My paper trading thread

Jason Fung OP : Day 1 update: I bought 267 units of $Salesforce (CRM.US)$ before market closed today. Hoping for a strong earning report and guidance for 2024. CRM did beat earnings in their last quarter and even announced their first ever dividend. But unfortunately they gave a relatively weak guidance for the new year. Stock is down around 4% in after hours trading. I will see how it goes when the market opens tomorrow.

P.S. 1: When I was placing my trade earlier, I realized I can't use my entire cash balance ($200,000) onto a single stock. I can only buy up to USD $80,000 worth of a stock. This is something to keep in mind if you were not aware. I suppose this is to prevent people from going all-in on a single stock and then got lucky.

P.S. 2: Added a screenshot of my today's P/L at market close.

Jason Fung OP : Day 2 update: Sold my $Salesforce (CRM.US)$ stock when the market opened today. I posted a screenshot of my today's P/L. Despite the stock being  down in early hours trading, it reversed its course swiftly when the market opened and stayed in the positive. So I quickly exited my position and made a small profit. I just didn't feel confident holding it because I was concerned the stock may continuously face downward pressure in the coming days due to its weak guidance for the year.

I will stay on the sideline for now. I am thinking of starting a position with $Gitlab (GTLB.US)$ since its earning report is coming up on March 4, Monday. I have a good feeling that its Q4 earning would beat the analysts' expectation since it's a large tech company that sells a leading product in the DevOps space. I also thought about starting a position with $FuboTV (FUBO.US)$ and $Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO.US)$ but find them too risky. I am open for new ideas. Hope the community can share some of their thoughts as well and we can all learn from one another.

Jason Fung OP : Day 3 update part 1: I was researching what stocks to buy last night and came across $Snowflake (SNOW.US)$. It announced its earning two days ago. The earning was solid in last quarter for a SaaS company but guidance is weak for 2024. But the thing that caught Wall Street by surprise the most is the unexpected retirement of the current CEO, Frank Slootman. Slootman is a veteran CEO with a proven track record of growing enterprise software companies at an accelerated pace. This is bad news in the eyes of Wall Street because as many of us know, wall street does not like surprises. The stock went down by 20 percent yesterday as a result.

I think Snowflake was oversold. Yes, this stock has a very high valuation but that has always been the case since its IPO. It is the market leader in providing cloud data warehousing solutions and its fundamentals and technology advantage have not changed much. So I started a position this morning and was hoping for a bounceback by end of day and exit for a quick profit. Unfortunately this plan didn't pan out. I am currently down 2% and that has pretty much wiped out all of my gains since day 1. Ouch...

I have not given up $Snowflake (SNOW.US)$ just yet. I hope next week the market sentiment would improve and I can exit my position with a small profit. Let's see how it goes.

Jason Fung OP : Day 3 update part 2: Another stock that I bought was $Apple (AAPL.US)$. I notice there has been a lot of resistance at the $180 mark. I thought it would be a good idea to deploy my capitals when this stock dips below $180. I don't like to be holding too much cash since this paper trading competition only lasts for 2 weeks. The buy and hold strategy probably won't work since time is not on my side. I felt like I need to take more risk but I am afraid of losing money. Hence I bought a blue chip stock like Apple so I can say to myself that I am investing in something. I am currently down very slightly (Less than 0.1%) on this stock. I am not concerned since this is apple, which is one of the most valuable tech company in the world.

That's pretty much all that I want to share in this update. It's been fun paper trading and learning about various companies and how to evaluate them. Wish you all a great weekend!! See you guys back on Monday.

Jason Fung OP : Day 4 update: I didn't have much time to keep an eye on the market as work was keeping me very busy today. When I first checked the market this morning, I got a feeling that today may be a bad day because a lot of tech stocks were down. When I checked again after market had closed, it turned out that my pessimistic prediction was correct and my two main holdings, $Apple (AAPL.US)$ and $Snowflake (SNOW.US)$ went down further than last Friday. I have to admit: things have not been going well for me in this paper trading competition since my first two days of success.

Anyway I had a chance to buy some $Gitlab (GTLB.US)$ stock during my break at work. I was hopeful that this stock would go up when it announces its earning at market close today. Unfortunately the guidance for 2024 is rather weak. It's a similar situation to my previous stock, $Salesforce (CRM.US)$ where they beat EPS for last quarter but gave a weak outlook for 2024. Currently Gitlab is down by more than 20% in after-hours trading. I hope it can trim some of its loss when market opens tomorrow. We will see. But this stock will most likely be a loss for me and I can't see it going back up to $74 anytime soon.

Jason Fung OP : Day 5 update: it looks like the challenge is over. Although I didn't win any cash reward, it's been fun trading stocks and updating my progress here each day. Thank you for reading and I look forward to the next paper trading competition.