How would you like to have a Wall Street Journal crystal ball?

Well, you can—sort of. One of the founders of Long Term Capital Management, which got vaporized when some sure-bet trades blew up in the ‘90s, came up with a tool to let you try your luck. (By the way, at least two of the financial advisors coming to work at Strategence Capital every day, including me, were in this business when that happened.) It seemed he learned his lessons back then and today espouses an investment approach very similar to ours.

Here’s how it works. The site presents you with actual but random pages from the Wall Street Journal, with important parts redacted, but the twist is you get to see it two days before it’s published. You decide how to invest $1 million. Each day you can decide whether to go short (sell) or long (buy) stocks or bonds. You can trade or decide not to trade. Then, your portfolio goes up or down based on the markets’ results.

As of October 10, “more than 8,000 mostly financially savvy players had taken a crack at the game. Their median ending wealth after 15 rounds was just $687,986,” according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Here is where you can go to try your luck: https://elmwealth.com/crystal-ball-challenge/.

Take a screen shot of your results, send them to me, and I’ll share mine with you.

This is another example of the real-world thought laboratory that I like to present to overconfident investors:

Imagine you have a crystal ball at the end of 2019, and you know that in the next year, the world is going to experience COVID; the Presidential election is going to be contested; and the Capital is going to be stormed. Do you think stocks would be a good investment?

For those who did nothing, the answer was yes. I continue to maintain that a vital component of successful investing is humility.

 

OneAscent Financial Services, LLC (“OAFS”), d/b/a Strategence Capital, is a registered investment adviser with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. OAFS does not make any representations or warranties as to the accuracy, timeliness, suitability, completeness, or relevance of any information prepared by OAFS or any unaffiliated third party. OAFS is neither an attorney nor accountant, and no portion of the presented content should be interpreted as legal, accounting, or tax advice. All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly.