For now, at least.

What you’re looking at is a graph comparing my fictional investment portfolio (Stocktrak) with several popular composites, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Russell 2000, and the Standard & Poor’s 500, which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As an ongoing assignment in one of my courses, we used the Stock-Trak trade simulator. As you can see, I was doing fairly well, considering that my “investment strategy” consisted of the following:

That’s it.

As you can see by the dashed vertical line, February 27 was a bad day for the market. I did not fare exceptionally poorly, however, which is very fortunate. My mutual funds were “growth/emerging market” funds – Asia and Latin America. They did not take kindly to the Shanghai bust.

But then I did something really dumb, because, well, it’s not real money, and it doesn’t really matter. I bought 35 futures contracts on Gold, which accounts for the lion’s share of my deviation from market performance. The dashed blue line, “What if” represents my portfolio value if I would have refrained from making ill-informed, reactionary decisions. Probably the only reason that I made this particular move is because as students, we are able to see our performance among our classmates – that is, Stocktrak updates your position relative to your classmates on a daily basis; it’s not a competition, and your grade is not tied to your rank, but the mere presence of that information (i.e., Portfolio value and Return%) made me gamble. It appeared that quite a few people had shorted one or more of the indexes. I had not. I went from being #3 or #4 in the class, to the bottom third, overnight.

Now, I’m not a gambler. I’ll play the occasional poker game with the guys, or maybe some blackjack if the game is cheap (and I mean very cheap – like $3/hand cheap). What I had done shortly after February 27, was basically the Martingale Strategy for the Stock Market. As a result, and as should’ve been expected, I lost about $70K in a day or two. Where did the money go? If you guessed “Futures,” you’re right.

Surprisingly enough, I fared very well in my short positions – although the results are skewed by a million dollar bet on the Nikkei 225 which paid off, in my favor, to the tune of $18K. So, for the time being… I’ll leave the investing to the professionals. I don’t have the discipline to deal with it.

Later in the week, I’ll give some more specific shortcomings and errors that I probably could’ve avoided.

Well, I’m sure there was a bit more diplomacy than that. But I’d like to believe that a not-so-small part of Comerica Bank’s (NYSE: CMA) relocation decision has to do with Michigan’s unfriendly-to-business policies, including a forthcoming 2% tax on services (like banking). Yesterday morning, Michigan Governeror Jennifer Granholm had the following to say about Comerica Bank’s announcement that it would be relocating its headquarters, from Michigan, to Texas:

Leaving aside the fact that Granholm routinely and hypocritically advocates “community”-oriented policy, with negligent disregard for the economic incentives (or, usually disincentives) such policies create for businesses – most of whom are having a rough enough go in Michigan without her “help,” and leaving aside the fact that business don’t really pay taxes, they only collect them for the government, from the “community,” it is all about money and anyone who tells you otherwise is a self-identified ignoramus. Making decisions on the basis of community! FreePress writer, Tom Walsh excoriates Granholm’s pervasive ignorance of general business principles:

But think for a minute about the implication[s of not putting] shareholders first. Perhaps banks should make whopping loans to the locals at 0% interest — the community would love that — even though bank shareholders would lose everything in the inevitable bankruptcy.

Anyone who has taken “Intro to Business & Entrepreneurship” at the local community college understands that businesses are owned by, and the property of, the shareholders who have put forth their capital in order to ensure that the workers get paychecks and that the utilities and rents get paid, in the hopes that one day in the future, the “community” just might purchase enough of the business’ product to justify the investment. Business, generally, is spending a heckuva lot of money now and in the near future, and hoping to make a comparatively modest return only in the more distant future. A business venture is a gamble, albeit a calculated one. But when the business you run is losing money – or if the opportunities are greater elsewhere, you are doing a disservice to the only people in whose best interest you are ethically and legally obliged to act: the shareholders.

But the “community” may decide it has no need for your product, whatsoever, and the entire investment is lost. Or, the “community” will coldly turn its back on you when your competitor delivers a better or cheaper product. The “community” owes you nothing, and it gave you nothing. To pretend that businesses owe some debt of gratitude to such an unforgiving bitch as the “community” is, in the nicest possible light, an absolute denial of property rights, and individual sovereignty.

It is an argument extolling the virtues of bondage.