I Challenge You.. to join the race!

That's right.. leave the rat race and join the race to true financial freedom. We have a weekly contest to see who can pick the best stocks in the real stock market. Use our imaginary, virtual money and see if you can make it grow! It's FREE, it's FUN, and it's for CASH!

Join the Weekly Challenge Here

Total Prize Pool: $2,500 weekly. See distribution of prize money in chart above.
How to play: You start with $100,000 in Fantasy Bucks. If you have one of the 10 highest portfolios at the end of the week, you win real cash prizes.
You can register and enter the tournament any time during the week. Sometimes those who start on the last day or two win top cash prizes as easily those who started on the first day.

The first thing you should do when you join BigSmarty WallStreet is set up your personal profile. With your own screen name you can be anonymous as you wish to be. Many players want to be known because it helps them network and make new friends. It’s your choice. Just be sure you upload your picture or any image you wish the community to identify with you. It’s fun. It’s free. And it’s for cash!

Can you convince yourself that you're ready to invest a chunk of your hard-earned money in the stock market? Here's how: Set up a FREE practice portfolio in BigSmarty Wallstreet, our online virtual stock exchange where you'll trade with play money and have a lot of fun in stock trading tournaments.

Want more? - join our Shootout Tournament
Total Prize Pool: $6,125 per tournament. The top winner can accumulate up to $2,450.
How to play: Each player starts the heads-up match with $100,000 Fantasy Bucks each week. The player with the higher portfolio at the end of the week advances to the next round like the brackets of the NCAA.
Any player who fails to trade during the week cannot move forward even if his or her opponent ends the week with a negative portfolio.
Players advance until we have a “Sweet 16” going head to head and then they start winning cash prizes according to the schedule below.

Could it get any easier? Actually, yes. But you'll need to register (for free) and login to learn how!

Top Dog

Well I did it! After 5 weeks of difficult trading I walked away the winner of the first ever BigSmarty Wallstreet Head to Head Shootout Tournament.

I struggled this week but managed to keep a modest lead on my competitor until Friday when I was able to widen my lead. I finished with a $6,466 gain. My competitor finished with a $2,817 gain.

The amazing thing is that even though he lost to me, his gain was almost 3% for the week. Why do most people settle for a 2 to 5% gain a year when it's possible to make that in a week? If I averaged 2.8% each week I could grow my money 140% each year (and yes that includes taking a couple weeks off).

Does doubling your money every year sound good to you? Let me show you how.

Civil War Update

As all of you know, my wife and I have been placed into the same bracket on a head to head investment tournament this week. It's really an honor to have reached this point. The tournament is down to only 4 players and our household comprises 50% of that! Amazing!

I took an early lead on Monday when I put all of my money into one stock that I felt would skyrocket. It did, and my portfolio grew by over $70,000. My wife is a very good investor herself and had picked the same stock. She played it a little safer and made about $69,000.

Then I got careless. Because I am going head to head with my wife, I tried to second guess her strategy. She usually takes more risks than me and I assumed she would continue to press me. Although I usually will take a profit and wait for the next big one, I jumped into some other investments and they lost me about $10,000. My wife, on the other hand was the cautious one and she took the lead as my stocks fell.

Tuesday I made some headway but I couldn't catch her. She had a $7,000 lead on me coming into Wednesday. This is where I had a little luck with some smaller investments that I worked over and over. Buying and selling all morning today until by 12:00 noon I was again in the lead. As of this moment my portfolio is at: $174,679.28 and hers is at: $171,077.62

Join us for some investment fun. We're all amatures and the tournaments are FREE!

I've learned a lot about investing in the stock market just by playing in these free tournaments. You'll have fun and learn more than you can imagine. Write me for more info.

Jim Cramer doesn't beat the market

Breaking News!!!
Cramer's picks haven't beaten the market!

An article in the August 20 edition of Barron's and sent out through reuters on Sunday reported that Jim Cramer's stock picks from his nightly CNBC show "Mad Money" have not beaten the stock market in over two years. Read the Barron's artice here

It didn't come as a surprize because I've felt for some time that his picks just aren't very well researched. I'm only a novice in the stock market but I've out-done his picks since my first few weeks of following the market. (I started in April of this year) Of course, Jim doesn't have the use of the Mentor Center like I do.

Unlike Cramers methods of using emotion to choose stocks, the Mentor Center gathers information from all of the 12000+ stocks on the market and breaks it down for me. It then rates and scores each company so that I can choose from the best. I just spend about an hour a week taking a deeper look at the top 40 to 80 stocks to determine the ones with the best "buy" or "sell" signals. My list is usual broken down to about 8 or 10 stocks that I watch during the week.

I use the website BigSmarty.com to practice making my trades. They provide FREE practice portfolios filled with $100,000 of virtual cash that I can invest in the real stock market without any risk. This is helping me build up my confidence and abilities to pick good stocks before I start putting my own money into the market. BigSmarty also has tournaments and games to play which makes it extremely interesting and fun. I invite you to join me there (it's free). Drop me an email to let me know your user ID in the tournaments.. we can go head to head sometime.

I'm not the best one there.. in fact, last week I finished in the next-to-last place after investing in a mortgage company which lost about 60% overnight. But it was fun and it wasn't my own money, so what the heck!

Register to join me on BigSmarty by clicking here.

Loose Ends

In light of the recent ups and downs of the stock market, I found this news encouraging and filled with common sense. I thought I would pass it along :

Top Tips: The biggest mistake in a falling stock market
Reprinted from Friday July 27, 5:37 pm ET
By Gerri Willis, CNN

This past Thursday was the second worst day of the year for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But remember, it was just a week ago today that the Dow closed above 14,000 for the first (and only) time.
What it means for 401(k) investors

Fluctuations in the market shouldn't get to the 401(k) investor. Keep in mind your time horizon - most of us are going to be invested in the market until we retire, often decades from now.
On average, stocks move higher - their long term average gain is 10.8 percent each year, according to Hugh Johnson of Johnson Illington Advisors. Over those long time horizons, stocks will move up and down. It will be nearly impossible for you to call the highs and lows. If you sell now, you run the risk of missing gains and paying fees to re-invest in the market. Here's an example of how damaging moving your money around can be:

• If you sold your stocks at the market bottom in September of 1998 when the Dow was at 7539.07, you would have missed out on portfolio gains of 21.8 percent by the end of that year.
• If you sold your stocks at the bottom of the 1987 crash in October, when the Dow was at 1738.74, you would have missed out on 24.7 percent of your portfolio gain by the end of December 1988. That's almost $25,000 missed opportunity on a portfolio with $100,000, says Johnson.
• Economists we talked to said we're in for at least one sharp sell-off a year. Put your money into the market a little at a time, consistently. That's the way to earn gains - not gambling on where prices will go next. Sit tight and let the bulls and bears ride it out.
• Selling when the market is falling is not the way to protect yourself or your assets.
  Diversifying your assets is the best solution here. Go to Morningstar.com's Instant X-Ray to see exactly what is in your portfolio.
• Make sure you are adequately diversified in sectors, company sizes (by market capitalization) and regional distribution. When you're diversified, if one sector or type of company takes a downturn, your whole portfolio won't feel the hit.