The UTC Analyst Games is hosted by the Unit Trust Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago. The game invites unitholders between the ages of 18 to 35 years old to use $1,000,000 USD of simulated money to invest in the US Stock Market for a period of a month. This October was the second year that this game had been played and my second time entering.
My performance last year was deplorable, to say the least. So when I saw the game being promoted again this year I was hesitant to participate. It was actually my husband who encouraged me to join. I really don't know why he did. Maybe it was the $25,000TT grand prize that piqued his interest. But I gave it a go. I wasn't really looking forward to the prize, I just wanted to do better than last year.
Did I win? No. I didn't. But I think I did pretty well for myself. I placed 50th out of a total of 979 players. (Yeah, my username was MakingCents1).
So after all that, what did I learn?
So after all that, what did I learn?
1. Do research
Do your research for profitable companies that will give you a dividend. Don't settle for companies that are too popular. Often times the dividend payout for those shares are quite low.
2. Pay attention
For a short term game like this one, it is important to pay attention to the market on a daily basis. Even though a company may have been profitable months before you've invested in the market, various conditions may cause that normally profitable company to have drastic losses. Normally, however, it is quite alright to suffer some losses if the company is a secure one for eventually, the market bounces back,
3. Diversify
Purchasing stock in various industries will reduce your risk level. Sometimes a market event may affect one industry, however, if you have protected yourself by buying shares from other industries, the loss felt would not be as drastic.
Looking forward to 2020's UTC Analyst Games. Hopefully, I would have learned a bit more about investing and would do better.
