In conjunction with the launch of Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the Securities Investors Association of Singapore (SIAS) campaign to educate the public in stock investing, an online trading contest StockWhiz has been created.
The official site calls it an online investing competition but due to the short duration of the contest, I would deem it more appropriately as an online trading competition.
Investing and trading have very different time frames!
The competition runs from 10 September 2012 to 30 November 2012 and registration is now open till 31 October 2012. You can register for the contest here: StockWhiz Registration
The winner of the open category stands to win $30,000 worth of prizes (in the form of ETF units) and there’s over $150,000 worth of prizes to be won.
As part of the campaign, free educational seminars in public libraries will also be conducted.
I was actually quite amused when I read this quote from a SGX spokesperson :”It’s very important for us to focus on retail investors, help the education process, to turn our nation of occasional speculators and savers into regular investors.”
I’m sure the seminars will help to do that but in order to do well at an online trading competition, the participants will probably need to adopt the mindset of short-term speculators. 🙂 And furthermore, the judging criteria for the contest is based on your total realized profits. So buy and hold will simply not work.