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No apology from DJ 

What you must do now DJ, is to do a covert deletion of your post. Get up at midnight, put dark glasses on, lift up your coat collars and sneak to your computer and delete that post. We won't notice.

The post still stands as is. Don't let your paranoia get the better of you.

Carry on talking shit to yourself here. There was a time when I would have been happy to help out in terms of technical analysis but you make it incredibly difficult to in any way want to contribute. Your steadfast belief in SMAs is ridiculous. They are not leading indicators in any way whatsoever, which is what you keep inferring, and you continue to advise people on the basis of SMAs relating to future trading ranges. This is basic stuff - SMAs are not leading indicators at all - they are the very opposite. If you wanted leading indicators you'd use a combination of EMAs and pricing curves, but even this method doesn't factor in much volatility, which is why if you really, really wanted to use a moving average as a leading indicator, you'd adjust your charting options to allow for differential coupling with a price slope. And you wouldn't be using an SMA. The reason that you continually see CML trade within the SMA, and the reason you continue to convince yourself that it is a leading indicator, is because it is in fact a lagging indicator, and will therefore always reflect the appropriate SMA range in terms of price. This is, once again, the mistake that amateurs make when attempting to read technical analysis. The issue here is that you punt your version of nonsense as gospel which at the end of the day is nonsense.

Allow me to reiterate that SMAs are not leading indicators and you can in no way make swing trading predictions (which is what you're doing) on SMAs alone. Especially to the degree that you're going at it.

I don't want a fight here. All I'd like is for you to try a little but of humility for a change and perhaps learn something out of this.

You also discuss future trading ranges, however you'd be looking at one of the oscillators to confirm, not SMA. You might also use a combination of fibonacci analysis as well, but these are very high risk methods. All you're doing is reading into technicals what you admittedly (on another forum) do not know.

I don't think that it's fair that you continue trying to teach others about technical analysis. If you are honest with yourself, you know that you have never ventured into the details thereof and are not in a position to be trying to help others. If you'd like to learn, you might want to start with the basics of lagging indicators and what purpose they serve, as they do not serve to predict future price movements in terms of the trading periods you're referring to.

I'm rarely on here to reply, but that doesn't miraculously make you correct...

Invicta is in my personal portfolio. The concern with IVT is their exposure to the ZAR being an import-based business, but with the flat-to-negative outlook of the ZAR this bodes well for IVT. Christo Wiese will keep them pointed in the right direction. The issue with holding IVT for this sort of competition is that they are unlikely to make waves in terms of performance. They will be solid earners but nothing substantial imo. They've been in the black and paid a div every year they've been listed.

WTF do I know?

Never ever, ever gear from an indebted position. Quite simply do not use existing debt to finance a leveraged trade,particularly heavily geared trades, well not traditional debt like a bond, at least. You're gambling an existing debt - it's just not worth it, imo.

If you want to play in the margin account business then start small and build your account up. You'll soon realise why not using existing debt was a good thing as your downside potential is substantial, depending on your gearing of course, and the markets you're going to be exposed to will not see you on the upside all of the time. As a trader in leveraged products, I square trades more often than being right, but when you're right you make it count.

If anything, rather move your booked profits into the bond than borrow from the bond to hopefully pay it back, or worse, be subject to a margin call and have to remortgage your property because you were geared to the max. No, thank you...

Well what I've noticed is that some people are spreading their risk across multiple asset classes and sectors, which for your personal portfolio is great if you're looking to minimise downside risk, but for this sort of competition isn't entirely appropriate. You want risk in this sort of competition. I'd suggest splitting your portfolio into 3 risk classes - low - medium - high and start with equal weightings. Each month you will be given an additional R100k, so you then have a choice to play with your weightings or look at getting into other companies. Don't just buy because you can - cash can be king. I'd also suggest holding on to cash to allow you flexibility to manage downside risk. Towards the latter end of the competition you might need to hedge your downside exposure to certain asset classes, sectors, and/or companies, and this is possible, but you need the liquidity to do so, and in this competition that only comes from cash. Or you might want to dump some money into a higher risk stock and go for broke.

I'd suggest that if you want to learn from this experience, then don't look at penny-stocks, as much as I've stated that you want risk. They are simply too volatile and illiquid an asset, and they're almost impossible for a noob investor to make an informed decision about. Stick with the medium-large cap companies, check their recent SENS announcements, check the latest news about the company, find some research by various asset managers and sell-side participants, look for when they announce results, look for when they go ex-div, look at their div yield, look at their past performance but importantly, use this as an indicator, not as a decision-making criteria. Look at the kinds of volumes traded. Try to understand why their price moves.

Let's take a good example - Calgro M3 Holdings. They recently moved from the AltX to the main board and have had considerable success, even though other property developers have struggled. Why? Well check the news and see their affiliation with government. Look at their potential contracts moving forward. Look at the management team. Look at why they are listed - they're simply diversifying their investor-base - they don't actually need the additional capital. So they are heavily liquid; are well supported; showing great growth; can protect themselves in the event of sudden negative economic impacts; and they're in a market that is somewhat protected from macro external property market moves, as they have a niche with government.

But this poses its own risks. Can their growth be supported for a long period of time? Well that depends on the sector but I say no. They are heavily exposed to one part of the market - government. So there is demand risk. They are approaching all-time highs. Will they trade through this price point? Possibly, but other developers in a similar position often struggle to trade through these resistance levels. But then again, the last time they broke through their all-time high, they shot up like a bullet. They've also recently broken through their 570 resistance level and traded above there for the last day or two, so 570 might in fact become the new support level for this stock.

Look into these risk factors and you begin to build your own risk model. Use this to begin to understand price movements, understand the range within which the stock trades, and you begin to understand where a good entry point into the stock is (i.e. price). You can also begin to gauge the potential of the stock moving forward with this data. You can then transpose what you've learnt on to other asset classes and companies and begin to make informed investment/trading decisions. Remember that you're only in this for a few months, so you're not necessarily trading, but you're also not necessarily investing for the long term either.

Oh and to patrick, I wouldn't suggest adding a sell option, as the competition started as a no-sell option and investment choices were made on that basis. Perhaps next round that can be introduced.

Long term investors will want to lock in their gains at some point. Why not make it possible to adjust the weightings of the portfolio, including cash?