Are you there Wall Street? It’s me, Kristy.

Today is an exciting day and its not because my portfolio is up. Today is exciting because Im in New York with some of my best friends. And in a little awhile I’m going to drag them over to Wall Street. Yes, the official, the mothership, the holy grail. I’ma going. My friends are begrudgedly going, they just cant understand why Im so excited about a street and some buildings, but it’s hard to explain that when your work revolves around something on the internet that revolves around something in real life, well, you got to see it in real life. I’m going to stand outside those huge gray walls, peer up into that hot humid sun, and say “Are you there Wall Street, it’s me Kristy!”

I’m thinking on selling my VZ shares, mostly because every time I log on to WallStreetSurvivor they just look pitiful, low performing stocks (can I use that term? Is that even right?). Well the accuracy level on PredictWallStreet for VZ is pretty inaccurate but it appears the majority of people think it will close down tomorrow as well. I have to agree.

PredictWallStreet also has three forecasts today for CSCO, DIA, and SPY. Based on predictions collected CSCO is forecasted to close down tomorrow. Now the forecasts are more accurate, so in the case that I did hold CSCO, which I don’t, I would know tomorrow will be down. I’ll check back tomorrow to see if this is right.

I’m off to frolic around in New York, get lost on the subway, eat some canolis, and maybe even lose my purse. Who knows, its a day of adventure and humidity hooray! As much as I’d love to stay in my hotel and write more, well, I just cant. The city is calling my name…

The hardest part of breaking up is getting back your stuff

Returning from a sunny and patriotic Fourth of July weekend, I log on to see my portfolio is up! I’m ranked number 988 among 18,225 players. It feels really rewarding to make a few thousand bucks of money I’ll never hold. Wait. I just clicked refresh. Im now ranked 1000. This is definitely SIRI’s fault. Its as if I feel sorry for this stock performing so badly, sorry that SIRI may go bankrupt because of the FCC dragging there feet, that I want to hold on to them, and nurture them until there grown up shares, ready to make a dollar on there own. So I wont sell you SIRI, although your flirting with the edge of penny stock and are looking quite measly next to my YHOO babies.

I’ve become emotionally attached. We are no longer just friends with benefits. When you’re up, Im happy and when you’re down, I feel this pain too. It’s as if we knew each other in a past life Stocks, I never knew we could be so close so fast. I love most of you, but some of your mood swings are intolerable. You may have to go in the future but at least we wont have to separate our belongings when we break up.

Anyhoo, I use the PredictWallStreet widget to check sentiment to see whether the community is feeling either bearish, bullish or neutral about a specific security. So, AAPL last week was looking pretty bullish. While AAPL wasn’t necessarily cheap when I bought it, the stock did indeed go up this week, most likely due to the influx of teeny boppers carting there parents to the mall to buy the new 3G iPhone. While the sentiment is a good indicator of what people are feeling in the industry, I also check the star performers to see how accurate this information is. In other words, should I trust a bunch of feelings from a bunch of people online? So theres the people that are pretty bad at predicting ( the 1 stars) and then theres the experts (the 5 stars). Looks like everyone is feeling the same. The 5 star’s and the 1 star’s have all gave AAPL an up prediction and you know, it probably will close up. At the same time, if all the bad predictors were rating up, this would be my clue to make the contrarian decision that it will probably close down.

My main goal with checking sentiment is for keeping an eye on my stocks and expectations. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and find out SIRI went down and I lost a few bucks when people had been feeling bearish on SIRI for the past three weeks. I mean that would be a dumb bummer. My second goal is general knowledge ie: price, recent news, sentiment, lows/highs, etc. Cramer has been yelling at me for the past hour about some Chesapeake company who makes god knows what and I want to check out this stock. So I pull out my new 3G iPhone (Im 20 and therefore exempt from any label inferring teeny or bopper) and get on the PredictWallStreet widget and see what Cramer is blowing his cranial vein about.

So its like why should I trust this widget? Couldnt I have just bought those “Beat the Market, Guaranteed!” video cassettes on the QVC last night? The 3 easy pay installment plan was in line with my disposable income budget. The bottom line is no one can guarantee you money in the stock market ( which is why you shouldn’t take my blog as any type of financial advice) but PredictWallStreet has beat the market by about 38% in the last 24 months. I mean, that statistic is pretty impressive. Most hedge funds are lucky to even get close to that number. I like there thinking over there- if two heads are better than one, how good is a million? PredictWallStreet is consistently beating the market by harnessing the collective intelligence of people like me. They take the experts and the not so experts, eliminate the bias with patented and proprietary algorithms (sounds fancy, I know, right?) to give processed data that is not only accurate but extremely useful and all in one place (my favorite part because frankly, I don’t have time to scour the web for hours like some of these retired investors.)

Well, Stocks, I must bid you adieu for the day, but I know you will be patiently waiting for me tomorrow. ( My love IS conditional.)

Wall Street is no Monopoly

Raging Bull. Falling Knives. Something about shoes that I can’t remember. You know if Wall Street just sold a dictionary, this whole investing thing would be a lot easier. After dibbling and dabbling around on the internet (maybe a few of my textbooks, maybe not) I’ve gotten a hand on at least a few of these Wall Street catch phrases and I’m starting to see I’ve only begun my fall down the rabbit hole. It would be pretty useless to pretend that I’m even a novice investor. I’m frankly a college student who reads the financial news and just signed up for a virtual stock market. Its summer, and I have little more to do than ride my bike at the beach and watch reality television. What better time to start thinking about my bright and promising future. The real stock market is scary so I’m using an online stock market simulation to buy and trade stocks and well, see what happens. This is essentially my practice before I have that disposable income everyone keeps talking about to really invest. (Where is that? I thought it would be here by now).

The thing is, I’m really good at taking risks with money that is not mine. I’m officially kris23 over at Wall Street Survivor (www.wallstreetsurvivor.com) and I’m also using this convenient little widget over at PredictWallStreet (www.predictwallstreet.com) to assist me in some of my decision making processes. Numbers are important, company’s reports are indeed important, but I’m a big fan of sentiment and I think that a thousand heads are better than one. This widget puts it all in one place so I don’t have to open a million tabs. Overall, this simulation is ridiculous fun. Its like that time I went gambling in Reno and put five cents in a slot and payed for the rest of my vacation minus the older men in Tommy Bahama and Marlboro Reds. So this is Day 1. I bought some companies I’ve been following recently and have a strong personal affiliation with including Apple and Yahoo. I also bought some Sirius Satellite Radio ( I know, I know) along with some others. I will update as much as possible to let you know how good (or bad) things are going.