Trading Stock

I have been practice trading using my virtual portfolio on kaching.com for over a month now. When I wrote this post I was $170,000 up on my starting position of 10 million. I have invested in vast array of stocks in the past month, testing the waters.

One stock which I held on to for a significant amount of time was the AAPL stock. Unfortunately I did not end up making a profit on this stock. This was the case as I had held onto to beyond a price where it had reached all of its potential. At the end of October Apple released their yearly accounts announcing a large profit. This profit came as a result of the new Iphone - the Iphone 3GS. However at the time when I had over a $35,000 profit on my stock of AAPL the company reached probably its max valuation for that period. However unfortunately I did not realise this before the stock dropped significantly leaving me with a loss. This drop in share price was further deepened by the rumours that the touch screen laptop Apple have rumoured to have in development was severely delayed or even shelved altogether.

However in contrast to this my GOOGLE shares continue to increase in value. Currently I have a profit of $100,000 on my 3,000 shares of this company. I believe this is due to the fact that Google continue to grow and widen their market share. Currently two of their most eagerly anticipated developments - Chrome OS and Google Wave are being tested and the feedback from them is quite positive. Whether or not these applications will be a success is not clear but it certainly allows for hope for the future of Google and their continued growth.

Portfolio Performance Graph

The graph above shows the performance of my portfolio since I started back in October. It has been mostly positive as you can see. I avoided a large pitfall at the start and have managed to keep my head above the water. However it does appear that my portfolio is still quite volatile and sensitive to market forces (although any portfolio will be).

The other industries that my portfolio concentrates on is healthcare. I have been trying to move away from the Technology sector as I believe it to be too volatile. I have picked this industry as the best genius on kaching - Min Thang relies on this industry for all of his portfolio. I hope to learn a lot by keeping an eye on his portfolio. Of course I have nowhere near the experience he has with Healthcare shares so it will be a steep learning curve. Of course with the current talk of reform of healthcare in the US, the healthcare market could become volatile also.

Summary of the diversity of my Portfolio

Above the pie charts show the division of my portfolio into Industry, my Investment Style and the Market Cap. Also the the graphs above that show where the majority of my returns have some from.

Of course I am very much a rookie at the trading game, however the innovative kaching website is helping my learn a lot fast. I would recommend you check it out if you at interested in the ups and downs of the stock market. Or at least you can check my portfolio here.