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

Well, perhaps not.

B

Tuesday, 25th October - 10:15pm

I'll go into the details of my investment strategy for the dividend period tomorrow when the results are available.

Are the people who have been trying to get into your account looking here to see what you are doing with it?

No, there's no direct link between Sportdaq and h2g2 at all. They're just having a go at wrecking people's enjoyment of the game.

Thursday, 27th October

This week, for a change, it looks like the best way to go was for the dividend run and to shy away from day-trading. I'm not sure what mecahnisms are in place that make one thing better over an another, but I have a strong suspicion that having win bonus deadlines that happen in the early hours of the morning have something to do with unsettling the whole market.

Anyways. How did I do?

Alpha - day-trade, India for the WB and day-trade again - 92.1%
Beta - day-trade, Sri Lanka for the WB, then Brian O'Driscoll for divis - 103.5%
Gamma - day-trade, Sri Lanka for the WB and day trade again - 68.2%
Delta - George Burley for the whole period - 82.1%

George Burley seemed like a good idea at the time. It was shocking news that the manager of the current leading team in the SPL had resigned. What followed, unfortunately, was very little. Both the ex-manager and the club shut up shop and weren't saying anything. This meant a dearth in column inches and a fall back in the dividend potential. None of this was helped with a drifting share price that actually fell back a couple of percentage points over the two days.

Brian O'Driscoll was interesting for two reasons. Firstly there was a big serialisation in the Guardian/Observer over the weekend and into Monday that was going to count in his favour. Secondly ther ewas news of new amateur footage of the so-called 'Spear Tackle' that ended his Lions campaign after just a few seconds. I've not got the full numbers worked out, but he looks good for the period.

The Win Bonus. Well there you go. The Sri Lankans should have won it as they are a far better team when it comes to One Day Internationals. But they didn't. They lost by nearly 200 runs

And as for day-trading? Ouch! That was not a fun time these last couple of days. It stated off OK with Sete Gibernau through to Tuesday tea-time. Then I made my first mistake by buying Valentino Rossi, when I should have bought Jarno Trulli.

And then it gets worse. At the point that I corrected my mistake and moved to Trulli at 9pm, it was almost time to jump ship and go for Brian O'Driscoll. I jumped again.

The move to O'Driscoll was pretty OK for the overnight and into Wednesday morning. By lunchtime it was time to move again and this time into Ordinary Harrison. He performed almirably for the time that he was at the top, but all too soon the market became confused with prices going all over the place. Therefore I jumped again into a quite riser, but one with a decent bit of divi potential, Robert Pires.

So with all that chopping and changing, I've done rather poorly in the day-trading stakes. The price movements of the individual shares have been cool, but with 5 shifts plus the 2 for the win bonuses, that's an awful lot of 2%'s to lose from one's portfolio.

Friday, 28th October - midnight

Well we've had some pretty fierce day-trading over the last two days. It's helped boost my capping account from £9m at divi payout time to £21m right now. £22m is a possibility with over night activity

At the moment I'm debating what percentage to set my capping account off at. In the last couple of weeks it's been around the -3.5% mark. I've got away with it, though one week I was very very close to disaster

Saturday, 29th October - 7pm

£22m in the Beta account happened, which I'm very pleased about

What I'm not quite so pleased about was the flying start I gave to the capping account (Alpha). I put this in Marat Safin, who quite frankly didn't do the business overnight, and I was left almost 2% below the £2m mark at capping time. True I still did make money from it, as the shares were worth more than £2m when I actually got out of bed this morning, but it could have been oh so better.

The WB was fine. I got Arsenal to get the first booking. (Apart from the two accounts where I didn't have Arsenal, but hey never mind.) I was a bit upset that Paul Sculthorpe didn't do the business on the day-trade when I invested back into the main market after my dip for win bonuses. But the two accounts that were with Horne did OK.

As a result I've got 4 accounts all with a different story to tell for Saturday:

Delta - Horne and Arsenal - this will do well, and as it is percentage-wise my highest place account, its position can only improve.

Gamma - Horne and Spurs - the downtrading account. I would like to place this in the top-30 at some point in the coming week, as it's not been there so far. However a missed WB like this makes that marginally less likely.

Alpha - Sculthorpe and Arsenal - the capping account. So it's missed out on a few percentage points of growth this afternoon, and had to make one unnecessary trade out of Sculthorpe and into the top mover. I guess this means its got no chance of being the Darkside Deliquent top capper this week. But hey, what's new where my accounts are concerned.

Beta - Sculthorpe and Spurs - off to a bad start for this new account. It's current standing is little over £11k which is pretty pathetic all things considered. But heigh-ho, we've got a full four weeks to improve things.

Monday, 31st October - 9am

I missed the inital move into Lockyer yesterday

And I fear that I am going to miss one or two or more moves in the next day (or longer). More of which later

Wednesday, 2nd November - lunchtime

I return with an extra hole in my arse. More later

Friday, 4th November - 3pm

If you spend two days away, particularly two days that intersect pretty neatly with the divdend period and you've got no strategy set. Then you are on a hiding to nothing for the whole week.

Just before I went to hopsital, I moved all of my money into Inzamam-ul-Haq. He wasn't the top moving share at that time. Though he was pretty close to being, and the current top mover was looking weak. Plus there was still the confusion over ul-Haq being listed as playing in the forthcoming Tuesday win bonus (which of course he didn't) so it was attracting a fair amount of trade.

Of course by the time I returned ul-Haq was nowhere, and the portfolios were stagnant. Judging by the previous day's leaderboard positions, he had been good, and had only gone bad at some point late on Tuesday.

The other thing was that I was nowehere in terms of dividend. I didn't believe that ul-Haq would pay any divi (and indeed he didn't) so there was no point in holding his shares any longer. I moved to Tommy Johansson who was the top mover and hoped for day-trade. This came good. And he paid a bit of dividend as well, so it was worth hanging on to him for the last couple of hours as his he dropped away from the lead.

Since then it's been quiet daytrading. The switches (all apart from the last one) have been pretty clear cut, and as a result I'm rising up the leaderboard again with a highest place in the four accounts of 51st today. Of course the damage has been done already, and I'll not get back to the top table until next week when the effects of this week drop off.

One corollary of my absence is that the account that is about to be downtraded (Gamma) has not spent a single day in the top 30 in it's run so far. This is only the second time that that has happened to one of my accounts since I started to play this game seriously back in the end of April. A bit sad that.

2½ hours later:

And Lockyer has gone and tanked

I did say that the last switch was tricky. It's now going to be Noble or Lewis-Francis.

I went Lewis-Francis. After a slow start, I think that that was the right idea

... one more update ...

Saturday, 5th November, 10:30pm

Given that I was going to be away for hours and hours in South London (three-two since you ask ) over the win bonus deadline. I decided not to play it and leave everything in Lewis-Francis.

In retrospect this seems like a reasonable thing to have done. He stayed top for much of the day, only fading in the afternoon. Plus I've kept my 4% commission and I've not rsiked getting it all wrong with the wrong pick.

Monday, 7th November - 12noon

Yesterday was a day of queit day-trading and getting the win bonus wrong.

Lewis Francis dropped off the pace in the late morning to be replacd by one of those Russian women tennis players that so clutter up the daq listings. Then in the hour or so before the win bonus deadline she started to fade.

The win bonus was a disaster. But then I think it will have been a disaster for everyone, as I can't see many people opting for Darren Fletcher to score the first goal in the Man U v Chelsea match - the guy has only scored three times in over 70 appearcnces for Man U! That said, if anyone did get it, they are in for a whopping pay day as his shares were trading at £2.88 at the deadline time.

After the bonus was over it was back to day-trading. Some Aussie rugby person if I remember correctly. Then a late night switch into Asafa Powell, who is still top of the tree today.

This lunchtime will be the payout time for the weekend's win bonuses. And this will be the moment that I start to drop back as I didn't play the Saturday win bonus.

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On another note. Last weekend saw me[Andy]g capped for the second time And then he promptly disappeared from the h2g2 league

I also note that Master B has dropped back over Sunday. I do hope that this doesn't mean that he's sodding off from Sportdaq as well as from hootoo

Wednesday, 9th November - 2pm

This week I decided to daytrade through the divi period, because there is a Wednesday win bonus. Trading has been pretty brisk with some good returns on Monday and some very good returns on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

The plan is to buy into McLeish/Strachan for the 7:45pm (I need to check the timings) deadline and to then hold for the final few hours for dividend purposes.

Position-wise I'm dragging my way back up the table. The effect of the hospital stay has dropped off from my stack, if not my bottom, and I'm only now suffering from the effect of not playing the obvious Saturday win bonus. My playing accounts are both on the low 40s today, and we'll see what happens tomorrow as the effect of those who went for dividends floods back.

5 hours later:

The strategy for this evening's Celtic v Rangers win bonus.

Alpha (1st week) - Gordon Strachan then hold for dividend
Beta (2nd week) - Alex McLeish then hold for dividend
Gamma (capping) - Barry Ferguson then return to day-trading
Delta (DT) - already downtraded to £2m, so no play.

Friday, 11th November - very late at night.

Firstly, here is a in rememberance today of those who did what they did. And I thank them for it.

- pause -

Gordon's Celtic boys did the business and won the game and that was going to make me plenty of win bonus money in the relevant account. Then things went a bit weird...

Gordon didn't pay any dividend

That was a big surprise given that his colleague over at Rangers paid over a quid a share. So we raised the issue with the Hamsters. They agreed that an error had been made, and offered up 89p per share.

This is where they cocked it up again.

They paid the 89p in full regardless of ho long the shares had been held! My Strachans had been held for just over 4 hours, but I got paid for the full 48 along with everyone else. This has created merry hell amongst those that didn't hold Gordon to the divi pay out time. They've all dropped dramatically whilst those that did hold the shares have rocketed

So on to Thursday night: I dropped a bollock I shouldn't have been drawn in by Karthikeyan's rise in the latter hours of that evening. I shouldn't have switched out of Cusiter and into our crap Indian driver friend. But I did...

Net result: the unknown rugby player ralleyed over night and then roared in the early hours of Friday morning's trading. Whilst our Indian friend spluttered and died - much like his drive this last season. Heigh-ho, I take a hit and I dive down the leaderboard

Saturday, 12th November - 5pm

The Gamma account got capped this morning at £15m. That's OK I suppose, given the difficulty of trading conditions in the last week. It does mean that I get my first island for the account with a total value of £113m.

The Saturday WB went west for the three playing accounts, when Australia lost in the rugby against England. I had England in my capping account so I've made some decent cash there.

There was some debate as to which England player to go for. Should one stick with Moody who was at £3.43 and a top riser that all should be holding going into the deadline. Or should one switch to Cueto at £3.02 and pay the commission charges with all the future effects of that up to payout time on Monday lunchtime. To settle the debate we've got two test accounts running with identical stratgies (Start Moody, then daytrade) but with different WB strategies (One hold on Moody, One switch to Cueto). Only time will tell which was the best

Monday, 14th November - 6pm

And the Sunday morning WB went down the plughole as well. I had Inzamam ul-Haq as the one to score a six first, but it was Trescothick who went and did it

Since then it's been straight forward day-trading with Coria and Karthikeyan - yes, people who you've never heard of again.

On a slightly disappointing note, we've lost three people from the h2g2 Superstars league. Master B has gone, much like he has from the site. But also me[Andy]g and Bright Blue Shorts have gone. It leaves only three of us left in the league, me, Bottletop and (I think) McKay the Disorganised.

Tuesday, 15th November - 11am

Bright Blue Shorts is back in the League, so that's good

Yesterday was the final day of Coria's long run at the top of the winners and losers list. By lunchtime he'd flattened out and it was time to go with Karthikeyan. (I've always been a bit suspicious of him, as his price rises usually flatter to deceive - he goes up there, but never sticks.)

Well this time it all worked out quite nicely, and he stayed top right up to about 9am, and still hung around even then. There was no point selling him and going for the new top mover. One, because that wasn't settled, and two, because there was an 11am WB deadline looming and 2 hours isn't enough time to make good on your commission charges.

The WB is tennis Coria (again) versus Nalbandian in the end of season Master's Cup competition. The bookies and the form say overwhelmingly that it should go to Nalbandian, and who am I to argue with that!

Now it's time for dividend strategies for the remainder of the two days (37 hours to be precise).

The Alpha account (2nd week) is daytrading, so is now back in Kim Collins, yet again.

Beta (down-trading week) is taking a flyer with David Moyes and the attention that he's garnered from Rangers. I did toy with the idea of going for Vieira and his whinging about Arsenal, but bottled it al the last moment. Only time will tell if that was right or wrong.

Gamma (1st week) is doing another suicidal strategy and investing in Ian Bell The theory is that as Trescothick's partner in his heroic innings against Pakistan, that he'll be dragged along and pick up column inches that will turn into money. [note to self: buy omelette ingredients ready to spread on face come midnight Wednesday.]

Delta (capping) is having a cheeky punt on Nikolai Davydenko. Yes the guy is almost unknown, but at £1.32 per share and a place in this here Master's Cup tennis thingy, he's got to be worth a go. [note to self: six eggs aren't enough. Buy a dozen]