Matti Karjalainen won the main prize of Unelamasalku – Here is his strategy

The winner of Kauppalehti’s Unelmasalkku game is from Taivalkoski Matti Karjalainen, 65. The main prize he accepted is 5,000 euros to be freely invested in the Mandatum Trader service. A whopping 24,130 game portfolios were created for the game.

The native of Karenia achieved a hefty 46 percent return in his game portfolio, leaving the second-placed player well behind in the end. Winning required active trading, market monitoring and some luck.

Decisive in terms of profit was the decision to invest in companies with stronger price swings, the monitoring of the stock market’s earnings period, the takeover offer that hit the portfolio and the decision to protect the portfolio during the market turbulence at the end of the game.

“I knew that you had to invest in small companies if you were going to succeed, and I looked at those. At the beginning of the competition, I watched Faronia and Modulightia and I weighed which one to take. I ended up with Modulight, and it jumped immediately within a few days.”

The laser company Modulight announced at the end of January that it had received a long-awaited sales license for one of its products in the United States. With the news, the share price rose by 48 percent in just one day.

Nixu’s purchase offer nudged the lead

At the same time, a mining company Sotkamo Silver announced the share issue. Karjalainen, who has followed the companies for a long time, estimates that the rate will rise. The value of Sotkamo Silver in his portfolio doubled, but also dropped twenty percent after that.

“It actually appears as the only drop in my portfolio. The briefcase dropped many tons and I broke away from Sotkamo Silver. It must have been after I got to the top 10.”

Karjalainen says that he followed the earnings season by looking at earnings announcements a couple of days in advance and analyzing whether the company could announce something in its report that would raise the price. The results publishers considered Karjalainen among the top ten.

“It must have been that when I looked at them again, I hired an information security company Nixun my portfolio. It didn’t take more than a couple of days, and Nixus became a purchase offer with a big premium. That’s when my portfolio went to number one.”

Norwegian of DNV the premium of the purchase offer was 67 percent.

During the last two weeks of the game, Karjalainen’s portfolio remained at least number one in the competition, measured by the final value of each day. During the last two weeks, he still did a brisk trade, being raised Afarakin shares have a head start in relation to stiff competitors.

Protective movement in turbulence

At the end of the game, tension was caused by the market turbulence, which was the background of the news from the United States Silicon Valley Bankin from faltering and finally falling. In Europe, on the other hand, the Swiss Credit Suisse the situation caused uncertainty.

“On Thursday of last week, the courses were in the red in the evening. On Friday morning before leaving for work, I saw that the market had fallen further, Asia and European futures were in the red.”

“I made such a move that I cashed in what I could. In addition, I bought Nixu and Caverionia, whose rates do not move much, because purchase offers have been made for the companies. They were practically the same as cash, meaning more than half of the portfolio was safe. The competitors apparently didn’t do the same, and the gap grew.”

Karjalainen says that at the beginning of the week, he didn’t dare to stay so heavily in cash after the weekend in the United States it was agreed that SVB’s customers would get their deposits back in full. So the news was positive, although European markets started to decline on Monday.

“I put everything in stocks and diversified so widely that I knew the rest of the time would go roughly in line with the index. At the end, there was no other fear or risk than that a purchase offer would be made in the portfolio of one of the top 10 players.”

During the game, the Karelian’s portfolio was at its highest at a fair 158,000 euros, i.e. an increase of more than 58 percent. The most popular stock among dream portfolio players, a software company Qt Groupiawas not in his briefcase throughout the game.

“It would have been nice to stay above the 50 percent return, but the problems in Switzerland still surprised me towards the end.”

Experienced investor

Karjalainen says that he follows the market and the economy every day. He is also a long-term investor.

“I bought the first funds in the late 1980s From cooperative bank. Then I bought a house, the family also grew, and investing was left for a while during the rush hour.”

Karjalainen returned to shares in the 2000s Nordnet’s started as an online broker in Finland. He says that he has been trading shares ever since.

“I have four children. Everyone is already on their own, but despite that they have portfolios that I still manage. Wife’s and grandchildren’s portfolios as well. Even juniors have index funds.”

Karjalainen says his direct stock investments are in shares of the Helsinki Stock Exchange, and he also has index investments. According to him, there are months between share deals, the longest holdings are from 20 years ago.

“I also do some day trading, mainly with the Nasdaq index and I did some with commodities as well. I never guessed about commodities, but I’ve been staring at Nasdaq’s minute candles so much that I’ve learned something about their behavior.”

Closet investors out

Karjalainen says that financial independence and early retirement, which investors often mention, are not the goals of his investing. Due to his age, he would have been able to retire earlier.

“Regular income has accumulated funds for investing, when there has been no debt for many ten years. Investing is a hobby for me, more during the winter – in the summer, the activities are at the cabin and forest work in my own forests. If you started following the market all year round, then it would start to become a job.”

In his day job, Karjalainen works as an aquaculture specialist at the Natural Resources Centre’s parent fish facility in Taivalkoski.

He says that he doesn’t know any other investors or people in his close circle who would at least publicly say that they invest. According to Karelian’s experience, investment is often talked about outside of growth centers as “speculation” or “too easy money”, and investing is not appreciated. He thinks that some of them will therefore remain as closet investors, so to speak.

“It would be good to emphasize that in Northern Finland, investment is practiced in places other than centers. It would be nice if it came out more. Here, people would rather put their money in the lottery than in stocks for fear of losing money.”

The dream portfolio will return in the fall – add your name to the list behind the linkand Kauppalehti will send you a reminder when a new game is about to start.