We Have Our Winners!

Final rankings of the 1st ever UCU Investment Challenge

We know our contestants have been waiting patiently for the results of our first UCU Investment Challenge, and before I get to commenting on the winners, I would like to thank all participants in our contest. With the variety of positions held in each portfolio, most long, many short, with some concentrated portfolios and many balanced portfolios, it was very exciting to see how rankings changed from week to week. It made the contest a lot of fun to run, and I'm sure it was great to participate.

At the end of the day, everyone was a winner, as many learned a lot during the 9 weeks of the contest. I'm sure that if contestants were to participate in it again, many would approach things a little differently. And hence, we are going to have a second contest, UCU Investment Challenge 2, where we will be accepting portfolios up to midnight on January 13, 2012. Please see our website for more details, as there have been some slight modifications made to the rules from the contest that just finished.

Enough with these administrative chit-chat and on with the winners!

A detailed look at the top ten participants
 in the UCU Investment Challenge

Our 1st prize of $1,000 in an investment account with Credential Securities through Ukrainian Credit Union goes to .... Alexander R. His portfolio focused on potential market weakness, and was able to take advantage of a weak technology sector. Alexander's portfolio held two positions, but highly skewed towards a bearish outlook on technology in general. This concentration really helped out. At the end of 9 weeks, Alexander's portfolio returned 8.9%! Well done!

Our 2nd prize of $750 goes to ... Walter Y. Walter's portfolio benefitted from two key issues - dividends, as almost all of his positions paid out dividends, but also from a strengthening USD relative to the CAD, as 4 of his 5 positions were US dividend paying blue chip stocks. Walter had a very well balanced portfolio, with all 5 positions holding a starting value of 20% of the total portfolio. An interesting aspect about Walter's portfolio is that only one of his positions was in negative territory at the end of the 9 week period of our contest, and not by very much. Walter's portfolio returned 5.4% overall during the contest! Great picks, Walter!

Finally, our 3rd prize of $500 goes to ... Lara F. Lara's portfolio was also a 5 position portfolio, but Lara had higher weightings in two positions, and two positions were under weighted. Lara focused on the mining sector, but with a little health care thrown in for good measure. Where Lara did well is that her weakest position was also one where she had the lightest weighting - good planning or perhaps just good luck. Lara's portfolio returned 4.6% after 9 weeks! Congratulations Lara!

An interesting point is that not one of the winners took advantage of the trade date back on November 17th, and held their positions steady throughout. Walter was one of the first portfolio entries into our contest, and picked his portfolio a full 2 weeks before our contest deadline, so he must have had strong convictions about his positions.

Now, we are also making a contribution to the Ukrainian Student's club with the most participants in our contest, and below we post the results of our student participants.


Students did quite well, one came in 3rd place,
4 were in the top ten.

We had 14 students participating in our contest, and we were really happy about this. Lara F., our third prize winner, was the top student, and the 4th place finisher, Oleh F., is also a student ... overall we had 4 students finishing in the top 10 of our contest!

As the prize for having the most student's participating in our contest, UCU will provide a pizza party to the Ukrainian student's club of the respective university. In this case, the party goes to the University of Guelph!

Anyway, there's still lot's of time to sing up to take part in our second round. Go here for details: UCU Investment Challenge 2.