TARPedBanks (< 20)

How to win the TARPed Banks Contest!

April 24, 2009 – Comments (0) | RELATED TICKERS: C , ONT , EST

Entering the final week of the contest, fellow Fool golfcoach59 holds the lead with a perfect 10 for 10 correct picks and a whopping 330 points.  To get an idea of how good this set of picks was and how strong the financial rally has been, that averages to 33 points a pick.  The S&P is up 11 points since the coach entered.  That means a portfolio of those ten stocks would have been up about 44% in just over a month.

Green thumb picks dominate the front page of the leaderboard.  The top 10 players have a total of 96 picks, all green thumbs. 

Among the top ten, watch out for 5th place sandmanuva13 (perhaps someone who slept through thirteen classes at the University of Virginia?) and 9th place pslorenz.  They each have two picks remaining to find a last minute silver bullet to the top spot.

The stat sheet shows 401 entries, still well shy of the 600 needed to make the convertible preferred prize worth $600 instead of a Stock Advisor subscription.  Not that there’s anything wrong with a Stock Advisor subscription.

The blog title promised a way to win with a late entry.  Here’s how that could set up.  Because this contest is limited to banks that took TARP money, plus GM and AIG, all picks are concentrated in one sector and that sector has been quite volatile.  Notice that the leader board is packed with all green thumb scorecards.  If a late entry were to hit a financial reversal with an all red thumb scorecard, they would probably be ahead of the other red thumb cards.  A whipsaw week could see the current leaders crash and burn while a new entry rides the other side of the wave to the winner’s circle.  Long shot??  Certainly.  But it costs nothing and if at least 199 more Fools enter, it could be worth $600 bucks. 

There is a small contingent charge for this advice.  If the prize converts and someone plays this idea for the win, the fee is a minimum of 10% of the prize donated to this year’s Foolanthropy drive. 
Fee not legally enforceable, honor system applies, you don’t have to feel guilty if you already had the idea yourself, blah blah. 

Finally, a big thank-you to TMF for running this contest and to all the Fools who have been following TARPedBanks.  I’ve enjoyed the little piece of the spotlight and had more fun with this profile than I ever imagined when I started it up.

Fool on!

Russ (aka rd80)