Share Forum - Discuss JSE shares and join the Investor Challenge

I'll give each user the option, with the default being yes.

I'm hoping to get into SAB in a couple of months. Hopefully at a good price.

As for today, I see UK retail is down and below expectation, while SA retail is up:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-18/u-k-retail-sales-decline-more-than-forecast-on-cold-weather-1-.html and http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/3-8-retail-sales-surge-a-good-sign-1.1502182#.UW-zyErcOaU

Frikkin cool, now u need to work on Advertisements on your sites. I do not want u to disappear. Also see if you legally can get feeds, 15 min delayed is fine. showing main i.e. JSE, dowjones, the rant and so on.

must say, u doing a good job.

Thanks. I got the all ok from the JSE, it'll be 15 to 25 minutes delayed depending on when exactly it syncs. I'll monitor the traffic, when I see enough hits to start covering costs I'll put the ads in. Who knows, maybe some financial institution would want to sponsor the challenge... We'll see.

Why oh why Patrick are you working so hard?  It's appreciated though, thank you

Hey MP. To be honest, this is the type of competition I've been looking for. It's dfferent to the normal share trading competitions as you'll see on the site. The usual share competitions generally give you R1million for you to trade and see where you end up. Not very realistic, who has a million lying around. In this one, you are the chairman of an investment club, and get R100 000 every month to invest.

As you know, investing cost effectively only happens when you have R30k per month, which for an investment club would be easily possible. I'm hoping it will be fun, and a good learning experience which could be carried over to real life too. I hope you enjoy it, even though you're more trader than investor. I'd be very appreciative it you could take a look at the site. I've opened it up to everyone for now, and will clear up the database on Sunday night before the kick off on Monday: http://www.investorchallenge.co.za/

A few more items that may need attention -
1.
At cash holdings of R400K, buying @ 260 per share allows you to purchase up to 153230 shares. Calculate it out and you have available cash of R 8.41 thereafter, so you could have bought 153233 shares. Seems you calculate the max shares allowed based on the max comm you will pay on the total available cash holding. Not a major issue.
2.
At cash holdings of R 94.86 you appear to allow the purchase of 1049 shares @ 9cents - Seems you are not taking the minimum comm of R120.00 into consideration at clculation of what you can purchase. (You do prevent the actual purchase from going through though). Not a major issue either.
3.
My previous blog comment is no longer viewable - was it cleaned/deleted?

Nothing else to report, all other calculations appear in order (although I have not bombarded the site with all variations).

Great job.

1. Yep, that's what Idid, right before thinking nobody would ever notice!
2. Hmm, I'll have to double check.
3. Yep.

Definitely need lines between the shares or an alternating background shade on the purchase page (already mentioned by someone above)

Done.

Include something on the front page about the portfolio valuation methodology - (Semi-live, closing price or whatever)

Done, but I'll have to re-write it when I'm more awake...

Please acknowledge the source of the pricing data - The JSE is very particular about who uses their data and how it was sourced - you might need to get permission from them to re-publish the data even though they provide it on a public web site and it is delayed.

Done, I've also sent them a mail asking if they're ok with that. If not I'll take the prices from another site, it'll just mean a fair amount of extra work.

Thanks so much for the input guys.

Are you sure you want to be spending all day approving/rejecting blog comments? Would it not be easier if only registered users were allowed to add, and then remove moderation/approval from this?

True

I would still like to validate the calculations etc., e.g. purchase fees and price updates. Suppose that can only be conclusive after the overnight price update (I am assuming you update on the daily close?) I would recommend a start date of 1st May (with R500K if you'd like) if all else is equal. That should also give you enough time to "advertise"? However, knowing developers - you'd want this live today if possible - gotta show off the work 

I update every 10 minutes, from the JSE website which updates every 15 minutes, so at best we're 15 minutes late with prices, at worst 25 minutes late... For the calculations I'm not bothering with strate or vat as the amounts are so small.

I would recommend a start date of 1st May (with R500K if you'd like) if all else is equal. That should also give you enough time to "advertise"? However, knowing developers - you'd want this live today if possible - gotta show off the work

You know us well!

On the point I forgot previously, letting people see all the members holdings, I'm not sure. If it's a competition, someone may not want someone else copying his purchases. I have a few options: Keep everything closed; Show the previous months trades, but not the current months; Give the user the option if he wants to share. Maybe I'll bring it in for a vote once people actually start using the site.

I'll give it a go - being a Tester in my day job has it's benefits.

Thanks, you should have access, try the link above.

I think it's about ready to go, but I know better than releasing untested code onto the masses 

So I'm looking for volunteers to give it a quick run through. 

No need to worry about making wise choices now as I'll be cleaning the database before the real go-live date, so you can be as brave as you like. Even as far as buying some Telkom!

If you're keen to help reply here and I'll add you to the private challenge section.

Cheers