Once again, CNBC is running their Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. Once again, I am entering, with the intention of doing very little.

The rules this year are a little different… only 5 portfolios per person, and you can’t buy more than 25% of a given portfolio in a single stock / ETF. Oh, and they’re getting advertising money from starting to offer 10% of your portfolio in a Forex account.

Trading opened on Monday, and end-of-day purchases are all that is allowed.

I’m setting up 5 portfolios for fun:

  • Shiny – Gold stocks
    • Unfortunately, many of my favorite “moon-shot” stocks didn’t have sufficient market cap to be included in the trading game.
  • Important – giant companies that should fare the best in a contracting market
  • Dividend – some natural gas and oil trusts with high yields (despite the fact that dividends aren’t included in trading returns)
  • BDC – Business development companies
  • ou812 – the most popular of the last bull market — AAPL, AMZN, EBAY, GOOG, and BIDU

Each portfolio has an arbitrary (and silly) name… only to identify them to me. Also, I’ve decided not to use the Forex account for now, but may hop in with some long-term trend following system at a later point (if I have the energy).

After one day of trading, my best performer is in the top 4.4% (16,000th place) — the Important portfolio with a 2% gain.

We’ll see if my strategic buy and hold portfolios continue to do so well after more than one day…