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Strategy Lab is MSN Money's stock-picking challenge. Six top traders run mock $100,000 portfolios for six months, documenting every move to show how they make money.
It's been a quiet week for the stock market, but it's been a good week for our Strategy Lab players.
Most were at The Money Show in Las Vegas. And, Vegas being Vegas and The Money Show being The Money Show, it was hard to find time for trading or posting.
No matter. The stock market is higher than it was a week ago. The Dow Jones industrials ($INDU) are up about 1% in the past five trading sessions. The Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) is up 3.4%, and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) is up 1.9%.
All that despite crude oil reaching almost $127 a barrel Tuesday. Crude fell during the day but basically ended flat at $124.12 a barrel at the close. A big unknown is how much of an influence oil will have on stocks going forward. In the past week, it has limited market gains.
Like last week, five of our six players have portfolios in the black, and all five are ahead of the Dow and the S&P 500. The one player with a losing portfolio -- High IQ investor Kelley Wright -- is down just 0.13%.
His negative performance is dominated by problems with one stock: American International Group (AIG, news, msgs), the troubled insurance giant and Dow component. Since Wright bought it at the beginning of the round, the stock has dropped 26% after Thursday's close -- and for good reason. It has reported more than $13 billion in losses in the past two quarters.
Vad Yazvinski, our player known as The Amateur, remains the leader of our little game with a gain of 16.6%, thanks to a steady stream of trading throughout the round.
He sold one group of stocks May 6 and bought nine others. Those nine have gained nearly 4.9% overall, led by a 20% gain in Vasco Data Security International (VDSI, news, msgs), which develops electronic security systems.
Yazvinski's strategy contrasts sharply with that of All-Star Team player Ken Kam.
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Kam's portfolio is up 10.5% for the round, but he hasn't made a trade since Feb. 22, when he added $2,000 to his position in Elan (ELN, news, msgs). He's up nearly 11% with the stock. Kam's big winner, however, remains Apple (AAPL, news, msgs), which he bought at the beginning of the round, a month before it started a huge rebound. Kam's stake is up more than 46%.
Meanwhile, CAPS Commando Russell Carpenter is motoring along with a 14.2% gain, good for second place. He bought graphics chip maker Nvidia (NVDA, news, msgs) and industrial turbine maker Woodward Governor (WGOV, news, msgs) on May 1. They're up 19% and 12%, respectively.
Guru Investor John Reese is third in this Lab round with a 13.8% gain. A more active trader than Kam, he turned over a chunk of his portfolio in late February and again April 21. Twelve of his 20 positions are sporting double-digit gains, a tribute to his methodology of basing buys on the strategies of his gurus, including Warren Buffett, David Dreman, John Neff and Martin Zweig.
His best performer remains Lufkin Industries (LUFK, news, msgs), an oil and gas equipment services company that's benefiting from the run-up in oil and gas prices. The stock has climbed 49% since Carpenter bought it at the beginning of the round.
And Dog Pound investor Robert Walberg is up 7.4%, not a bad gain at all, especially since he started off slowly, and, as he said on May 5, he's had to claw his way back into the round. Like Carpenter, he took a position in Nvidia, and it's up 21%.
Walberg also has an 11% gain in TradeStation (TRAD, news, msgs)which makes market trading software. He also has little downside risk in his portfolio, which has more than $62,000 in cash.
Our guess: Walberg won't sit on that cash pile for long.
By Charley BlaineRate this Article
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