Stock Guru: Oil explorers boost winning portfolio

By Jenny Ruth

Wednesday 7th April 2004

Oil explorers that could be described as being in the "penny dreadful" category certainly paid off for the winner of the second Sharechat Stock Guru game.

Coaster's portfolio gained more than 39%, or $3,903.61, over the course of the game, not bad on a notional $10,000 investment in less than a month.

Coaster chose New Zealand Oil and Gas, its options, its Australian offshoot Pan Pacific Petroleum and Austral Pacific Energy, which was spun out of Indo-Pacific Energy late last year, and its warrants as the five stocks in their portfolio.

NZOG has a $76.85 million market capitalisation, but Pan Pacific's is $30.9 million and Austral Pacific's is just over $34 million.

NZOG was boosted by its Pike River coal mine on the West Coast getting the green light and by the possibility its stake in a drilling venture off Taranaki may discover oil or gas. Pan Pacific also has a small stake in a current drilling project.

Indeed, all the leading portfolios featured "tiddlers," and it's only in the portfolio of fifth place-getter, Redbaron, that major stocks start to be included. In their portfolio, Telecom's 3% gain and Tower's 2.7% rise during the game pales into insignificance against NZOG's 28.3% rise, its options' 28.2% gain and Trans Tasman Properties' 20% increase.

Mind you, "tiddlers" featured such as prominently among the worst performing portfolios.

Lucky last, Stallz, lost 11.25%, or $1,125.09 through betting on Blis Technologies, down nearly 10% to a $12.8 market capitalisation, Certified Organics, down 10.9% to a $6.3 million market capitalisation, Selector Group, down 5% to a $1.55 million market capitalisation, Sealegs Corporation, down 10.7% to a $16.8 million market capitalisation and Spectrum Resources, down nearly 20% to a $3.7 million market capitalisation.

The most popular stock in the second game, The Warehouse Group, which was chosen by 95 of the 256 contestants, ended up being down just over 2% to a $1.3 billion market capitalisation.

WN, winner of the first game, did reasonably well in the second with 24th ranking out of the 256 entrants, their portfolio gaining just over 9%, or $915.47.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet