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

Tuesday 26th April

It's all been a bit quiet. The only minor bit of excitment was which of the two snooker players to go for - Stephen Hendry, Matthew Stevens - in today's win bonus. I opted to hedge the bet and bought evenly in both.

In the last couple of hours noticed a movement away from Alan McManus who has been the top day-trading share for the last 30 hours, and towards Clive Woodward.

I've just made the jump. I'm not sure if it was the sensible thing to do. But I've done it anyway

Wednesday 27th April, 2:30pm

Well I ballsed that up entirely

I wasn't around this morning to check the over night prices, and in fact didn't get here until gone 2pm this afternoon. I found that since I made the switch from McManus to Woodward the prices had moved from £1.66 and £3.58 to £2.00 and £3.73 respectively, with Woodward actively heading downwards.

The 4% in commission charges that I've had to pay to make and then correct my decision has wiped out all of the profit that I had made from Woodward's shares. If I had just sat tight, I would have made a 20% profit from the McManus shares over the same time period.

Oh well. You live and learn I suppose

So what was the plan for today? And how come you missed a mornings trading?

Will you be able to fit going to THE movie in with your trading obligations?

WHy does she ask so many questions?

Thursday 28th April (well actuall it's the early hours of Friday, but never mind...)

I was up early and away from home yesterday because it was a nice day. A day which demanded to be spent having a long morning walk over the Downs. It was only when I got home that I discovered that I'd been mullered over the day trading.

And today (Thursday) was worse...

I'd noticed that Michelle Wie was on the move, but I did nothing first thing as I thought that the movement was a reaction to the dividend payment that she'd received the night before. (Modest dividend divided by cheap share price = big yield and plenty of trading action.)

Well I was wrong.

When I got back from some work up in Haywards Heath, I discovered that her price had jumped 20% or more.

Obviously I got straight into her from that very moment. Investing dividends and win bonuses as they cropped up during today. But I can't help but think that I missed a trick in not checking my position *before* I left the house this morning

Its looking like the weather is going to stay nice for a while too (except I have to drive to York tonight and I had hoped not too many people would be on the roads ...)

It must be good to be able to go for a walk just coz the sun is shining

What work were you doing in HH?

Is Michelle Wie the young golfer?

Saturday 30th April. 10am:

From a standing start of £10,000 this time last week. I now have a portfolio worth £141,177 for a very health 1,311.77% rise and 71st place overall.

Actually I'm a bit richer than that. Those figures were calculated at 4am. Six hours later and my worth is up to £150,377 and I've just dumped Mike Weir and bought into Ernie Els.

I've done two mornings work in Haywards Heath setting up a costing database. Basically just lining everything up and making sure that the buttons when pressed did the right sort og thing. Not bad for £40 an hour

Wednesday 4th May - about the Bank Holiday manoeuvres.

Saturday trading was very light, and as a result there was no clear focus for day-trading. The net result was a lotof folk (myself included) suffered from itchy trigger finger and over traded at 2% commission per switch.

I started with Els, but by the afternoon had moved into Peter Ebdon. Neither of which were making a lot of movement to tell the truth.

There was a win bonus available in the early hours of Sunday morning, so by about midnight I had moved the whole lot into our old day-trade chum, Sete Gibernau.

He lost.

Anyone who held Valentino Rossi for the Shanghai Moto GP is going to have made a fortune. There shouldn't be too many of them, as no way was Rossi expected to win that race.

Anyway Sunday dawns. A new day, a new challenge, another win bonus pissed up the wall, another one to aim and fire at.

By 12noon I needed to get my monwy down on the snooker. As only one of the players is in the Sportdaq index, it was a bit of a no-brainer in putting the whole lot on Matthew Stevens and hoping for the best.

He lost in the end.

The afternoon was spent in Mike Weir.

As was the evening.

As was the next day. All of the next day..!

This brings us to Tuesday. But that is another story, of a new strategy, and will be reported in the next exciting(?) instalment of this journal.

Saturday 7th May, 2am-ish:

Tuesday and Wednesday I went for a win bonus / dividend double. I held the whole stake in Arjen Robben for the two days in the hope of getting a big payout. Sadly it didn't come off. This was partly due to him carrying an injury, therefore not a definite for the team, and hence not a lot of press coverage, and partly because Liverpool went and bloody well won the match

To test the theory as to which approach: day-trading v win bonus & dividends is the best. I set up two new accounts, one I daytraded with, the other held Robben for the two days. At the end of the period when all divs etc were in, the day-trade account was worth £18,152 and the dividends account was only worth £14,439.

Conclusively proving that in the current highly volatile market that day-trading is absolutely the way to go.

In the days since then I've been quietly trading away. I'm not making any kind of a dash for cash. I want to be on £2million by the end of Friday 13th, and currently I'm on £780k, so I can take it easy for the next week if I like.

are you enjoying all this trading?

Saturday 14th May. 1am-ish

Yes, I'm still enjoying all the trading. I'm just not posting as much about it, that's all

Last weekend I got one of the two win bonuses right. Which was nice. But as I said before, I wasn't really going for it this week, as all I needed to do was raise my funds from £780k to £2m, which is a piece of piss.

Then on Tuesday whilst I was casually all in Tim Henman as he was the top mover, along came a surprise win bonus for Wednesday afternoon. Therefore I decided to stay put with his shares and see what happened. In the end I got around £350k dividends for a 1.3 day holding and £450k for the win bonus as the guy beat Rusedski in the match. This was also nice.

By Friday afternoon I had built up the funds to some £4.8m, and I reckon if I had stayed trading I would have made it to £5.6m by capping time (4am on Saturday morning). However that was not my intention, as I want to start next week with a full £2m to chase icons at the next week's capping round. Therefore at 5pm I started downtrading and I'm now sitting on a pile of cash, a few pennies short of the magic £2m figure.

There are two win bonuses to grab during Saturday: golf - a bit of a lottery really, and rugby - much more of a banker. Then it will be straight into 'you know who' for the dividends over Tuesday and Wednesday.

Big weekend for footie!

Sunday 22nd May.

Well the win bonuses for last week went absolutely tits up

The net result of that was that I didn't make as much cash as I had hoped to; and in the week that I was getting capped as well.

The one bright spot was the Malcolm Glazer coverage that had been wall to wall the previous week, making it an attractive proposition to hold his shares for the full dividend period. In the end I bought shares at £6.09 watched them rise a few pence to £6.36 over the two days (ie not a lot of movement) and then got a whacking £5.03 dividend at midnight on Thursday

I also learnt something about capping in the early hours of Saturday morning: and that is that they take a 1% commission in selling your shares before they swap them for icons.

Going into the 4am cut off point I held £13,091,000 worth of Shane Williams shares at £1.53 per share. This then got trimmed after the 1% commission was taken off, to less than £13million. Therefore when I got icons I only got £12million worth: a waste of nearly £1million

The real kicker however, was that his price went up just after 4am to £1.54 per share which would have put me comfortably through the £13million barrier and would have meant I got another

Talking of Shane Williams, he has been on a continual price rise since Friday afternoon. His current worth is £3.81 per share, and I have no idea what is causing this rise

Oh hum. Onwards and upwards. I've made a reasonable start so far with my £10k seed money. The only problem is that I've cocked up both of this weekend's win bonuses. I had Darren Fletcher and Man Utd for the FA Cup and Alonso for the Monaco GP. Thus I will take a hit when the bonuses are paid out on Monday (assuming of course that they will be paying bonuses, what with the strike on and all )

Saturday, 28th May:

Today I've achieved my highest ever position on the overall leader board

I'm in 18th place and so on the front page of the league, with a weekly growth of some 1,558.89%

This success is all down to the newly reformulated dividend system. It's now more generous in its payouts tha it was before. I'd bought shares in Gordon Strachan at £1.34 each and watched thm grow gently to £1.72 at the end of the two day dividend period. Then on Thursday they payed out quite spectacularly at £3.42 per share

There was a bit of hiccup though, as those holding Strachans didn't recieve their dividend until Thursday afternoon. This was due to some mechanical cockup with the computer, and it certainly led to some anxious hours amongst the investors.

Anyway, it all came out good in the wash. And I'm very very happy with my performance so far

Congratulations GD

I'v just discovered one of the downsides of success - people try to hack into your account!

What real p*ssed me off about that is that the membership is all accross the BBC with the SSO thing. So not only was I locked out of Sportdaq, I was also locked out of h2g2

Locked out of hootoo

* goes to lie down in a darkened space *

so when we were speaking to you was it really you?

Sunday, 29th May.

I'm pretty much maintaining my league position. I'm 19th today

what a

Monday, 30th May:

I'm still on the front page leader board in 26th place.

Though I may drop off it tomorrow, I suspect that I will be back there on Wednesday and Thursday as those will be the days when my fantastic dividend payment for last week will be included in the percentage growth calculations

What is the gap between 18th and 26th?

I mean in terms of how it is calculated not in terms of number of places