A few personal finance bloggers decided to participate in a friendly stock picking contest for 2009. The criteria was to pick four securities in equal dollar amounts listed on a Canadian or American exchange (not including derivatives) to just sit on for the duration of 2009 with no changes allowed. We are to provide updates every quarter and the contest ends on the last trading day of 2009. The initial prices were based on the closing prices of December 31st, 2008.

Disclaimer

My picks were pure swing for the fence plays – two of them were 300% leveraged ETFs, one was a 200% leveraged ETF and the fourth was a penny stock play. Leveraged ETFs only do well if the underlying investment goes in the intended direction with little to modest retracements (if you are holding them for any extended length of time). You essentially have to be right both on direction AND path. There’s more potential reward, but more risk (yup, they’re still related!).

You can read the original rationale for the picks on my original post back on January 1st, 2009.

In case you don’t read the original post, read this: THIS STOCK PICKING CONTEST IS JUST FOR FUN, IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN GAMBLING. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT BUYING THE STOCKS LISTED HERE OR ON ANY OF THE OTHER BLOGGERS’ SITES WITHOUT FIRST CONSULTING A PROFESSIONAL FINANCIAL ADVISOR. IF YOU BUY THEM ANYWAYS, YOU MUST RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND BEFORE PLACING THE ORDER AND REPEAT, “I AM A NUTBAR”.

Performance Update

My four picks now have a YTD collective performance of +43.01%, which is better than the +27.25% average of all the bloggers’ picks in total. I’d gloat, but what’s the point? As I stated before, my rationale for the contest was to bet big and hope for the best, hence three leveraged ETFs and a speculative tech play (which has fallen from it’s almost +100% performance at the half-way point). There is still one more quarter to go and it’s still anyone’s game. Emphasis on “game”.

A brief recap of the picks:

1. TNA.us: Direxion Small Cap 3x Shares (+32.36% YTD)
2. EDC.us: Direxion Emerging Markets 3x Shares (+161.24% YTD)
3. ENA.v: Enablence Technologies (+10.00% YTD)
4. HOU.to: Horizons BetaPro Nymex Crude Bull Plus ETF (-31.57% YTD)

Here’s the list of the other players and their performance so far. I’ll update their links to point to there respective performance updates as they become available…