On July 1st of this year, ten individuals and I kicked off a very unique investing experiment that will last 12 months. Using $10,000 of real money, I allocated $1,000 to each participant to invest how they saw fit. We’ll see who does best (and ask why) after 12 months pass. Although it costs nothing to participate, to better emulate the outcome of real individual investing, profits will be shared with the participants. I will foot the bill for all commissions. On the first of each month, I share a monthly update to all participants showing exactly how their investments are performing.

After less than two months have passed, I’ve observed the following:

• Participants make trade requests using written communication (not verbal), notably via SMS and Email.
• Order types (market, limit, etc) vary based on the previous investing expertise of each individual.
• The only investment that more than one participant purchased was stock in Disney (NYSE: DIS).

The goal for this experiment is not to make money, although that would be a fun bonus. Instead, we aim to analyze participants actions and their investing results. We aim to answer simple questions about individual investing, such as: What triggers an investor to take action? When given $1,000 and zero risk, what do investors buy? What impact does competition have in this group of 10?

Tracking is accomplished using a shared Google Spreadsheet.