We are fully aware of the portfolio performance issue that’s been plaguing our July contest. Couple things happened that caused the spikes in affected portfolios. The issue originated from a data issue from our vendor. We did not get a data feed of AIG 20:1 reverse split on July 1st until late in the morning. So, portfolios that had AIG holdings on 6/30 had a huge increase in performance all of a sudden. The huge gains (250%+) you saw on July contest leaderboard were due to this issue. Second issue is we had a bug in our batch fixing code that retroactively corrects portfolios with missed stock split transaction. After our initial correction on July 1st, we discovered the AIG split were handled twice on a number of portfolio. This explains why some users still had huge gains and some users had big loses after July 1st. We have fixed the bug and have been auditing and fixing each affected portfolio manually. That’s why some of you may still have performance issue with your portfolio. All affected portfolios should be fixed by the end of this week. Please continue to send us email at contact@updown.com if you believe your portfolio still have performance issue. We are working diligently to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

We have just released a new commission schedule to further improve our real world trading simulation.

From now on, the commission for a trade will be calculated the following way: For trades below 1,000 shares, the commission will be $10 flat. For trades above 1,000 shares, the commission will be $10 + $0.01 for each share in excess of 1,000 shares. For example, a 1,500 share trade will incur a $15 commission (1,500 - 1,000) * $0.01 + $10 = $15.

This commission schedule is more realistic, as it makes high volume trades more expensive. In the real market, a large order would influence the stock price - this is now simulated on UpDown with a higher commission.

We’ve just released an update to UpDown.com which included a new stock ticker, an updated home page, and an overall design improvement.

The stock ticker shows the stocks in your portfolio and watch list and stocks you’ve recently checked out on UpDown. The new home page that you see before logging in has more information on the market and what’s currently happening on UpDown.

Let us know what you think.

Michael

I wanted to point out a great summer program for anyone interested in starting or advancing their Wall Street career: finance training plus a guaranteed finance internship.

First, you get to brush up your financial skills in a Three-week intensive finance training program covering accounting, consolidated financial statements modeling, mergers and acquisitions modeling, leveraged buyouts and valuation.

Then, you get to apply them in the real world during a Guaranteed four-week internship at a premier private equity or venture capital fund.

Up to 15 qualified candidates will be able to join this program this summer. UpDown members get a 5% discount.

Learn more here.

We’ve launched a significant improvement to our trading system today that makes trading on UpDown even more realistic: partial fills.

So far, all orders were executed in one batch regardless of their volume, allowing for substantial volume trades of even lower volume stocks in seconds. Now, orders will get executed based on the volume that is traded in the real stock market.

Small orders of high volume stocks (i.e. 1,000 shares of Apple (AAPL)), will still be executed immediately. However, the execution of a large order of a low volume stock will happen over time as the volume becomes available.

For more info, check out the new paragraph on partial fills in our help section.

Looking forward to your feedback!

In today’s release we have changed the UpDown navigation and have also given it a new look and feel.We’ve also released our new Education Center.

The goal of the new navigation is to make navigating the site easier and allow faster access to your portfolio. All the trading features (your portfolio, trading, the watch list, and your performance) can be found under the new navigation item “Trading“. The new “Community” section hosts information about other members, your friends, groups, and networks.

A substantial number of you have asked for more learning content. Today, we launch our Education Center which I hope will be a great resource for beginners and advanced investors. For now, it contains a glossary, an investing 101 section, and an overview of the services that different online brokers offer. You can also contribute by suggesting additional glossary terms or writing a review for your stock broker.

Let us know what you think.

We recently asked some of you to complete a survey to get feedback on the the quality of the current site, how you use UpDown, and future functionality. We got great replies thank you to everyone who completed the survey for helping us make UpDown better!

We got a lot of interest for expanding the learning aspect of UpDown. Many of you are also interested in being able to trade options and forex on UpDown. We’re already working on some of the ideas you mentioned so stay tuned …

Out of 600 completed surveys, here are the winners of the itunes $20 gift cards (you will also receive a separate email):

semille2
wlingke
Delta_5
UnVraiRobillard3
amg800
gallfera531
leo0648
Frankky
bassettb
moneyman187
GKM
skidaddy
chocomog
jkag007
Moosle
spaceball1
venutijp
kaloko
Jproductions Corp.
sstrom61
TheMush
thatmanguy
hallmarp
jmnmic27
beezr15
Poundit
scrummy
rrfrith
JackFawRealz
Jognils
clee6
kzhang
Taxicr

Thank you again to everyone who participated!

Michael

Members frequently ask for is insight into what other members are doing, including the ability to view each other’s portfolios. We’ve resisted this, becasue we want to see how each member does on their own.

But in our Facebook application we have published trading information, specifically when a member makes a buy and sell. This experiment is working well, so we’ve decided to bring it to UpDown.com.

Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to see when a friend has:

• Made a buy, including the amount
• Made a sell, including the company name and amount
• Added another friend
• Joined a contest, group or network

We’re really excited about this new feature and think it will make the site more interesting for groups of friends.

We’re about to make some improvements that we wanted you to know about.

Over the past few months we’ve added to and enhanced quite a few social features on the site, including groups, contests, networks, friends, and we’re about to make improvements to our member profiles.

These features all make the site more fun, and enable better collaboration and competition. But they work better when members can find each other.

As part of these changes, we’ve decided to require and show real names. We’re also going to show real names across the site by default. You’ll be able to turn this off with the profile settings.

UpDown.com is thrilled to announce the start of The Future Financial Analysts Contest.  No matter where you’re headed, a strong financial modeling and presentation background is crucial for your success.

UpDown members can compete to win over $4,000 in valuable financial analysis courses that can help them do better in upcoming job interviews.

These courses are taught by Wall Street professionals and focus on developing the essential skills for valuing and analyzing companies.  Check out the course descriptions here.