hey everyone... i'm currently going back to school for financial planning and hoping to get a job in the financial industry when i graduate. i've heard that it's a good idea to set up a fake trading account to demonstrate your ability to construct a portfolio and ability to day trade.

my plan is to set up a few different accounts... one for a conservative approach, one for an aggressive approach, one for a speculative approach... and one for day trading.

i'm going to start the accounts this weekend and e-mail them to my professor just so that he can verify that i'm only using these accounts rather than starting 50 different accounts and then cherry picking the best performers. so this will give me some sort of track record of investing that i hope will be profitable.

so ideally, i want these portfolios to be "public" in the sense that i want my professor to be able to check and monitor the portfolios without entering my username and password.

i'm Canadian btw, so these portfolios are designed for Canadians.

here's what i'm thinking my allocation will be for the moment:

conservative

30% canadian cash
40% foreign currency
20% gold
5% agriculture
5% equities


aggressive

20% canadian cash
20% foreign currency
20% gold
10% silver
10% agriculture
20% short equities


speculative

10% gold
10% silver
10% oil
10% Canadian cash
20% foreign currency
10% short nasdaq
5% short russell 2000
15% short canaidan financials/canadian homebuilders
10% short junk bonds

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my reasoning for these investment allocations are as follows:

conservative: the stock markets and bond markets are very overpriced and should be avoided. the global economy is not recovering and is likely headed towards another downturn. now is the time for safety to protect the wealth you have and try to keep losses to a minimum. therefore, you should hold mostly cash. since i think that the canadian economy is in particular trouble with the collapse of our housing bubble approaching and demand for our commodities falling... i recommend a lot of foreign currencies (US dollars, + lots of Asian currencies). however, since an all cash portfolio can be dangerous in a fiat currency world with central bankers running the printing presses and bankrupt governments, the gold and agriculture should provide a good hedge against inflation and currency devaluation. the small equities portion will likely consist of stocks in China for the long term growth potential. as asset prices come down, the large cash position can be used to purchase additional equities and commodities in the future at more reasonable valuations.

aggressive: still holding 40% cash for safety + the 20% in gold... which should provide a lot of safety. silver and agriculture are more speculative investments but i feel that the prices for these commodities are still relatively low and the fundamentals for both look good going forward despite the fact that there is significant downside risk in the event of an asset price deflation. since i expect the markets to come down, the 20% short position should provide some capital gains and mitigate the potential losses that gold, silver and agriculture would experience in another 2008 style market sell-off.

speculative: this is basically a bet that the stock market is going to fall and that the Canadian real-estate bubble is going to pop and junk bonds will not be repaid. oil is a bet on the middle east going up in flames. it's always good to hold real money (gold & silver) which will hopefully be safe haven assets. the gold, silver and oil are sort of balancing the short positions... because i think if there isn't a crash and asset prices continue to appreciate, i expect gold, silver and oil to go up more than the stock markets will. but this allocation is designed to make money as things come crashing down.

anyways... that's the basic idea.... thoughts? ideas? suggestions?

i'm obviously going to write everything up properly and choose which specific securities to purchase. for example, the chinese equities, i might as well buy Peter Schiff's china fund. use the merc currency funds for foreign currency. gold and silver will be a combination of physical and maybe use Sprott's physical funds. agriculture, i'd use Jim Roger's commodity ETF/ETN. plus use ETFs to short equities which limit the downside risk (since traditional shorting can expose you to potentially unlimited losses).