Why I dislike CNBC’s “Million Dollar Challenge”…
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…and basically every other fantasy portfolio contest for that matter.
Snippet from CNBC’s “Million Dollar Challenge” website:
“In CNBC.com’s Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge, you play the market starting with $1,000,000 CNBC Bucks. Every day you’ll be ranked based on the size of your portfolio, and each week we’ll award a winner $10,000 for earning the largest weekly percentage gain. At the end of ten weeks, the weekly winners, plus the ten highest ranked players - will qualify for THE FINALS.”
So the premise is that the portfolio with the highest percentage gain each week will win $10,000. The problem is that since it’s not real money, people will create multiple accounts and take crazier than hell risks. The contest generally isn’t about investing ability but rather who’s the luckiest gambler. Five out of the top ten players are “nancy beaumont”, either there are a lot of people named “nancy beaumont” or someone created a bunch of accounts and hit it big with them all.
6 Responses to “Why I dislike CNBC’s “Million Dollar Challenge”…”
I’m puzzled about the highest percentage gain winners. If you start from a smaller portfolio wouldn’t it be easier to get a higher percentage gain than if you start from a larger portfolio?
By Ira Krakow on Mar 12, 2007
Here’s my comment posted elsewhere regarding the Nancy Beaumont issue. I thought I’d share those thoughts since you have a similar complaint. My current Rank is 174.
“Hey all,
Thanks. I’m thinking, however, of dropping out of the contest because of the Nancy Beaumont scam and the fact that there isn’t a single brain working in the Executive Offices at OptionsXpress or GE/CNBC. I don’t exaggerte. Get this–NB has 800 accounts with the potential of making 40,000 trades per day. I hope you’ll all join me now in getting out the word to other Press outlets how OptionsXpress and GE/CNBC let this contest spiral out of control.
I’m in shock and I trust that the rest of you are not going to believe this either. I just read the blog of the so-called Official Blogger, Mark Koba, at CNBC’s site, and he is stating, contrary to Dylan Radigan’s comments last week, that muliple [sic] accounts are, get this–within the Rules.
The Rules state, in no uncertain terms, that each “participant” is entitled to “1,000,000″ and “50″ trades per day, not $800 million spread over 800 accounts and “40,000″ trades per day.
This is an absolute joke. Any of you who understand statistics know that she is all but guaranteed to be the winner. There’s no sense going on with the contest.
I intend to contact other press outlets to expose how silly this is and how everyone fell asleep at the wheel at OptionsXpress and GE/CNBC. They encourage everyone to read the Rules, but obviously they forgot to read their own Rules.
Dave”
P.S. Unbelievable
By Dave on Mar 12, 2007
I can see why you wouldn’t like the 1,000,000 challenge. It is one thing to get 10,000 and another to get the highest percent gain on a real investment which would mean that you stock in a good company that will potentially help you in the future. $10,000 isn’t as good.
By Elaine on Mar 12, 2007
Why does Nancy Beuomont from California hold spots 1,2,3, 6,7, 11, 12, 15, and 17?????
There is something unfair going on here. I don’t know what…
By Elaine on Mar 12, 2007
DYLAN RADIGAN LAST WEEK SAYING MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS IS CHEATING, WHICH IS CONSISTENT WITH THE PLAIN LANGUAGE OF THE RULES. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.
CNBC and OptionsXpress are flip-flopping all over the place on this issue and the controversy continues to grow–a public relations nightmare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9VR77_gzOs
WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OptionsXpress
By Dave on Mar 13, 2007
Ira Krakow ,
Returns are not affected by the size of your holdings.
Holding period return = [what you sold it for - what you paid (+dividends)] divided by what you paid.
or: portfolio ending value - beginning value/ beginning value
MULTIPLY ANSWER BY 100 for percentage gain/loss
In this game dividends are not included though.
By Dana Corbin on Mar 13, 2007