Trading Simulation Report

The project should include the following parts:

(1) Cover page. Show your name and account name.

(2) Trading overview: A brief introduction with a graph/chart clearly showing your profit/loss starting from the beginning to the end of the game period.

(3) Trading goals: A brief introduction of your goal(s) for the trading. If your goal(s) changes as the game progresses, state how and why it changes.

(4) Trading strategy: A full analysis showing how you construct your initial strategy, including your analysis on the underlying stock, ETF and option, and reasonable projection.

(5) Trades analysis: A full report showing what happens on your profit/loss, how and why you change your trading strategy as the game progresses.

(6) Biggest winner and loser: Rank the performance of all the assets in your portfolio from the best to the worst. Identify the assets performing the best and the worst. Provide the reasons why you include them in your portfolio initially. Comment on their performance and provide the reasons why they become the biggest winner/loser.

(7) Trading conclusions. Based on the entire trading experience, state what general factors lead to your profit/loss, the appropriateness of trading strategy and change, and the lesson you learn for investments.

(8) Appendix. Attach a table showing your weekly profits and losses, any calculations supporting trading strategies you used, graphical depictions of your portfolio positions, data and information resources, etc.

The results of the trading should be written up in a formal report that does not exceed 10 pages of double-spaced 12 pt Times New Roman text (not including cover page or appendix). Set margins to 1’’ for top, bottom, left, and right. However, keep appendix to a reasonable length.

There is no standard format for your report. And this is no standard strategy for your trading. Different strategies root from different beliefs which are always welcome and respected in finance area. The focus of the report should be detailed description/explanation on how you move from your belief to the actual actions, based on what you have learned from common sense, finance classes, classes of other disciplines if necessary. The reasoning can be sophisticated, or simple, it does not matter. But is has to be reasonable and supported by what you have learned, not just a description of your personal feeling. As you review what you have done during this period, it is also important to figure out the reason you are gaining money or losing money, how the market moves within or beyond your expectation, what you have done right and what you have missed while considering a stock’s value. Try to avoid statements like the following:

“I lost a lot of money from XXX stock as previously I thought it was a good investment but it turned out that the price decreased significantly.”

Try to dig more what cause this decrease – macroeconomic wise, industry wise, firm wise, and other possible factors you might have missed when you made the decision previously.

What I will look for from a good report is listed below:

Even though the report should be shorter than 10 pages, it does not mean that a report of 3-5 pages would be OK. Make good use of the 10 pages and fill it with as many details/explanations as possible. A short report will never be able to hold enough information for so many required parts.
Especially for the parts that require complete analysis, give detailed descriptions and explanations to show your thoughts and reasoning for your trades. They need to be relatively deep and reflect what you have learned from your finance courses.
Make your report well structured. Make it clear to find all the parts required instead of putting everything together in several big paragraphs without subtitles.