My Marketocracy Portfolio

A few months back I discovered a brilliant site call Marketocracy.com, a site which allows you to register, trade and track your portfolio. Generally, trades are all based in US markets, and you can buy and sell ETFs, foreign ADRs, etc. I thought it would be useful to see if I can pit my skills and experience to beat the indices over time in a transparent format, instead of just talking about it. Its been some years since I was managing funds. Mind you, history has shown that at least 85%-90% of all mutual funds cannot beat their respective benchmarks.

My portfolio was started on 1st August 2008. Marketocracy lets you manage a virtual portfolio of $1M in a simulated trading environment, allowing you to track your performance accurately and compare your fund management skills to other investors and professional fund managers. Yes, they do take into account transaction cost as well. If your track record turns out to be one of the best, you could be hired to help manage a real fund at Marketocracy. It's a great place to learn, and a great place to prove your talent. They also have important rules to ensure that you are running an actual investing portfolio and not just sitting on cash:

• No position can exceed 25% of your total portfolio value.
  
• Half your portfolio must be comprised of positions under 10% each.
  
• Your cash position isn't limited by this guideline, although you must be 65% invested

My fund was smartly called SMF, or Salvador Mutual Fund (no, not the foul language acronyms you are thinking). So far so good, although the first couple of months was iffy. SMF fund performance in orange colour.

ecent returns vs. major indexes
		Beating Today MTD QTD YTD SMF -0.45% 6.12% 6.12% 6.12% S&P 500 0.55% 2.70% 2.70% 2.70% DOW 0.27% 2.01% 2.01% 2.01% Nasdaq 0.85% 3.23% 3.23% 3.23%

RETURNS Last Week 9.19% Last Month 17.69% Last 3 Months 6.60% Last 6 Months N/A

S&P500 RETURNS Last Week 4.97% Last Month 6.93% Last 3 Months -4.42% Last 6 Months N/A

RETURNS VS S&P500 Last Week 4.22% Last Month 10.75% Last 3 Months 11.02% Last 6 Months N/A

Go and try the site, but its geared towards those who have a decent understanding of US markets, still fun. Oh, before I forget, my current portfolio with Marketocracy (I think I barely turned over 40% of the fund so far):
a) Japan Smaller Cap Fund
b) iShares MSCI Singapore Index
c) iShares MSCI Malaysia Index
d) Acacia Research Corp
e) China Mobile
f) iShares MSCI Japan Index
g) Visa
h) iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 select
i) Mizuho Financial Group
j) Yahoo!
k) Greater China Fund
l) iShares MSCI Brazil Index

Some of my recent sells include iShares Basic Materials, Pfizer, Savient Pharmaceuticals, Apple, Axion Power, Starbucks and Oil Ultra Short ETF.

p/s photo: Maya Karin