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Play portfolio manager at fantasy investing site

By Darla Mercado

September 17, 2007 3:14 pm ET

Amateurs looking for a place to play portfolio manager and take risky bets without going broke can check out TheUpDown.com, a fantasy-investing website.

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Georg Ludviksson and Michael Reich, students at the Harvard Business School in Boston, and Phuc Truong, a graduate of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., have launched the networking site, which allows members to create and manage a $1 million virtual portfolio that responds to the real market’s movements.

Managing an all-star portfolio here won’t make you millions, but you can earn cash prizes: Neurodoc, the site’s top “manager,” has won $200 for his portfolio’s performance. Although his profile indicates that he trades “only on instinct and emotion,” his portfolio has produced a 70% return in the past two months.

Analysts-in-training can also earn some cash for thoughtful stock analyses. And community members can rate them.

But the founders are also taking note of smart stock picks. Mr. Reich, chief executive of The UpDown Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., said he and his colleagues hope to launch an investment fund that will rely on the users’ input.

Using a quantitative model, they will scan the site’s data to find out who has made the most reliable picks and how they have performed on the site.

“The philosophy is that if we have thousands of users on our site, we can analyze their trading data and get what they think the best stocks are to own or short,” Mr. Reich said. “Our members would become our fund managers.”

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