failing like never before

20Apr/0877

How To Cheat At Stocksquest

Not too long ago, I wrote an article about why I thought stocksquest.com is lame. It would appear that a lot of people want to cheat at stocksquest's market simulation, so I'm going to describe in depth, a very simple way to make tons of money at stocksquest.

(Note, just reading the indented sections will give you the bare minimum you need to know to beat stocksquest.)

Stocksquest doesn't update their stock prices in real time. That is, there is a noticeable lag between the real stock prices and prices displayed on the stocksquest website. If you're using stocksquest then you're probably using Yahoo Finance to track prices, and like most stock price trackers, Yahoo Finance is behind the real time stock prices by about fifteen minutes. But stocksquest is at least thirty minutes behind the real time stock prices. Which means that you can buy stocks in stocksquest and know that they'll go up in price in a very short amount of time, because you've already seen them go up in Yahoo Finance (or whatever site you use for tracking prices).

Now, most teachers already know of this flaw in stocksquest and so they'll require that you hold a stock for a certain amount of time before selling it. The idea is, is that a volatile stock that jumps in price in the space of ten minutes probably isn't going to stay high till the next day. Thus, by enforcing a minimum holding period, the ability to "know the future" becomes useless.

But there is another way to predict the future.

1Apr/085

Stocksquest, A Review

There are numerous schools that use stocksquest.com, an online stock market simulation, as a teaching tool. The point of the simulation is to mimic perfectly the real stock market, the only exception being the use of fake money. Real stocks can be bought and sold at real market prices, and students can perform market research and read news articles in order to help their performance in the simulation, just like in real life (theres a lot of "real" here for a simulation) The point of course, is to show students how the stock market functions and how to make money in a relatively easy manner. Stocksquest even adds a little extra fun in, allowing teachers to create class or school wide competitions so that students can battle each other out for financial success. My high school economics class engaged in a stocksquest competition, and you can see the final class rankings here. As you can see, a few students ended the contest with ridiculously huge amounts of money. While most of the class had made or lost between 15% of their money, there were a few that ended with unrealisticly huge percent gains. Once would of course assume that these students cheated. Although in this case, cheating is rather a strong word, especially since the system invites it.

There are other online stock market simulations available, some of them as free as stocksquest, and I would highly encourage teachers to sample other sites before selecting stocksquest for use in the class room. Hopefully, some of the flaws of stocksquest that I will investigate later in this article will be evidence enough to convince teachers to select a different simulation.

3Feb/084

Draw Me In

I looked through my stats and log files today (instead of doing my homework), and determined which articles were drawing the most visitors to my site. Mind you, this was not an in-depth study, just a cursory glance at my stats.

  1. Dynamically Create a Multidimensional Array in C/C++ - The most popular article on my site was a new one. It would appear that lots of people were searching for ways to dynamically create a multidimensional array and Google kindly linked them to my site.
  2. more stocksquest - This one surprised the crap out of me (pardon my Klatchian). Back in high school, I had nothing else to put on my blog, so I posted my econ class's stocksquest rankings (notice who's number one). It would appear that lots of people use internet search engines to search for their own name. Since pretty much none of my classmates were vaguely famous on the internet, the ones with fairly unique names ended up at my site. Funny how that works out. I bet none of them ever realized whose site they found themselves looking at.
  3. problems with gallery - So apparently lots of people have problems with an uninitialized constant when using attachment_fu. Back when I was working on my blog CMS, I had a problem with attachment_fu and I posted the error message on my blog. I found a solution eventually, which I still remember today because the error was particularly annoying. Basically what happened was there was a misspelled variable name, and if I remember correctly, I copied that code fragment from another site (which would explain why everyone is having the exact same error). I remember that I spent forever looking and it turned out that one of the variable names was spelled beginning with a lowercase letter, which resulted in the uninitialized error. Sorry that I can't remember the exact name of that variable or where it was, but it was almost a year ago.

And thats it folks...

1May/070

more stocksquest

Contest Rankings
Rank   Name Total Value % Gain # Trades
1. View chi

85519.44

755.19

80

2. View michael mendoza

24866.90

148.67

40

3. View Ben Driscoll

15778.95

57.79

78

4. View Bharath Ganesh

14174.96

41.75

31

5. View Travis Coots

13646.89

36.47

90

6. View Sarah Czarnecki

12800.59

28.01

39

7. View john ward

11793.03

17.93

59

8. View Melissa Gray

11419.12

14.19

13

9. View Bob Wright

11285.18

12.85

17

10. View daniel ngui

10956.86

9.57

109

11. View Chris Meyers

10893.37

8.93

22

12. View kortney slater

10850.86

8.51

114

13. View Elizabeth Allen

10746.80

7.47

48

14. View Josh Ruff

10577.27

5.77

26

15. View cody goodridge

10572.36

5.72

18

16. View Zack Conley

10434.36

4.34

40

17. View Lauren Sedgwick

10404.00

4.04

19

18. View Lindsay Dworman

10395.54

3.96

32

19. View Claire Campo

10361.92

3.62

20

20. View audrey gandy

10344.96

3.45

13

21. View ChristyAnna Zimmerman

10330.15

3.30

17

22. View Chris Kwee

10325.39

3.25

26

23. View Matt Bogert

10188.31

1.88

30

24. View joe sowa

10184.25

1.84

22

25. View Lauren Bernau

10175.82

1.76

46

26. View Anthony Wiedrick

10157.54

1.58

31

27. View Christina Davis

10149.64

1.50

19

28. View Danielle Brill

10130.03

1.30

18

29. View Lucas Clark

10104.90

1.05

18

30. View Joanna Gross

10061.50

0.61

61

31. View Elliott Hull

10025.74

0.26

0

32. View danny ngui

10025.19

0.25

0

33. View david umina

10025.19

0.25

0

34. View pete tate

10025.19

0.25

0

35. View Vanessa Miranda

10019.53

0.20

1

36. View robyn lashley

10006.15

0.06

64

37. View Kevin Schumm

9990.90

-0.09

35

38. View Elizabeth Guza

9986.93

-0.13

25

39. View Emily Christensen

9959.17

-0.41

31

40. View Erica Wilens

9931.59

-0.68

8

41. View John Bartel

9921.46

-0.79

30

42. View Claire Heller

9915.74

-0.84

7

43. View Ashley Garrett

9913.15

-0.87

29

44. View nick thomy

9904.98

-0.95

15

45. View Meredith Price

9899.61

-1.00

26

46. View Camden Ash

9898.92

-1.01

38

47. View Elliott Hull

9888.55

-1.11

50

48. View Donell Cooper Jr

9847.79

-1.52

33

49. View Erika Caietti

9832.24

-1.68

32

50. View Ivan Otsuka

9828.00

-1.72

40

51. View Kaity Whittaker

9826.60

-1.73

48

52. View Alexandra Broyles

9814.06

-1.86

37

53. View Kaity Tully

9805.28

-1.95

41

54. View Claire Hellar

9800.44

-2.00

22

55. View Matthew Yost

9785.64

-2.14

39

56. View Eric Presnall

9779.08

-2.21

47

57. View Mike Terranova

9774.95

-2.25

24

58. View Emily Alpert

9773.82

-2.26

24

59. View Brandon Davis

9768.21

-2.32

30

60. View Shane Morosky

9765.42

-2.35

19

61. View Caitlyn Huber

9762.49

-2.38

37

62. View Ivan Otsuka

9749.97

-2.50

42

63. View Matt Hanson

9737.70

-2.62

25

64. View pete tate

9724.96

-2.75

18

65. View Sara Miller

9723.98

-2.76

16

66. View Dana Mangseth

9718.22

-2.82

22

67. View alex anticevich

9698.52

-3.01

29

68. View Dana Stoller

9651.62

-3.48

14

69. View Amanda Gulyas

9615.35

-3.85

38

70. View Matt Anderson

9601.48

-3.99

22

71. View Shannon Lee

9597.80

-4.02

57

72. View Christina Shuler

9584.83

-4.15

23

73. View maziar salimi

9583.28

-4.17

23

74. View Jacob Ricks

9548.03

-4.52

36

75. View Kayla Schureman

9529.86

-4.70

38

76. View Ashley Keefer

9516.27

-4.84

55

77. View Jason Shaffer

9487.65

-5.12

20

78. View Wesley Birrer

9483.96

-5.16

32

79. View Matt Borasi

9458.34

-5.42

55

80. View Anna Wehr

9413.00

-5.87

42

81. View Eric Nakano

9400.19

-6.00

22

82. View Matthew DOoge

9398.44

-6.02

33

83. View Jarad George

9382.81

-6.17

21

84. View Ian Privitt

9371.17

-6.29

10

85. View Jen Smit

9348.65

-6.51

24

86. View alyssa beatty

9347.01

-6.53

19

87. View Jordan Embree

9320.53

-6.79

32

88. View Matthew Yunge

9315.69

-6.84

21

89. View Jonathan Manzi

9300.21

-7.00

37

90. View maninder singh

9291.00

-7.09

118

91. View David Umina

9288.12

-7.12

16

92. View Heather Rains

9236.87

-7.63

52

93. View Elhom Mirmazaheri

9192.27

-8.08

33

94. View Brent Hottman

9153.37

-8.47

20

95. View Jen Barisone

8906.85

-10.93

74

96. View Brittney Heil

8874.16

-11.26

74

97. View kevin trommer

8857.42

-11.43

52

98. View Brett Armstrong

8788.73

-12.11

25

99. View Erik Gregory

8761.83

-12.38

26

100. View 12 1

8385.14

-16.15

1

101. View taylore collie

7714.22

-22.86

124

25Apr/071

stocksquest rankings, oh boy!

Contest Rankings
Rank   Name Total Value % Gain # Trades
1. View chi

85512.31

755.12

80

2. View michael mendoza

24980.30

149.80

39

3. View Ben Driscoll

15777.63

57.78

78

4. View Bharath Ganesh

14173.78

41.74

31

5. View Travis Coots

13645.75

36.46

90

6. View Sarah Czarnecki

12799.52

28.00

39

7. View john ward

11776.81

17.77

59

8. View Bob Wright

11284.24

12.84

17

25Apr/070

stocksquest!

DATE NAME PRICE QTY DAY
CHG
CURR
PRICE
SUB
TOTAL
GAIN/
LOSS
%GAIN NOTES
04/17/07 ACCREDITED HOME (LEND) 9.90 5555 0.08 10.94 60771.70 5777.20 10.51 Accredited Home Lenders hires new auditor
02/19/07 BOSTON SCIENTIFIC (BSX) 17.01 1 0.36 15.98 15.98 -1.03 -6.06 stents
03/26/07 CAMBREX CP (CBM) 24.60 1 0.05 25.04 25.04 0.44 1.79 wasting money, yeah...
04/18/07 INTROGEN THERAPE (INGN) 5.16 956 -0.09 5.18 4952.08 19.12 0.39 Introgen Cites Positive Study Results
02/26/07 MUTUAL BEACON FD (BEGRX) 17.47 1 0.11 17.93 17.93 0.46 2.63 berkshire hathaway
04/17/07 NOVACEA, INC. (NOVC) 6.70 2400 0.22 8.22 19728.00 3648.00 22.69 low volume, rather risky
02/19/07 ONYX PHARM INC (ONXX) 27.75 1 0.17 26.73 26.73 -1.02 -3.68 just because
02/26/07 STATS CHIPPAC AD (STTS) 9.38 1 0.01 12.22 12.22 2.84 30.28
02/02/07 SUN MICROSYS INC (SUNW) 6.55 1 0.04 5.93 5.93 -0.62 -9.47
02/15/07 TALX CORP (TALX) 32.05 1 0.55 34.28 34.28 2.23 6.96 equifax attempting to buy talx
02/05/07 VANGUARD INTERNAT (VINEX) 22.06 2 0.27 23.49 46.98 2.86 6.48
Long Portfolio Subtotal 85636.87
Short Portfolio Subtotal 0.00
Cash Account Subtotal 35.68
Portfolio Total 85672.55