h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, today I went to Nottingham to watch a disappointing one-all draw against the scabs.

And when I get home I find that my Woodwards have gone down in value by 11p per share. Not a lot you may say, but when you have 92,869 of them it does rather mount up. As the slide seems to have steadied, I'm going to hang onto them until the morning, and may well keep them all through tomorrow for maximum dividend

I have not got the hang of this - I would have thought that with the announcement of the Lions team ...

hoe Hum

It did on the day of the announcement, and then started to come down after that.

In fairness I seem to have buggered the dividends thing up entirely this week. I sold the Woodward shares after holding them for 36 of the 48 hour period, and decided to go daytrading with the funds. This hasn't worked out today and the value of shareholding is now worth £20k less than it was first thing in the morning. That's a drop of about 2.5% overall, when I had been getting gains of 20 to 30% in a day

In the end I got just under £100k of dividends. Mainly from my side orders of Michael Owen and Luke Donald.

If I'd hung on to the Clive Woodward shares for the full period, and not gone daytrading, I'd have had about another £180k to play with. Bloody effing egg chasers

Anyway, as of the early hours of 14th April, the whole lot is in Sete Gibernau (*) who is rising gently, but quite nicely









(*) he rides a motorbike for a living - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/sportdaq/trade.cgi?showIssue=264 - in case you didn't know that already

Thursday 14th April, 11:30pm

And this Gibernau character has marched steadily upwards in price all through yesterday evening, last night, and all day today.

He's currently quoted at £2.02 per share. Which for me marks a VERY healthy profit on the deal, seeing as I bought him - all 704,524 shares - at a very reasonable £1.28 each

I'm not planning on going to bed any time soon, so will keep an eye on the price movements in the next couple of hours. If, as I suspect, he remains top mover but in a calming market - as it always seems to do overnight - I will hang onto the shares until tomorrow morning. Then I'll look again at my investment strategies.

1 minute later:

... make that £2.03 per share

Friday 15th April, lunchtime.

The no-brainer for today's investment is Ronnie O'Sullivan. There is a win bonus available for him tomorrow, and all of the smart money is going to be pouring into his shares.

The jumping off point for selling Gibernau and moving into O'Sullivan was first thing this morning, and I'm pretty sure that I hit just about right.

My next travail is that I suspect that I'm going to have to start downtrading if I want to avoid getting kneecapped tomorrow. From my current asset base of £1.62million to the kneecapping point requires a compound growth rate of 1.31% per hour. Ronnie is currenly tonking along at 1.59%, and has been for the last 4 or 5 hours.

But what if he looses his first match - I gather he has lost twice this year to the guy he meets in that match

Friday 15th April. Just before midnight.

Daytrading...

Sometimes weirdness happens

There we all were, congratulating ourselves for getting in early on Ronnie and watching his massive growth through the course of the day, and then on to Saturday's win bonus, when an odd thing happened.

Paul Hunter (another snooker player, in the news a lot owing to him having recently been diagnosed with cancer) starts to move. At the same time Ronnie starts stalling: his growth was down from 1.5% to 0.8% and the like.

This confuses everyone. Why move into Hunter? He's not on a win bonus. He's unlikely to win the World Championship, and anyway the final is a fortnight away which is eons in Sportdaq terms. It can't be for a dividend: true his will be good, but we've two win bonuses to play for before the dividend period, so why move now?

And still Paul moves upwards.

By about 4pm the bush telegraph is buzzing, and everyone is questioning what they should do next. Should they stay with Ronnie in preparation for tomorrow's battles? Or should they jump and get onto a fast rising new share in Paul Hunter?

I jumped.

I sold £1.71million in Ronnie for the same value in Paul. Then I went out for the evening to my old boss's leaving do, down the pub near the old office.

When I got back home I found that the following had happened:
- Paul Hunter had increased in value by 24.5% to a price of £3.30 per share.
- Ronnie O'Sullival had decreased in value by 6.1% to a price of £4.79 per share.

Sometimes I just don't understand this market

---------------

But on a happier note, with Paul's help I have now passed comfortably through the £2million barrier. I'm now about to start downtrading to get myself just under that sum so that I can fire out of the traps with maximum effect on Saturday morning, to get maximum profit before I get kneecapped the following weekend

Don't worry. Ronnie ain't gonna to lose

Sunday 17th April, soon after 2pm

Well after sitting on just shy of £2million in cash (F61824?thread=626113) from late Friday evening to Saturday morning, I put the whole lot into Ronnie O'Sullivan in readiness for the snooker win bonus available that day.

Fortunately Ronnie did us proud, albeit after a nasty scare - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/4451655.stm

Then in the afternoon his price started drifting and we all hunted around looking for another share to buy. After a bit of wandering around it was decided that Graeme Dott would be the man. (Yes I know, another snooker player that no one has ever heard of )

Today so far has been a quiet day. There was some trading in Paula Radcliffe, but not enough to make it worth the switch into her shares. The rise was only c.0.3% over and above what I was getting with my current holding. Therefore it wouldn't have covered the 1% commission costs for buying and selling.

2pm marked the deadline for picking a Newcastle or Man Utd player for the Sunday win bonus. Ten minutes before the mark, I plumped for Man Utd to win, and put everything into the cheapest Manchester player who was in the starting line up - 752,256 shares in Paul Scholes

Monday 18th April, 5:30pm

Blimey Sunday was quiet. Nothing moving, no trading, no activity at all!

I ended up with the stock split evenly overnight between Damien Duff and Paula Radcliffe, which seemed to come out OK in the wash.

Today's trading is a story of two halves. Paul Hunter all morning and Sebastian Loeb since lunchtime. Plus of course £1.7million in win bonuses from the weekend

Tuesday 19th April, Midnight

Loeb has been top mover all day long, and looks like he will be overnight as well. I might as well hang on to the shares and see what happens in the morning.

The dividends are going to be crap as all the likely payers are both expensive and not rising in value. (Therefore day trading is the way to go.) They're also not helped by having a win bonus 4 hours before the end of the dividend period.

Wednesday 20th April.

Overall league position - 113th
Gain in the last week - 935.73%

That's my best ever performance

Thursday 21st April

An even better day than the day before. And that is with making zilch on the Win Bonus and just pennies on the Dividend.

My opening league position for the day was 77th, with a 991.72% rise for the week.

When the figures get recalculated in the early hours of the morning, I hope to be doing better still. The rise, in cash terms, today (4am until midnight) has been £5.5m which equates to around 53% which is pretty spectacular!

Now I don't know (yet) how that will play on the leader board, as I imagine everyone will have had a similar investment strategy for today - Mark Williams overnight and up until lunchtime, Mauro Bergamasco since then - so all will have achieved big rises. However I should, with a 53% single day rise, (and it ain't over yet!) see my weekly gains exceed 1,000%

Friday 22nd April, 4pm:

I was right. I did rise further up the overall leader board today

I'm currently in 64th position with a weekly growth rate of 1,047.45%

Bergamasco continued his relentless climb overnight and all through until just after lunch. It's been quite a remarkable process, given that all the rise has been in the last 2 days. Prior to that his share value had done absolutely sod all.

Currently there are 2 win bonuses up for grabs. Shares in which need to be purchased by about lunchtime tomorrow. The office players are piling into the market, and causing the F1 shares, and other Rugby shares to rise. I've jumped ship and have split the stock between Betson and Alonso.

However I'm not going for the Win Bonuses yet. I'm going to get kneecapped tonight, so I'm actually chasing maximum growth in the hope of getting more icons. I reckon I should make it to two and a couple of before 4am

Saturday 23rd April

I did better than I thought I was going to do. I made it to the £25m icon before I got capped

This morning was a mad rush in getting stakes down for win bonuses - I've hit one so far, the other plays tomorrow - and then out of the door and up to Watford for a dire football match and a pleasant evening with my Uncle and Aunt who live in nearby Bushey.

Whats all this about capping?

How are things in general with you?

Ps there seem to be people waiting for a question at the quiz ...

Sunday 24th April.

Capping is what they do to you avoid super-duper-hyper-inflation in the market. If you've got more than £2million in assets in the early hours of Saturday morning they take that money away and exchange it for a set icons representing how much dosh you've made in the market. (Think of them as on-line swimming certificate badges if you will.)

This process was given the name Millionaire Day by the BBC. This quickly got translated by the users as kneecapping or capping for short. A term which the Beeb have now started to use themselves

Anyway, as to today's fun and games. We all woke up holding Steve Davis. We held him all day long. All through the Grand Prix, through the ManU game and on into the evening. Then that fat lump Ordinary Harrison started to make a move. So we all jump ship.

Tomorrow the highlight of my trading day will be to recieve win bonuses form BOTH o fmy selections over the weekend.

At least that sort of capping should not hurt too much!