Wow I'm doing better than 4/5s of the users here. Quite an accomplishment. Let me sing my praise. LA DE DAAAAA! Ok I'm done. Here's the facts:

 

* 1/2 of CAPS users signed up and stopped playing immediately (a pure guess but grounded in fact, I'm sure)

* All of the stocks I own in real life are lagging the S&P (MSFT, GOOG, AAPL).

* And here's the kicker ...

 

Except for a few stocks here and there (RSH, COST, BBI, NFLX and a couple more) I've picked against what I think will happen in the market. I.e. I've underperformed a bunch of small-caps I've been watching, hoping they'd go down while I accumulate money to go buy them. And you know what? They've all (mostly) underperformed! These are stocks I thought were going to be winners and they're underperforming! Granted, its only been a few days and small caps are volatile guys sharing a common attribute (they're small) so hence I can understand why they'd, as a group, underperform. But still. Hmm.

 

This leaves me in a quandary. So do I really want to invest in a bunch of supposed winners who have underperformed? Well that was my hope when I started! But now its reality and so I question what I should do. It's a funny dream situation I'm in but I'm not sure if I have the balls to do it. Of course if the stocks shot through the roof, would I have the balls to buy them at a higher price?

 

So the answer is I need more balls.

 

Now here's the real question: would I truly be better off pulling a Costanza and buying the opposite of everything I think is good, shorting everything I've meticulously researched and determined to be underpriced, undervalued and certain to go up?

 

I'll take a chicken salad sandwich, hold the mayo.

 

And lastly, I am going to earn my medals (or lack thereof). Once I make my purchase, I'm going to do a reassessment of all of my picks and close all picks that I don't entirely agree with. Then I'm going to play for real ... and see if I really am an all-star.