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.

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.

Congratulations to udfisher for outperforming over 6,400 top college and university students during the fall semester and winning the Fall 2008 $10,000 Student Contest!

Here are the final rankings:

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Since udfisher has now won both the October 2008 $3,000 Monthly Performance Contest and the Fall 2008 Student Contest, he has truly established himself as one of the elite investors in the entire UpDown Community. If you want to improve your investing skills, let him be your guide!

Congratulations to udfisher for winning the first Monthly Performance Contest for the entire UpDown Community! He masterfully navigated extremely volatile markets throughout the month and won $500 for his remarkable work.

Last night I caught up with our winner to learn more about him, his thoughts about UpDown and the new payout system, and his strategy for making money in today’s markets. Here’s what he said:

“I am a relatively new investor, only following the markets closely since joining Updown in September.  I enjoy challenges, and with the markets starting to collapse in September, I decided to challenge myself to beat the markets.  Being a student, I don’t have spare money to put into the markets for real, which is why Updown offers such an outstanding opportunity to learn some skills that I can employ once I graduate, and am able to set aside some money to put into the market.  I’m setting myself up with the challenge to continue to outperform the markets, and continue developing my market instincts.

“I am a short term value trader, typically holding stocks that I like for a few days, until they appear to have yielded what they are going to for the time being.  In October, I enjoyed big returns from stocks like General Growth Properties (GGP), AIG (in the early part of the month), and as the month ended, Las Vegas Sands (LVS) and MGM Mirage (MGM).

As far as my performance in relation to the others on Updown, I am proud of the fact that so many were able to outperform the markets.  I was impressed by the fact that all of the top 20 contestants in October beat the markets by 75%, or more.  I am humbled to lead such an impressive pack of investors for the month.

On the new payout system, I think in many ways, it is better than the previous method.  I still think it should be a little more balanced, because people who beat the market by 40%, like my brother, only get a fraction of what people who beat it by 75% get, even though both are incredible performances, and should both be rewarded.

Finally, I’d like to congratulate everyone on an outstanding October, and wish everyone a successful November!”

-Bryan “udfisher” Fisher

Our real-money payout system has been very unclear and very confusing to many UpDown members. First and foremost, sorry about that. Second, we now have what we believe is a very clear and very straightforward way to show you exactly how much real money you will earn each month on UpDown.

If you visit the Contests tab, you’ll see that you have been automatically entered into the October 2008 $3,000 Monthly Performance Contest. For the month of October, you will be paid according to the amount, ranging from $500 to $0.01, that matches your ranking in this contest. We will repeat this process every month so you always know exactly where you stand and exactly how much money you will earn at the end of the month.

Don’t worry, long term investors! In January we will launch a year-long performance contest (and possibly quarterly performance contests too) that will not put you at a disadvantage and will have payouts much larger than those in the monthly performance contests. Our main goal right now is to finally make crystal clear the amount of real money that each member will earn each month.

What do you think? Please let us know!

Brendan
UpDown Team
brendan@updown.com

Congratulations to 007wall-street, the winner of The UpDown Official Q3 Contest!

Since the contest was open to the entire UpDown Community, 007wall-street truly showed off his investing prowess by becoming the Q3 Champion. He beat the second place finisher by over 400%!

007wall-street has been a top investor on UpDown.com since the we launched the site on CNBC in September of 2007. He has offered many insightful stock tips to other members and put together a tremendously successful investing strategy. We would like to personally thank him for taking on such a great leadership role since the very beginning. Congratulations again from the entire UpDown Team!

What a day to start the contest! As dark as today was for Wall Street, there were many great investors who still found a way to make a lot of money. Here are the students who best navigated this stormy day:

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e are launching the Official UpDown 3rd-Quarter 2008 Contest for everyone in the UpDown Community. That’s right; this contest is open to every investor on UpDown, not just students. Of course, we are still running our Summer 2008 $10,000 Student Contest as well.

Everyone has a chance to win real money and an original UpDown t-shirt from today, July 2nd, through Tuesday, September 30th.

We are happy to provide every member in the UpDown Community with the opportunity to compete in an Official UpDown Contest and to win a lot of real money!

Good luck!

The UpDown Team