Squawk Box Trading Game

So, while I'm stuck at home I have started finding other things to do...

Honestly, today is the best day of my recovery so far. My incision doesn't hurt near as bad as in previous days, and the swelling at the surgery site is less and less each day. I walked a mile yesterday and have no ill effects.

Back to the main post: as I mentioned, my In-laws were visiting this past week. They left this morning and should be home any minute now. My father-in-law, Bob, is a pretty savvy financial guy so in the mornings he watches some of the stock market channels. One of his favorite shows is CNBC. Just this week they started a contest on their early a.m. program Squawk Box (6-9a.m.) - it is called the CNBC Squawk Box Fantasy Portfolio Challenge and the Grand Prize is a 2006 Maserati Gransport. Basically you get $1,000,000 fake dollars and the one with the most "virtual" money at the end of the contest period wins the car.

Here's the funny part. I signed up and made an immediate mistake with my first stock purchase. Instead of putting in 7500 shares of AAPL I hit an extra zero.

Two things happened:

1. The other two stocks I wanted to purchase essentially (I got 1 share of one company)went right by, and,
2. Over 16,000 shares of my stock ended up being Apple - all but the one share of TOO.

Well, little did I know that Apple would make an announcement that I mentioned in the previous post, namely, that users would be able to boot Windows XP on their new intel-based Macs.

The freaking stock shot through the roof and earned $99,000.00 in virtual bucks. Can you hear the hum of the Maserati in the driveway? Just kidding. Anyway, it was fun. Especially since I made a stupid mistake that paid off in the contest.

Check back at the end of May to see how I ended out.

WH