1. Colm H 204%
2. Sean H +169%
3. Blaine R +82%
4. John B +66% (John has made the top 5 twice now along with me.)
5. Rohit G +62%

I came up a little short of the top 5 this year with +54% in the general portfolio. I should have just stopped trading back in Oct. and I would have made the top 5 🙂

That being said, I’m actually more proud of the 17% profit I managed to produce in the metal portfolio. Metals have been a whipsawing nightmare all year. Nothing in the metal sector is up. Silver and miners are down double digits. To produce any profit in this mess of a market was a miracle. No one else managed to make any money trading metals.

We’ve had nicely trending markets for the better part of a year and a half in everything except metals. I suspect that will change next year and it’s going to be much harder to make money. Don’t be surprised if next years winner comes in with less than 50%.

The winners need to contact me to collect your prizes. [email protected]

The 2022 challenge will begin Monday. You will need to contact me to register to enter the challenge. This year I’m going to limit the number of contestants to 25. I get way too many people that just buy NUGT or JNUG on the first day then ride their losses all the way to the end. Hint: You probably aren’t going to win the challenge by going Old Turkey in leveraged mining ETF’s. It hasn’t worked for the last 4 years and I doubt it will work this year either. The winners will be the people able to recognize the changing environment for 2022 and adapt quickly to it. Those that assume this coming year will be exactly like last year and use the same strategies will probably be disappointed. For instance a lot of people assumed toward the end of the year that because uranium stocks had gone ballistic the last year and a half that they would just continue to rise skyward forever and that free money was going to be had in the uranium sector. What actually happened, and what I warned people of, was that uranium stagnated and began to churn sideways. The easy money had already been made. So don’t expect 22 to be like 21. I doubt it will be.

Here are the rules and prizes for next years challenge.

Everyone starts with $100,000 in paper funds.

1. You must email me within a minute of making your trade so that I can confirm price. I don’t care if you actually take these trades in your portfolio. These can be paper trades. I just want real time calls.
2. Trading starts on Monday, although you don’t have to make a trade until you are ready.
3. I need price and percentage of portfolio only. (I will calculate how many shares). Only price for closing trades. (ex: XYZ stock;10% of portfolio; Price $10.50) I’m not going to be able to track stops for you. You will have to notify me if you stop out of a trade.
4. I will email confirmation by the evening of that day. If you don’t get confirmation from me send your trade again in case it got lost in the ether.
5. No penny stocks (under $5.00) are allowed. I will allow ETF’s under $5.00.
6. No options. Only leveraged ETF’s.
7. No day trading. You can stop out for a loss on the same day as entry, but you can’t take a profit on the same day. I may allow one or two exceptions to this if one happens to score a big one day gain and wants to take profits. But I’m probably going to limit each trader to 2-3 day trades over the entire 12 month challenge.
8. No more than 10 positions at any one time. I don’t have time to track 40-50 positions and you aren’t going to win the challenge by trading a huge conglomerate of positions anyway.
9. The challenge will run 12 months and end on the last day of December.
10. Entry to the challenge is free.

prizes 

1st place: $500 cash, or a free one year subscription to the SMT, winners choice.

2nd place: $250 cash or 6 months free subscription to the SMT.

3rd – 5th will receive 3 free months SMT subscription.

To register you need to email me (preferably from the email address you are going to notify trades from) Include your first and last name. (I will only post first names and last initial to the monthly leader board.) You must be registered and receive confirmation before the market opens. If you don’t receive confirmation it probably means the challenge is full.