486G!

While flipping through the channels on evening, I quickly flashed by the business network, and for some unknown reason I was instantly reminded of an activity my grade 12 business class had done. In our class we had each created our own stock portfolios on the Globe and Mail’s GlobeInvestor to observe the effects of the recession and to gain some insight on what to keep an eye out for when deciding whether to invest in a company or not.

Well, as the year progressed, we as a class monitored our own portfolios through the familiar ups and downs of 2008 and 2009. And to this day I check up on them, for example since inception, my portfolio is up 17% today. However promising that sounds, one girl in my grade 12 business class outperformed me , and the entire class, without so much as looking at any of her companies information.

This friend of mine simply did what many of us do daily. She asked Google. I believe the exact search words were “Promising Stocks.” Her query provided a number of investment advisors blogging on their top stock picks and she simply scanned the ranks searching for an overlap of advice; a stock which had been recommended by at least 2 advisors.

One of her results was a penny stock, distributed by a mining company under the name of Celtic Minerals. Now many of us have seen internet get-rich-fast pop up ads claiming investment advice and promising penny stocks which guarantee 200%,300%, or even 400%, returns on investment, all for absolutely free, the only condition being giving your credit card number so these advisors could promptly commit credit card fraud and steal your money. Well instead of 200%,300%, or even 400%, Celtic Minerals managed to provide a generous return of…. 750%!!!

Now that you have multiplied your investment by 7 and a half, you should go fire your stock broker, buy a nice desk chair and scan Google for investment advice. But then  again… Celtic minerals could have been a one in a million opportunity only exploitable with proper timing.

This is the purpose of my experiment.

A week ago, I mock invested $200,000 in 20 different companies, all recommended by Google’s finest. My goals:1.) discover if stock brokers are a waste of money, 2.) if it’s viable to live off Google’s advice for a living, and 3.) see just how much luck this girl really has.

So far, in 10 days it has returned a remarkable -2.4% on my investments. However, only time will tell whether or not the Celtic Minerals event is repeatable.

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