When I get a chance, I shall look at the investopedia linkie. it sounds like it could be edumacational fun.
I’m currently playing a similar game. I’ve been going for short term gains, almost as I suspect day traders act.
I just put almost everything into Qiao Xing Universal Telephone Inc. (XING) , and I’m going to watch it closely in the morning. A Chinese company that makes telecommunication products, and it is going to be issing it’s quarterly earning report before the market opens tomorrow morning. Might get a big bump. Might get hammered. We’ll see.
Hammered. Damn, I’m glad it’s only play money.
As a rule… and market timing doesn’t work, so ignore everything I’m about to say… the week before earnings are announced a stock runs up, and no matter how good or bad the earning is, the stock drops the day of the earnings announcement. If the earnings have been bad, everyone wants out. If they’ve been good, everyone wants to take their profits and run figuring it will get bad.
Other rules that don’t work, but are interesting, stocks will go up in the year after a buyback is announced. Stocks will go up between the time a split is announced and the stock split, sell before the split, buy again after the split and it will run a second time. Stocks in winter, bonds in summer (might be the other way around, do a little research and don’t take investment advice from strangers over the internet - kills the opportunity for capital gains tax rates, but we are talking market timing, not investing with common sense).