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I’m really trying to understand the rankings with the CNBC Portfolio Challenge. As of today, Nancy Beaumont, although not in the top 10, but she has taken over 11 spots in the game. You can see it in this picture below. Now, “Nancy” has either multiple accounts & is rigging the game with her own multiple account endeavors or, there is something really screwed up with CNBC’s ranking & tracking tool. I need to find out becasue I’m curious. So far, there are 237,000 people registered for the challenge.
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I saw this as well and was quite upset however I read the rules and no where does it say only one account per person. If we were all crooks we could have done the same. Also I had exteam problems with their server not responding or erros. I just about gave up! If Nancy and who know else only had one account like may be I would be more than just in the top 28%. Now for the BIG SHOCK! I just logged in to the Challenge site and ALL OF MY TRADES AND PORTFOLIO IS $0.00 ??? I THINK CNBC IS HAVING A BIG PROBLEM! I bet they end up in a court if they dont get a handle on this.
Thomss, yes, I had all my trades & portfolio at $0.00 too. This is either a major technical glitch or that they are tabulating everyones trades for the day. Also, I was having problems making trades, especially during the opening bell. Yeah, I’m wondering if it’s true though, that Nancy has multiple accounts.
Yea, we could all open a thousand accounts and buy a different stock in each one.
I agree with you. I think it is manipulation of the contest by entering your name many times with multiple emails. I sent a message to CNBC about this, maybe all of you should do the same and our rankings will move up. This was designed to be a fair contest. Also, this is an unusual contest in that you can’t make your trades during the same day. The trade you make on Monday will be processed on Tuesday… and you won’t be able to sell this trade until after 4pm on Tuesday. It is quite interesting.. as I am in the top 1%. Of course there are 2500 people ahead of me, but how many of them are Nancy Beaumont?? I guess she won the first week, seeing that she was #1, #2, and # 3 along with about 8 more of the top 25 spots!
She’s clearly in violation of the Rules and Dylan Radigan even said so two days ago. The Rules forbid “cheating” and “exploiting”. When you have 25 lottery tickets and everyone else has 1, your odds increase exponentially. It’s basic arithmetic.
However, even after Dylan said she had violated the spirit of the Rules if not to the letter, this Cheat, Nancy Beaumont, still has 10 of her 25 or more accounts in the Top 10. He suggested that CNBC would be checking IP addresses, but nothing seems to have been done.
I’m currently ranked 174 with one account. I can only wonder where I’d be if all the multiple account holders were weeded out.
I left a Complaint at CNBC 201-735-2622. Press “O” for Operator and ask to register a Complaint. You might also want to suggest, as did I, that GE/CNBC purchase some more bandwidth so the site doesn’t crash all day, and hire some more staff so that the Bonus Points are awarded by 8:30 a.m. instead of two-days later.
Buchanan: Congrats on being Top 1% of the contest. What strategy or methods have you been using? Also, can you provide any advice or info?
Dave: Congrats on being ranking # 174. That’s outstanding. Would love to hear more about what have you done to get to that rank. Yes, I agree with you about the bandwidth issue. Right before opening bell, I get error messages & you can’t even log into the site. I spent more time looking at that, then preparing for research.
I’m not the skilled portfolio manager that most of you are but I worked extremely hard to reach the top 9%. I have little chance of winning a prize but the markets are always interesting and I’ve really enjoyed taking part in this even though basing trades on closing prices is so unrealistic. I wish all of you the best of luck.
I also agree that the network underestimated their bandwidth/equipment needs and the lag is as aggravating as the inaccurate data displayed. I somehow haven’t received credit for Monday or Tuesday’s trivia answers but I paid too little attention to the points listed to pinpoint on which day it happened. I felt a little silly emailing that complaint but even if my points aren’t corrected, the feedback may validate the complaints of others who have experienced the same thing. Personally, I think the whole “bonus bucks” offering was a mistake, particularly offering money for referrals.
As someone else pointed out, fair is fair, and Ms. Beaumont should have to rely on her own trading skills, just as we all have, to achieve her rank. I find it difficult to believe she has no genuine abilities as she’s ranked so consistently high for most of the week. I’m of the mind that all but her first account registered should be disqualified and removed so everyone’s true rank would be displayed. I missed Radigan’s comments regarding Ms. Beaumont’s activities but I’m pleased to hear that someone is looking into it. My letter to CNBC will most likely be discarded.
Wow #174 thats killer, I am at #292, up 24.7%. I am trying to focus on stocks that the street likes (if the big guys dont like the company the price doesnt seem to drive up as much as needed) and find a catalyst to drive up the price. good luck to all …PARLAY!!!
Hey guys,
Thanks for letting me participate on the site. The one trade that catipulted me was FMT (Fremont General), one of the subprime lenders, which was up 25% two days after its big gap down. I bought it at $6.78 on Tuesday just before 4:00 p.m. and sold it on Wednesday at 4:00 p.m at $8.53. I had my entire account invested in it after making 1.5% the first day on ASML.
I played FMT for a bounce for a few reasons. First, my visceral reaction was to check to see which of the questionable subprimes had been around the longest and had a relatively large market capitalization. My instinct told me that those companies were the most likely to survive and have recoveries in their stock prices after the whole group got slaughtered on Monday. Fremont had been around longer than NEW and I believe it had a larger market cap. I then ran a few algorithms that I’ve been working on for the last few years to determine the likelihood that it would, in fact, bounce. It passed the test. This was also consistent with the likelihood that it would fill, at least, the last gap down at some point. I didn’t expect it to happen in one day, but when it did, I dumped it thinking it might come back down and test those lows again. I wasn’t going to look a 25% gift horse in the mouth because I knew that this trade was going to dramatically improve my odds of being competitive. What also happened that day were news reports that Fremont intended to get out of the subprime business and had 5 possible suitors. My instinct told me that after filling that gap, some news would be released saying that nothing was set in stone with those suitors and the stock would start to slip back a bit. They made that exact announcement the next day, the stock slipped, and now I’m not particularly comfortable with any of the subprimes. As you can see, for instance, the most highly traded stock in the contest is NEW, the most questionable of all of the subprimes, and people got hammered in it. Anyone who tried to bottom feed on NEW is basically out of the contest now because their accounts are severely drawn down. They’d have to win one of the weekly contests to get in to the finals.
Anyway, after the FMT trade I went from 54,645 to 190. I then bought PGNX and made around 1.3% or so. I didn’t make any trades on Friday and am in cash right now.
If they give me my $3,000 in Bonus Bucks from Friday, the portfolio will start the week at a $1,300,450, up a little over 30%. They apparently are having trouble awarding the Bonus Bucks by 8:30 a.m. as they say in the Rules.
I’m running my algorithms now looking for some candidates next week. I have to say, though, that I’ve been a little demoralized by the out and out scam that Nancy Beaumont and others are trying to pull. Actually, it’s not so much the scam as it is CNBC’s failure to address it (as Dylan Radigan said they would on-air Thursday). He suggested that they were going to check IP addresses etc. They need to kick the cheats out of the game. There is NO AMBIGUITY IN THE RULES yet Nancy Beaumont still has 10 of her gazillion accounts in the Top 25.
The Rules clearly state that each “participant” gets 1,000,000 and 50 trade orders per day–not $17,000,000 and 850 trades which she has been getting. The statistical probability of her winning the contest are exponentially increased because she can put one egg in 17 baskets and can be wrong 16 times and still be the winner. We get one shot. It’s a disgrace that CNBC hasn’t remedied this yet. In fact, as I check now, she’s still in the Top 3 places and 11 of her accounts are in the Top 25.
If I was running 17 accounts, or any of you were, we could all just put one earnings play in each account and would be guaranteed to have the one big winner each day in one of our accounts.
And, yes, for God’s sake, increase the bandwidth already. How could the largest company in the world, GE, and it’s subsidiary, not have enough bandwith or staff to keep the site from crashing and from weeding out the Nancy Beaumont’s of the world. Positively pitiful.
Dave
It took me 2 days to figure out how to play this contest, I went from 200,000 to 4,000 in 2 days…..I slap myself for losing those first couple of days. I was investing as if this were my 1 million.
CNBC needs to raise the market cap and make trading more responsive….Now, that would be a contest. This game is more like Lotto than it is about investing.
MEMO TO GE: Don’t hype and promote a contest if you are not prepared. Last year’s 170,000 contestants did not crash the system. So the geniuses at CNBC figures, “LET’S HYPE IT HARDER!”….not a smart move.
The Nancy Beaumont issue: Nancy wins either way folks, she has found a “loophole”….amazing how some people go through life searching for shortcuts. Didn’t last year winner invest in a company that was conducting a Ponzi Scheme?
GOOD LUCK TO ALL!…even the cheaters…Remember,
—”If you are not cheating, You’re not trying”
Quick Question, guys. How do you know what your exact rank is on the game? I tried every which way, but i cannot see anything more than the leadership board and the percentage at which i stand. Can i get some help here?
Thanks..
After you have logged into the game.There is a box called snapshot, your position and % ranking is in the top left
Link to my thoughts on this contest below, and the intro. As for this Nancy Beaumont thing, I don’t know if it’s admirable she’s figured a way to trick the system and gain thereby, or despicable that she’s doing what most of us would look at as cheating. Let’s admit that the fault lies mainly with CNBC for running a contest which can be scammed in such a manner. Probably everyone has realized they could run at least 4 other bogus accts and use those to trick the correct answers for the bonus questions, which is another failing of this contest having such bonus in the first place. Isn’t this a stock “trading” contest?! Then let it be that and use some other means to have people make additional page hits on your site. As for later entries into the contest, what about those who might enter early, then see the markets take a big correction, and others jump in afterwards with a fresh million to start and be ahead of many of those who suffered through such market correction? This Nancy Beaumont tactic tells everyone with half a brain or more in such a severe market correction scenario to dump the account they have if it’s below a million and start all over again and play the market bounce and maybe win a weekly contest in a couple days instead of the whole week. CNBC needs more control on this if they want to really have people consider it a trading contest and not just some CNBC promotional night mare.
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At my blog;
I signed up. Got in late. For some reason I didn’t even notice the contest till it had already started. So, tuesday afternoon I entered and put in what I thought would be my first buys for Wednesday. OH no, that was NOT to be. Turns out if you enter your buys AFTER 4pm they don’t count till the day after tomorrow. BUMMER. What that meant was I ended up not having ANY trading be counted till Thursday. I also made sure to enter my sells and buys before 4pm, which unfortunately interferes with my actual daytrading during those important final two hours.
For the first week, even with only 2 trading days registered and being ineligible for that week’s $10,000 prize due to late entry, I still ended up in the top 13% so far. Do you realize how bad that means some other people are doing on it, lol?!
Basically the CNBC Million Dollar challenge started Friday this past week. You had to……(more at link) http://marketbash.com/forum/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=233
I am falling in love with this Nancy Beaumont, why?….Heck, CNBC appears to see nothing wrong with her numerous accounts. Joe Kernan seems to treat it all as a joke.
I shall dub thee, “CNBC’S MILLION DOLLAR JOKE”
Nancy pulled a sweet move by going all in on a Chinese Supermarket chain….DAIEI (DAIEY) an ADR on the nasdaq….I can’t even find a market cap on this company.
Old Nancy did, she was so confident that she went all in….YOU GOT TO LOVE IT!
Now, Ms. Beaumont, did you have any insider information on that?
Wow. Thanks for all the comments everyone. This is fantastic. Look for more posts regarding Tycoons Quest & what’s happening with the CNBC Challenge. It’s going to be an eventful week. Congrats to all of you who are up around the Top 1 thru 20 % in the rankings!
The latest on Nancy - 9 out of the first 17 places. Hits a takeover on Daiei - now that’s trading. Hmmm….
I told CNBC this weekend that they have a huge PR problem here. No response, but I am sure they are inundated.
I doubt that the WSJ will write it up, since they are a CNBC partner, but this is a fun story!
Did Nancy refer herself thousands of times as well? The bonus for referrals is a bunch of crap. So are the bonus bucks for trivia. It should be based on trading.
I went from 187,700 on the first day since I didn’t do any referrals to 15,000 on the nose (top 6%). That is only up 52K. Not bad for a dividend investor.
Bought CHL Friday, so today looks good so far.
I also complained three times for three days out of five last week that my portfolio DISAPPEARED. I could not buy nor sell. It seemed to lockup after I answered bonus questions (after giving me the messsage that I answered them correctly)! Then they did not give me credit for answering the bonus trivia questions plus this GEEK Nancy Beaumon (if that is her real name) has hundreds of accounts (just varified on air at CNBC who thinks she is cleaver and blesses her endeavors). Only in America!
Here is a copy of the last and final complaint I sent to CNBC:
So since CNBC blesses this sort of crap, I suppose you would bless say “Judy Gold” if she opened numerous accounts. How cleaver it would be for her to go to that extreme to beat out fellow celebrities??? Does she use all her star friends’ computers, so as to have different IPO addresses? Does she send multiple e-mails to tell all her co-erts in this scheme to place down different bets? CNBC has no ethnics and is trying to make it sound okay to do this. READ THE RULES! That’s their answer. I have read the rules and it certainly sounded pretty clear to me that you would be given ONE portfolio to trade with. (Probably written by some attorney who can be very cleaver with words and some other MORE cleaver attorney just may come along to challenge not only the validity of this contestant, Nancy Beaumont, but the down time that numerous other contestant’s have had blocking them from trading or even giving them credit for their trivia bonus points)! Just key in the words Nancy Beaumont on any search engine and read the hate mail. So if you think that this has gotten your ratings up temporarily, maybe, but for the long haul, people will be talking about this crooked event for years to come. It will be interesting to see how many bozos enter any other contest you ever hold in the future!!!
I just heard from a friend that Nancy Beaumont has over 800 accounts….so she has been trading with 800,000,000.00?
Not to worry folks, GE is all over this….they are taking it slowly either because they plan to disqualify Beaumont, or, they don’t want to be sued….I believe Old Nancy has found a loophole.
800 accounts?, that can not be correct….imagine the referral points alone…Nancy must be sick and shut it to register that many times.
Sick, that seems to be the appropriate term that applies.
Has anyone notice that Week 1 winner has not been hyped that much today?
Hi,
Nancy Beaumont has 803 portfolios in the challenge!!! What a cheat.
Official word:
Why is there the same name on the leader board multiple times? (Do we allow multiple entries?)
The CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge allows for multiple entries into the Contest.
Regards,
Navya Goud
NBC Customer Care
So strat signing up!
However the site says that each aprticipant must start with A portfolio=1 portfolio….why don’t we give Nancy a call and tell her how frustrated we are:
Nancy Beaumont (661) 296-6728 23544 Clearidge Dr,Valencia, CA 91354
OFFICIAL WORD FROM CNBC:
The CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge allows for multiple entries into the Contest.
Regards,
Navya Goud
NBC Customer Care
and: The new blog confirms it as if you expected it all along. Hah!
and:
Even worse, Maria just mentioned Beaumont as a trader with an interesting strategy - “…(she goes all in with 803 accounts)” - putting the official imprimatur on this strategy.
IMHO CNBC got caught with pants firmly down on this. The rules state several times “a” portfolio, and each participant will get 1,000,000. Those are pretty concrete. The article “a” indicates one. Only one portfolio should be allowed as 99.9% of participants were led to believe. Had we known otherwise, we’d have played the game differently.
But NBC has obviously had legal go over it again and decided to allow the multiple entries. (Probably a different lawyer than the one who wrote the original rules and got them into this mess. ; >, that guy’s most likely out of work today.
And, yes, they need more pipe. You can’t play if you can’t get through and from this and other boards it seems that many (including myself) have actually “lost” their entire portfolio for part or all of a day.
Good marketing gone bad.
So say TraderJack
So, Nancy Beaumont’s 800 account clearly violates the spirit of the game. But how exactly should CNBC identify duplicate accounts. Their registration did not require any unique identifier other than the email address, which is hardly difficult to get. I could legitimately imagine a few “John Smith” in the top 10, but each being a different person. Going the IP route won’t fly with the larger ISP.
About all I can imagine is the phone number contact. Require everyone to submit a phone number well before the end of the contest. Then, whomever wins will get a phone call. If the call fails or reaches a different person, throw out that portfolio. Force the Nancy Beaumont’s to purchase a hundred different phones. While not impossible, it will raise the barrier for easy cheats.
A complaint to OptionsExpress might do more good than complaining to CNBC. They are the sponsor and expected GOOD PR from this, not the reverse. goto:
http://www.optionsxpress.com/cust_service.asp?pageid=home
and register your displeasure
TraderJack
CNBC - Cheating Nancy Beaumont Channel!
Now I am really upset, I got that stupid Customer Care email from the “Cheating Nancy Beaumont Channel’s” MILLION DOLLAR JOKE CONTEST.
Old Nancy did indeed find a Loophole as I suspected, so if cheating is your passion, “BE LIKE NANCY”.
But, that’s not the only reason I’m upset, I have manage to go from 200,000th to 1,000th in 3 days of trading, thanks to KRY and FMT.
The 2 days I spent trading GOOG and GS, when I should have gone with SYPE….AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
Cheating Nancy with her 800 accounts is keeping me from my destiny.
YOU B*TCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CNBC also can’t get the trive answer correct.
Shanghai is up 6 SIX straight days.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=000001.SS
Then add today, 3/13 to your results.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=210705746
apparantly Maria B. thinks the Nancy Beaumont strategy rocks!! I cannot believe this! Let me know where to sign up for the class action suit against this contest.
CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenege
I have noticed a problem with buying and selling during weekends. If you place an order on weekends (Sat or Sun), the order will get executed only on Tuesday instead of Monday. Did any of you have this problem?
As a result, I was on the loosing side. My order to buy Jo-Ann store did not happen on Monday. Jo-Ann stores went up around 12% today.
This is the second time I am having the same problem. Response from customer service was disappointing with the generic message they sent to everyone. Shame on them!
Does anyone noticed this issue?
thank you for the information, above. consequently, i just wrote to, both, cnbc and options express, recommending a public response, in order to level the playing field, requesting that either the rules regarding multiple e-mail accounts be clarified or Nancy be immediately disqualified. we shall see if either properly responds. meanwhile, given the response from cnbc, above, it appears to be anybody’s game…
fyi… i am within the top 3% with bxp straight across the board. bxp is the heavyweight of trowe’s real estate fund because it owns times square and multiple key office real estate within only the largest american cities and is a relatively excellent performer within my real stock portfolio. i contacted cnbc about the days of 0% and they said that it was due to overload, yet, did not effect our accounts, in any way. i agree that that cnbc’s shanghai answer was troubling …thank you for the implicit advice to analyze their questions and news articles more critically. see you in hyperdrive…
Does anyone has problem seeing their rank on this Friday/Saturday? My rank remained the same even though there are changes in my portfolio value. This looks strange. So, it could be that they did not update the rankings.
Please post if you also faced the same problem.
Actually, my rank is questionable too. I only gained 1% on the week but I haven’t dropped from the top 7%-8%. The portfolio is up 5.19% overall and I’m always number 20,000whatever. I can’t sort out why it’s not ranked considerably lower after this week.
Also, I should point out that since Team Beaumont affected the rules, I started several other portfolios Monday, one of which gained 7.39%. It’s value is obviously higher than my original yet its rank is only in the top 17% and it’s number 39,580. Most of the others have tanked or gained 1%-3%.
Two of the three contestants now in the finals are multiple account cheaters. Ryan Stackman was on weekly leader board with 2 accounts last week. Who knows how many accounts he needed to get there. What a public relations nightmare for CNBC and Options Express. Make 400,000 honest customers angry and reward a handful of cheaters. Disgraceful.