Added GME

I bought GME on Monday, per the mechanical portfolio and then added more on Tuesday when it dropped sharply early in the day. I also added to my positions on Tuesday to UEPS, CMED, VM and UTA it what today was an extremely timely move. At the same time, I moved RNR-C and ENH-A out of my MFI portfolio to try and move to a more traditional MFI portfolio.

My stock contest in down to just a week left. It looks like JeffC will win. I list the standings below:

Row Labels	Average of Pct Change
JeffC	-1.9%
MFI >100m	-11.7%
Wynona	-12.7%
MarshG	-14.6%
JohnB	-18.2%
JuanC	-20.5%
Newest	-21.4%
PeterC	-21.6%
Sideview	-24.8%
GlennR	-25.3%
TonyB	-26.1%
RichardP	-27.0%
Russell Value	-27.3%
Ken	-27.6%
S&P 500	-28.0%
SteveH	-29.6%
Devolution_9	-29.8%
Al	-31.0%
AlexG	-31.3%
Roberts1001	-31.5%
FortyDown	-31.7%
MFI>2b	-31.9%
TimK	-32.8%
EdwardU	-34.9%
Impossibled	-39.1%
Eric	-39.1%
SteveB	-45.1%
Grand Total	-26.5%

The eye-catching item is that the simple top 25 list of 100m and greater did better than all but one portfolio. And it beat the S&P by 17 points. It also beat the Magic Diligence portfolio (as of July 1st last year and held for a year) by 11 points. What does this suggest? JG said it in his book that picking your own stocks is like running through a dynamite factory with a lit match. You might make it out, but it still isn't a good idea. I would suggest we all have our vision of what is a good stock, straight out of Finance 101 and we are biased towards picking those stocks in these sorts of contests and stay away from what turned out to be the big winners:

TPX +58% (mattresses in a recession?)
ICFI + 56% (they were in the news in a bad way almost daily with handling of Katrina victims)
BVF + 49% (poster child company for egregious management behavior)
CAST +57%
CPSI +120%
USMO +97% (pagers in today's economy???)

That is a reason I am going to lean more on the mechanical approach. Funny, I did look today at the official MFI website where they will now manage your money for you. I thought it'd be like a mutual fund. But literally you have two choices: (1) you give them money and they select stocks for you per the rules or (2) you give them money but then direct them how to buy and sell stocks.

I am not sure how (2) is different from doing it yourself in a Fidleity account? The annual cost (for either plan) is 1% of your assets. I suppose if you have $25,000 with them, that is pretty good... $250 a year. But if you have $500,000 with them, you'd be paying $5,000 a year for exactly the same service... so I only think their cost structure makes sense for small investors. I know I trade more than I should, but $5,000 a year would be hard to spend a year at $8 a trade at Fidelity. Also they charge the same whether they give you advice or not. Weird.