I had entered into a year-long competition organized by the personal investing division of the Young Presidents' Organization , a global network of chief executives with over 22, members in more than countries.

The competitors used Investopedia's game simulator, and any player could observe trades in real time and we were ranked daily. My investment returns were so fantastic that even my wife asked me why our own portfolio didn't look that good. The fact is that I would never do what I did with real money.

Because it was fantasy money I took on a fantastically outsized amount of risk.

My first big win came from JC Penney JCP stock and options I bought going into the February and May quarterly earnings. The consensus at that time was that the company was going bankrupt.

But the stock more than doubled by midyear. But these represent just a handful of my investments. I was a very active trader. During the year, I completed 2, stock and option trades, averaging about 11 per day.

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Female investors often beat men. I'm not going to claim I'm a genius.

But I can certainly attribute my successful strategy to lessons I learnt from stock picking champion Marty Schwartz. I learnt at the feet of Schwartz, who received national attention when he won the Stanford University U. Investing Championship in He is the author of "Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Day Trader.

Marty worked harder than anyone I ever met. His golden rule was "Before taking a position, always know the amount you are willing to lose. My best source of ideas is Tiger 21, a peer-to-peer learning group for ultra-high net worth individuals. Founded in New York in , it is now in 17 cities. The members come from virtually every segment of the economy and meet monthly to focus on how to make better investment decisions, chose worthy charities and raise socially responsible children.

How to retire rich. From my conversation with peers, is turning out to be a volatile year. The stock market is overvalued, the Fed is threatening to raise interest rates and the global economy remains weak. As I said, I won't advise people to go crazy with their investing techniques like I could using fantasy money.

But if I'm right and the market does have a large correction this year, I would buy these three stocks which I would hold for the long term. It's far cheaper than fellow growth companies like Bristol-Myers, which trades at nearly 34 times next year's earnings, despite the fact that Gilead is expected to grow several times faster than Bristol-Myers. It's also cheaper than large companies like Pfizer.

It's generating a ton of cash that it's using to buy back stock and to pay shareholders a dividend. Southwest Airlines is particularly poised to reward shareholders with strong returns in the upcoming year.

The collapse in oil prices is putting cash in people's wallets. Just consider that in December , new car, truck, and SUV sales topped 1.

Free Stock Market Game, Create Your Own Contest

A way to play this trend, is to own CarMax, which is the biggest seller of used cars in the U. Start your day right with the latest news driving global markets, from major stock movers and key economic headlines to important events on the calendar.

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