FWF contests

FWF contests are typically annual events that take place on the (FWF) where members take educated guesses, throw darts, consult their crystal ball or use their Ouija board to forecast how the current year will end.

This article serves to both capture the results but also draw some conclusions on the futility of predicting the future.

Contests
There are two long standing contests, a predictions contest and a hedge fund contest. The Hedge fund contest was last contested in 2017.

Predictions contest overview
Guesses or forecasts for the values at year end for the following items: DOW (Dow Jones Industrial Average) ; TSX; GOLD; OIL (crude oil price); and CAD (Canadian / US Dollar exchange rate). The DOW was replaced by the S&P500 as of 2018.

Hedge fund contest overview
Members are asked to pick up to three stocks to go long and up to three to short. Equal dollar amounts are placed on each position, long or short. No trades during the year, except that you can elect at any time during normal exchange business hours to "freeze" a price for any individual position at that day's closing price, i.e. liquidate any position.

Active contests
The 2022 Predictions contest was announced on December 27, 2021 with an entry deadline of January 24 at 9:30 EST.

The standings are updated at month's end. The most recent standings are:



Takeaways from the results
There has been no clear, repeat winner in either contest. The unpredictability demonstrates the variation of year-to-year investor returns and reinforces the advantages of holding a diversified portfolio, which contains several asset classes.