So I have to participate in a stock market simulation for school...

[Massacure]

Any suggestions at what stocks I should start to look at?

Is oil and big pharma good to invest in? What about Halliburton?

[Vincardog]

1. How about Black and Tan and Titan? Mercenaries are the new growth fields

[LSparkle]

2. Booze

There are going to be a LOT of drinkers in this country as Scalito hacks away at the Bill of Rights.

[TheFarseer]

3. It depends on how long the simulation is for

if it's only for a couple of months, then God knows what will make money. The best advice I can give you is to study past performances of stocks and try to find cyclical patterns to see what stocks are "due" to go on an upswing. Some stocks operate like that anyway. If it's for longer, then oil, pharma, health care are good bets. Good luck!

[atfqn]

4. Depends on your commitments.

Long term, short term, greatest bang, safest bet? We need more details. Personally, I would look at Soy (china is now getting over 50% of their protein diet from this), Copper(used in just about ever electrical component we use today), Palladium (catalytic converters are now getting stolen to salvage the palladium), Gold(hedge against inflation), Silver(good material to trade goods in WHEN the dollar starts failing) and then follow any other metal commodities. Find the companies with positive growth and those that will be opening new mines. Avoid monsanto like the plague they are getting kicked out or europe now. Shrug, good luck.

[Sammy Pepys]

5. When I did the same thing in high school

My group just picked the stocks with the coolest names. Out of something like 500 teams statewide, we finished in 11th place.

[Massacure]

6. Since some people asked for more details, I'll provide them.

It lasts for 10 weeks, and the objective is to gain the most money. We have to own at least 6 different companies at any one time, though I don't think it matters how much of it. We start with $100,000.

[Sammy Pepys]

7. Yup, that was exactly how ours worked

We just picked six (or whatever the limit was) random companies, I think starting out with basically equal amounts of each, and then a few weeks later you would check your "account balance" and shuffle your holdings around if you felt like it.

[phantom power]

8. "GLD"

[On the Road]

9. Best Source of Short-Term Picks

Go to Clearstation.com and look at the discussion board for the NASDAQ (click on the word "NASDAQ" at top center). Scroll through and see what some of the traders are recommending to each other. You could do worse.

Another strategy, if you think the market is going to go down, is to take the most stable stocks you can find, with a low beta. They'll hold their value better when Google tanks.

Just a couple of thoughts.

[IronLionZion]

10. Go with what you know

Companies that you understand and purchase their products will often be a good bet. You can estimate their market trends a lot better than you think. ;)

You can also check out financial advice sites and financial news. CNNMoney, MotleyFool, Yahoo Finance, Mutual Fund sites, etc. Pay attention to lawsuits, new regulations, layoffs, mergers, acquisitions, etc. A good short term strategy is buy right after something goes down and hope it rebounds. GOOGLE, buy it, it will do well in the near future.

Get something like 4 stocks that you know and 2 that just look cool. That worked for me whenever I played the game in school...but that was in the roaring 90's :shrug:

Oh, and if Warren Buffet buys something, DONT BUY IT. He is a brilliant investor and my personal hero but his stocks always rise rapidly just because he buys it. Then they stabilize and everyone who bought in that growth time loses money except him because he bought it first.

[SupplySideLiberal]

11. Buy the shooting stars

I would suggest buying a copy of the newspaper Investor's Business Daily. Look at the charts and pick stocks that are shooting up, that is, where the price is rising at a forty-five degree angle or more. Watch them at marketwatch.com or yahoo finance, and buy when they've been down for a day or two then start back up.

Your best hope to win a contest like this is to bet the ranch on high fliers and hope you get lucky. Pretty much the opposite of investing in the real world.

[Warpy]

12. I remember another experiment in a bear market

where they pitted go-getter brokers against somebody who tacked the stock market report to a cork board and threw darts.

The dart thrower did much better than the high paid brokers.

With that cautionary tale in mind, I'd be careful at taking recommendations from hired stock pickers. You might do better on your own.