school entrepreneurial contest

[Aicirt]

Im a college student and have been gaining some interest in investing and have done some research on it although it has been fairly minimal. Today I recieved an email sent to all the students at my massive (1300 student /images/graemlins/tongue.gif) school informing us of an entrepreneurial contest. Basically they are going to give three students $100 and we can invest this money for 4 weeks. The original $100 and any profits will then be donated to charity. I figured this would be an excellent way to get my feet wet in investing.

I have until February 16th to submit a paragraph on how I plan to invest this $100, and then the top 3 plans will get actually get the opportunity to invest the $100 for four weeks.

Since Im an extreme novice here, I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions on what I should do here. Im open to any and all suggestions.

Thank you very much for any info you can provide.

Aicirt

[icetonez]

With $100? I would suggest .50/1 hold 'em.

[Deathbear]

Enron stock is the only option.

[Miguel__Sanchez]

What a horrible way to teach someone about investing. 4 weeks to make as much money as possible?

I'm guessing you can't short MSO or something. If you're looking to *win* the contest, you'll need to basically hit the jackpot. Find a stock with momentum (like TASR from last year) and dump your money in there. I'm guessing the winning portfolio will have at least a 200-300% increase. If you want a good starting point, try the stocks with 100% 12-month relative strength (http://tinyurl.com/65g6c [msn stock screener]) and randomly pick one. Hope that it continues its rise.

If you can buy/sell as much as you want without commission, look up which biotech stocks have FDA approval decisions coming up, buy them the day before and hope its good news. Hit 4-5 right in a row and you could double your money.

This is NOT the way you should invest, but if I needed to double $100 in the stock market, that's what I would do. Either that or gain some insider information on a company ready to report its earnings.

[snowbank]

I would not suggest investing in the stock market. Your just going to be trying to get lucky. You should easily be able to win the thing if you really wanted to. Buy things cheap and sell for more. With 4 weeks, you can do this several times. If you found a decent product and worked hard to sell it you could easily turn it into over $500. EASILY.

[EliteNinja]

Use it to bonus-whore at 0.50-1.00 limit.
Or, bet it all on black and try to double up in Roulette.

Ok, seriously:
How about buying origami paper and folding roses and selling them off at $2 a piece. The Origami club was doing this today at my university and they for sure sold at least 50 of them. Plus other Valentine's Day related stuff.

[RollaJ]

Its not even a joke, but if someone told me they had to turn 100 into 1,000 in 4 weeks, I would tell them to bonus whore online. Aside from drug dealing it is probably the easiest way to do it. If you are not signed up at most poker sites you should be able to make 1000 in under 20 hours.
Granted Id suggest a different approach if you had 6 months, but that is not the case here. And the stock market isnt close to a good idea

[midas]

Aicirt:

$100 being chump change and 4 weeks being too short a time for anything major - here is you biz plan.

You will need access to a digital camera and a color copier/printer.

The idea is to create a two calendars picking the 12 of the hottest girls and guys in your college (1300 sample size is small - at my school with 8000 it worked well).

Charge - $5 - $10 for a processing fee just to enter the running to be in the calendar. Pick the 24 finalists - produce the calendar - sell the calendar for $10.

[Aicirt]

Okay, I realize that this whole contest thing is not even close to actual investing/trading, but I thought that the fact that I get to use someone else's money would give me a good starting ground to practice investing/trading. The goal is not to make as much money that I can by any means necessary, it is to practice trading/investing. If it were any means necessary, Id be playing stud 8 online, but its not really about making money as much as it is learning about trading/investing. So I understand this seems extremely minor leauge to most of the people in this forum but I was seriously looking for some advice on what might be a good way to get an understanding of investing/trading while on someone elses tab.

Aicirt

[TGoldman]

Don't bother with the stock market. With only $100, commissions will kill any possible gain you could hope to acheive.

I think your best bet would be to use the $100 to either buy a prize or just leave it as a cash prize. Then run around campus promoting a charity raffle, selling tickets for $1 or so. If you promote it well enough, you should be able to sell enough tickets to cover the cost of the prize and make a small profit.

Another idea would be to use the $100 to buy a bunch of Krispy Kreme donuts. Setup shop in the morning on campus and sell the donuts for $1 each. KK donuts are guaranteed to sell, just make sure you manage your inventory well. Good luck!

[snowbank]

The goal is not to make as much money that I can by any means necessary, it is to practice trading/investing

I doubt the goal of the contest is to practice trading. It is an entrepreneurial contest. I'm sure their vision is students using entrepreneurial business ideas to make money, not throw $100 in stocks for a month and hope to get lucky. You've got quite a few good ideas here in this thread. Put them to work. Good luck.

[snowbank]

Here's my idea for you. Since whatever money you make will go to a charity, why not bring in a famous person, and run a charity event for them. Not only will you make the most money, but you will also help a good cause out. If you brought in a celebrity that people would like to see, you could easily charge $5-$10 at the door and get 100+ people there. If all proceeds are going to their charity, chances are they'll come for free. You can use the $100 for advertising, prizes, etc... You could do well over $1,000+ doing this, but it would take some effort on your part. Depends how bad you want to win it, and how much it's worth for you to help a charity out. You could have a charity auction with it as well, and many businesses will donate items for these, meaning you will be making money for the charity and won't have to spend any of your $100 towards the auction items.

[Warren Whitmore]

Hi,

(1)4 weeks is not investing, 4 weeks is speculating.
(2) The mean is irrelevant in this case (Think David Sklansky and "the horse race paradox here).
(3) A high standard deviantion is your friend in this case.

Therefor buy a one month contract short for the commodity item greater than 2 standard deviations above its traditional selling price (oil futures). And "hope" that it will regress to its mean in the month. This is not the best investment it is however the best speculation.

[BadBoyBenny]

If you can double $100 dollars in 4 weeks you might as well do it with your own money.

[snowbank]

If you can double $100 dollars in 4 weeks you might as well do it with your own money.

If you can only double your $100 in 4 weeks, being an entrepreneur probably isn't for you. You could double $100 the first day if you tried. I think this contest benefits charities too, so it's not all about making yourself money.

[EliteNinja]

If said course costs less than $100,
Keep the $100 and take it again next year.

[JoeC]

If Krispy Kremes are going for $1 nowadays, Dunkin Donuts are worth at least $3. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[snowbank]

,