The year is coming to an end. For many people that means it’s time to come up with new year’s resolutions. Some might be thinking of tax loss harvesting, using up the remainder of their FSA balance, or maxing out an IRA contribution. Those are all very noble endeavors. I’m looking forward to (and simultaneously dreading) the first quarterly check-in for the Freedom Portfolio. One other thing I am looking forward to? Starting the first annual Paul vs the Market Fantasy Investing season.

What is fantasy investing?

I have some friends who are interested in investing. Some are hardcore advocates of low-fee passive index funds who don’t believe that people can beat the market by investing in individual companies. Others are a little more open to the idea and have dipped their toes into some individual stocks. Still others are me, who has half their retirement funds in individual stocks and created a whole website based on the premise that he can beat the market.

Regardless of where we stand on individual stocks, we all occasionally talk about various aspects of investing, from what percentage of our income we try to save to Roth vs Traditional IRAs to what individual companies we’re invested in.

I enjoy investing. I enjoy games. I’ve played a bunch of “fantasy” sports games like fantasy football, basketball, baseball. I’ve even played more esoteric games like fantasy movie league. I had always thought that investing lends itself well to a fantasy game. The numbers are already there in abundance. The scoring is straightforward and translates well to real life. Most importantly of all? The studying and skills developed playing a fantasy investing game might actually be extremely useful in real life.

So around two years ago, I came up with the idea of a game to play with my friends. At the time, I called it the “stock market challenge”, but the basic idea was to make a “fantasy” version of investing where people draft stocks and see how they perform over the course of a year. So far we’ve only had one contest finish, while two more are in progress. I’ve really enjoyed it so far, and one of the best parts about it is how little time it takes. Because the focus is on long-term investing versus day-trading, there are no daily or even weekly line-ups to set. You basically draft your portfolio of stocks in the beginning and don’t have to do anything else (in fact, you really can’t do anything else) until the contest ends a year later.

Rules and Scoring

The rules are simple. Each player picks 5 tickers that they think will outperform the market over the next year. Each ticker must be different and each is weighted equally. There is no need to stress over how many shares to buy of each company.

Scoring is based on the combined return of the 5 positions in a player’s portfolio. What does that mean? Assume the example portfolio below:

Company	Return
Stock A	+30%
Stock B	+5%
Stock C	-20%
Stock D	-10%
Stock E	+15%

Then the score for this portfolio simply involves adding the returns together. In this case: 30+5-20-10+15 = 20. Dividends can be counted separately and added in if necessary, although none of the games I’ve played so far have been close enough to where dividends made a difference.

Other than that, there really aren’t any additional rules. The spirit of the game is to not pick penny stocks, leveraged ETFs, or different classes of the same stock (ie, GOOG and GOOGL), but there are no specific rules against it. When buyouts occur, the position is typically closed at the buyout price. We’ve been fortunate to not have to deal with any splits yet. Among my friends so far it’s been competitive, but also cooperative. We’re trying to win while also discover what other companies our friends are bullish on and why. The hope, at least for me, is that we’re all winners no matter what the final score is because we all become better investors.

The hope, at least for me, is that we’re all winners no matter what the final score is because we all become better investors.

As mentioned above, the competitions generally run for a year, although I enjoy checking in occasionally past the end date to see how things are going and to see if I am catching up to the winner.

This year’s contest

Previous competitions have been small affairs between a handful of friends and I, but I’m interested in formalizing it and opening it up a bit for the new year. For the 2019 season, I want to track things on the PvtM site, with quarterly check-ins on how people are performing. The competition will run from January 1st, 2019 to December 31st, 2019. Because the market is closed on New Year’s day, the first day of scoring will be January 2nd and the starting price for each ticker will be set by the price at market open on that day. The final price will be set at market close on December 31st.

Interested in playing? Great! Please fill out the form below. All entries must be received before January 1st. You don’t have to use your real name, any alias or unique identifier will do. If your stock isn’t traded on the major US exchanges, please provide additional information so I can find it and make sure I have the right one. As mentioned above, the spirit of the game isn’t to pick penny stocks or leveraged funds, so please keep that in mind. Lastly, please place something in the comments field to indicate to me that you are a real human being and not spam, especially if you’re going to be using an alias that I do not recognize. If you think there’s any chance I will mistake your entry for spam, you could include an email address there for me to double check on. Also, the plan is to make each portfolio (along with the stocks chosen) public once the contest starts, so if for whatever reason you don’t want it public, please let me know in the comments section. Entries are due in by midnight on December 31st so I can set things up on January 1st. Thanks! I’m excited about this and hope we get more entries than my “find the marijuana references” competition.

*UPDATE* Apparently the form wasn’t working properly, so please either use the comments section below to list your tickers or email your submissions to: paulvsthemarket@gmail.com. If you previously submitted, please submit again. Sorry for the inconvenience.