Share Forum - Discuss JSE shares and join the Investor Challenge

Here's what people bought in April, numbers are in rand:
SAB    3134240.1100
CPI    2517367.5200
VOD    2362729.4200
CML    2036572.7000
BIL    1975941.0600
MTN    1724088.1600
SGL    1563793.4600
APN    1518500.3600
WHL 1434728.7500
CFR    1395544.1900
SOL    1379699.8300
JDG    1297510.1200
ABL    1293936.8800
STX40    1288646.6800
ANG    1171821.1300
DSY    1079267.3500
OML    1077487.6500
KIO    1017480.4800
NPN    1008883.2300
BTI    1005563.5400
FSR    1003214.0000
STXIND    866367.8400
PNC    855271.8000
AGL    844558.1400
TKG    843573.1000
FBR    834490.5000
MSM 834375.9000
SBK    802016.6600
LON    691304.3300
HAR    677549.1000

Fortunately I have some code in the system that checks every signup against a central spam database. So far nobody has gotten through, but in the brief time that it's been running...

1204 Spammers blocked up until today

Mostly from eastern europe.

Everyone should have another R100 000 in cash. So who's going to stay in cash or what do you plan on buying this month?

A bunch of the competition users are clearly new to investing so I'd like to include some advice to the newbies in the email when the monthly deposit email goes out every month.

For the first month I thought of explaining how buying less than R30k worth of shares means you pay an excessive amount in fees.

Any other ideas as to what I could use in future months? Something which seems like common sense to us might be useful to a newby.

Dividends have been tough to figure out. There isn't a list of LDTs I can grab on a website. I did manage to find most of the ex-dividend dates. AFAIK if you hold shares before the ex-div date you get a payment. OMLs ex dividend date was the 22nd, so even though it was after LDT, they did technically own the shares at the right time...

I'll go with thoughts from others here?

Unless I find a site offering all those dates, the only way I could see of having things perfect would be to have humans entering the dates for me. Perhaps double checked by someone else. That way contestants would have to enter the LDTs and ex dividend dates.

5350 up 1.90%. Why oh why do I hold such a small amount! I imagine the buyers are expecting really good result to justify that price...

Gee-whiz can we go down now pretty please, 1000+ points up since Tuesday; I've almost stared panicking for my shorts.

Lol, have some consideration for the investors, I'm finally in the green again today 

Well, if you are not actively selling your shares in order to make PROFIT, then you will not really be seen as a trader. You are allowed to sell your assets in order to limit or stop your losses (which is OK because there will not be any profit anyway). I also prefer a competition where it is more about smart investing than active trading. But as there is a leaderboard and there is a competition, one would like to be able to sell a share that is consisitently going into the negative, instead of holding on to it. In real life I would probably hold on to a share for at least 3 months before actually selling it, and as this is a 12 month competition I guess it is OK. With the Sanlam investment challenge, I think the only reason for the limited trading allowance was exactly to limit excessive trading and thus level the playing field between "normal" people and actual active traders that sit night and day. Also, I would think the software of the program would require a lot more sophistication as the trading increases. Only allowing people to sell if they dispose of all of a particular share, limits the amount of trading as one has to think twice before just selling. You could also not buy more of a share you currently had, unless you sold your current lot.

Ah thanks for that! Maybe I should consider allowing sales for a loss then! I'll see. By next year we should all have a good idea as to the best format, this was just how I thought it should run for now.