What did I get myself into?
Twenty weeks ago, I began chronicling my efforts to get out of the gutter in Motley Fool CAPS, the community-based market simulation where you pit your paper portfolio against tens of thousands of your fellow Fools.
I'm not doing so well. My rating of 3.63 -- which essentially means that all but 3.63% of my fellow players are doing better than I am -- is a five-week low for me.
Yes, it's better than where I was when these columns started, but I thought I'd be dancing with the stars by now. I'm not, yet hopefully these weekly dissections will help make us all better investors.
Here's how my ratings have clocked in over the past few weeks:
As I have every week, let's go over some of my recent picks and pans.
Making moves and taking names
I made four new market calls this week. Two of them -- Hooker Furniture
Hooker Furniture is a former Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation. The importer of mostly Chinese furniture hit hard times, but I'm warming up to the idea of a domestic importer at a time where foreign currencies are appreciating against the dollar. Even with the Fed trying to talk up the greenback this week, I still see opportunities here. New furniture may be a hard sell in this anemic housing market, but that pessimism is already baked into the stock heading into next week's earnings report.
China Medical hasn't had a setback. In fact, the medical equipment provider has met or exceeded analyst expectations in every quarter since going public three years ago. That is the kind of trend that impresses me, so I'll bet on the company until it proves me wrong.
I also returned to Netflix
The last of my new moves was to pick Royal Caribbean
Things can only get better
I did a little pruning, too. I ended my bearish call on Starbucks
I also ended my bullish call on A.C. Moore
Another pick that didn't pan out for me was betting against Stamps.com
What will I do next? You're welcome to follow along on my CAPS page to see how I'm doing even before next week's update.
Another thing you may want to do is to give Motley Fool CAPS a shot. You'll be way ahead of me the moment you start. But I'm not going to stop fighting just because there's one more person ahead of me.
I'm not going to rest until my rating grows respectable. See you there!