.

JFF7

lentinman

05/07/07 3:04 AM

#1305 RE: Knowledge is King #1303

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

stanu78

05/07/07 8:17 PM

#1307 RE: Knowledge is King #1303

I think what Len is trying to say is that, those low entry price of those very illiquid stock might not be feasible to get in the real world even with only $1000 buy-in, hence those stocks (and the gains booked) doesn't portray real world return. moreover it will just skew the result of the true PSL performance (mainly overestimating), even though we know PSL isn't true performance (since buy and sell transaction isn't really sent to the market on the bid and ask) but we want/try to get it cloase as real world world as possible (vs fantasy world).

On the other hand, it is also true for the stock that is priced very high due to the large bid and ask spread or due to the fact it is illiquid adn someone just happen to do a "stupid" buy.. but this won't be an issue since we VMCers are bagain hunter and will not pick this type of stock for their PSL (I hope they don't pick these kind of stocks).

JMHO

Stan