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Like last time, I’m going to devote part of the article to my update and the other part to the second iteration of the Google Sheets portfolio manager (which has some sweeeeeet updates…). So, find the section you are personally interested in and enjoy!

Part 1 - Progress Report

To begin, my current portfolio and closed positions for the last two weeks (see my previous article for weeks 1-7 closed positions, if interested).

Date Opened Card Name Set Avg Price Bought # Bought Sum Total Sold Profit Date Closed Week 1-7 Profit 339.42 4/29/2016 Lightning Bolt M10 0.06 8 3.26 2.82 5/18/2016 5/5/2016 Lumbering Falls BFZ 0.39 6 6.26 3.92 5/18/2016 4/28/2016 Phantasmal Image M12 1.20 12 18.10 3.65 5/21/2016 5/20/2016 Phyrexian Revoker M15 0.23 16 7.23 3.56 5/21/2016 4/11/2016 Mishra&s Bauble CSP 3.98 12 61.24 13.48 5/22/2016 5/20/2016 Bribery 8ED 5.27 4 26.17 5.11 5/22/2016 5/13/2016 Huntmaster of the Fells DKA 4.49 8 43.99 8.07 5/23/2016 5/21/2016 Grand Architect SOM 0.06 53 20.44 17.53 5/23/2016 4/1/2016 Gut Shot MM2 0.07 16 4.08 2.96 5/24/2016 5/15/2016 Open the Vaults M10 0.11 20 10.34 8.05 5/24/2016 Week 8 Profit 69.1484 4/1/2016 Overgrown Tomb RAV 2.00 9 21.90 3.94 5/27/2016 5/12/2016 Journey to Nowhere ZEN 0.10 11 3.22 2.10 5/27/2016 5/20/2016 Slaughter Pact FUT 1.90 16 35.64 5.25 5/27/2016 5/20/2016 Slaughter Pact MMA 2.00 4 8.92 0.92 5/27/2016 5/26/2016 Elvish Archdruid M10 0.16 8 2.12 0.84 5/27/2016 5/26/2016 Grindstone TE 4.17 4 21.99 5.31 5/27/2016 5/26/2016 Joraga Warcaller WWK 0.90 8 8.88 1.72 5/27/2016 5/21/2016 Mindslaver SOM 0.93 3 4.08 1.30 5/28/2016 5/26/2016 Ezuri, Renegade Leader SOM 0.38 9 7.65 4.20 5/28/2016 5/26/2016 Glimpse of Nature CHK 3.05 5 21.84 6.60 5/28/2016 5/26/2016 Elvish Archdruid M13 0.11 23 4.48 2.04 5/28/2016 5/26/2016 Elvish Archdruid M11 0.08 8 1.38 0.74 5/28/2016 5/26/2016 Grindstone TPR 4.57 4 19.87 1.59 5/28/2016 4/21/2016 Rattlechains SOI 0.10 16 2.47 0.86 5/29/2016 5/26/2016 Elvish Archdruid M12 0.11 11 2.18 0.98 5/29/2016 5/15/2016 Orzhov Pontiff GPT 4.62 14 64.41 -0.27 5/30/2016 5/20/2016 Choke 8ED 2.02 7 18.90 4.80 5/30/2016 5/27/2016 Past in Flames ISD 8.60 8 73.91 5.11 5/30/2016 4/21/2016 Bygone Bishop SOI 0.21 44 17.97 8.81 5/31/2016 5/28/2016 Shatterstorm 10E 1.26 4 9.07 4.03 5/31/2016 5/14/2016 Needle Spires OGW 0.81 17 17.40 3.60 6/1/2016 Week 9 Profit 64.4649 Total Profit 473.04

Throughout the update, I’ll just reference the profit I made on a card. If you are interested in the precise details (buy/sell price, quantity, etc), you can refer back to this table.

Modern GP Weekend

I picked up several things in preparation for the two modern GPs:

Open the Vaults, Faith’s Reward, Slaughter Pact, Mindslaver, Orzhov Pontiff, Choke, Chord of Calling, Aven Mindcensor, Knight of the Reliquary, Simian Spirit Guide, Lantern of Insight, Academy Ruins, and Sword of the Meek.

Open the Vaults and Faith’s Reward : Either of these could break. Somehow Open the Vaults shot up without any results I was aware of, I’ll take the 8 tix, though it seems I could have made more had I waited. Since I couldn’t identify why the value when up, I sold to guard against it be completely random and plummeting.

Slaughter Pact : Despite not doing much, I made 6 tix from these. Eh, I’ll take it.

Orzhov Pontif : I thought this would be a great buy, since supply was super low. However, Azban Company didn’t put up much results, so it seemed to stagnate and the price began to decline. I made a quick exit for a small loss. Had I sold earlier I would have a small gain. You win some, you lose some.

Lantern of Insight and Academy Ruins : Hedge in case lantern control or some type of Academy deck (tron or maybe jeskai control?) did well. These aren’t doing well at the moment, I’m looking to get out whenever they rise enough to give me a small profit.

Aven Mindcensor Simian Spirit Guide and Sword of the Meek: These were picked up during the flashback drafts at relatively low prices. The swords aren’t doing well at the moment, but I expect to make at least 0.75 per Mindcensor and up to 1 per Spirit guide.

On Internet Hype

Things are always being hyped on the internet. It’s both a great way to make and lose money. Remember, if often doesn’t matter if the hype plays out, just that enough people buy into it that prices change. Case in point.

Sirgog often uses reddit to hype his specs. I’m not questioning his motives, whether they be malicious (trying to get others to buy in to help his own holdings), altruistic (alerting others that there’s a good opportunity), or egotistical (hey look at my awesome specs, love me!). However, you can use hype like this to your own advantage. In response to the ridiculous and completely unwarranted (my opinion) hype surrounding Nahiri, sirgog suggests buying into Pithing Needle, Bribery, Zealous Conscripts, Word of Seizing, Dreadbore, Celestial Purge, or Phyrexian Revoker. I felt, of these, Bribery, Dreadbore, and Phyrexian Revoker had promise. I was too late for Dreadbore, but did get a few Bribery and Phyrexian Revoker. Bribery because it is in low supply and the price was a bit low at the moment due to 8ED flashback drafts. This is a card I’ve certainly considered in the past, but it’s within a special class: older, low supply cards, with low velocity. These cards have high prices because supply is so low, but demand is also low – few transactions are occurring. While these cards can certainly gain A LOT of value, more often than not they simply slowly decrease in price (exact opposite of paper MTG, unfortunately). Thus, I generally stay away. However, with people talking about the card, there is the potential for some demand, so I bought in.

Similarly, I’ve always liked Phyrexian Revoker and it was at a local low, so it seemed like a good buy in. One interesting point here was that I had two choices: M15 or MBS. I chose M15 for a very specific set of reasons. Generally, assuming the price/art/frame is the same, you should go with the older version because supply is lower. However, in this particular case there is another variable to take into account. M15 is still available for redemption, so there is a source of demand for that specific copy. When some other demand (such as reddit hype) comes along, the sum is enough to push up the price a decent bit. And, that’s how sirgog helped me make almost 9 tix from a few cards and a couple of days. Other forms of hype are, as always, SaffronOlive’s Budget magic series. I found myself already up late when his Elves article went liveand decided to buy into many of those elves (Archdruid, Warcaller, Ezuri). Just like with Bribery, these were all targets I had seriously considered, but never taken the plunge because I didn’t foresee significant demand that would occur before flashback drafts killed the prices of these. So, +11 tix there. Certainly not worth losing the sleep over, but I happened to be up anyways.

The most recent budget article, Clue Flash went up and everything had already spiked by the time I woke up (a whole 4-5 hours after the article went live…). Fortunately for me, I already had a stash of Bygone Bishops that I immediately outed for almost 9 tix profit. I had bought some these before the PT, for almost 0.5-0.8 tix each, betting on monowhite doing awesome things. It didn’t pan out and I was looking at losing, like, 5 tix. Rather than sit on the card and hope it hit 1 tix (doubtful), I went deeper when it got down less than 0.05.

This lowered my average buy price to 0.2 with the hope that EMN brought some goodies to give it a home, as I could see the price going back up to 0.5, but probably not beyond (thus, lowering my average buy price was the only way to turn a profit). For some discussion on the anatomy of a Budget Magic spike, I’d suggest looking at another one of sirgog’s threads, where I think I get it right and he’s wrong.

Eternal Masters

My initial EMA strategy was to watch the number crunch to ASAP identify cards that weren’t being reprinted, then buy prior to the inevitable spike. I missed out on one of the big winners here: Counterbalance. However, I was able to get in on Snapcasters, Damnation, Omniscience, Past in Flames, Grindstone, Hurkyl’s Recall, Imperial Seal, and Serum Visions. Some of these have already panned out, but with unexciting levels of profit. Others don’t seem to be doing well (I’m looking at you Damnation, Omniscience, Hurkyl’s Recall, and Serum Visions). I think they have long-term potential. However, this isn’t a long-term competition, unfortunately. We’ll see how these pan out in time.

When EMA is actually released on MTGO, I’ll certainly be buying into a few things. It will all come down to the prices really. There is certainly a good opportunity for profit (or loss!) here. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for each of us. As I’ve been making good profits recently, I’ve been sure to keep a decent cache of tix. This has pros and cons. As liquid tix, I’m not going to make any money from them, as they aren’t invested (obviously). However, having a chunk of tix allows me to quickly take advantage of opportunites, if they were to arise. That agility can be quite valuable. A good example is with Inkmoth Nexus a few weeks ago. It (randomly) fell below 17 tix and I was able to snatch up 4 because I had plently of free tix. I turned these around, the very same day, for a 17 tix net profit (yes, I could have made more had I waited, hindsight…). Without 85 free tix to quickly drop on those, I just wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make 17 easy tix.

Part 2 - Portfolio Managing Spreadsheet #2 (vlookup and hotlist)

Portfolio Manager #1

Portfolio Manager #2 (this week’s)

Again, these are view only. To use it, go to File and Make a Copy That’ll put an editable copy on your own Google Drive account that you can use (and follow along with).

Again, I also recorded two videos so that you can see the spreadsheet in action, for when the following text fails to fully describe any of the features:

Many features have been added with the second iteration. Some of these I had been thinking about for a while, but never got around to implementing til now. I think they are pretty sweet, hopefully you guys also find it useful.

Transaction Log: Biggest changes here. I’ve added dropdown menus, using Data Validation, to most fields to make inputting transactions easier. Double-click the date field to bring up a calendar. Hourly times listed in the time field, which is pulled from a list of cells in the hidden “Data1” sheet. If you change the cells in that range, it’ll change the dropdown, so you can modify/shrink/whatever the time dropdown.

The Name/Set field also has a dropdown with all MTGO cards ‘of any value’, the cutoff generally being worth at least 0.05 tix (which gets rid of two-thirds of all MTGO cards…). This was done simply for speed, as the full list of cards has a significant load time within the spreadsheet. However, if you really want all cards, you can go to the Collection # sheet and change a formula so that the Name/Set field dropdown will contain ALL card names. I felt the most elegant solution was as implemented here, which requires the Card Name and Set to be a single string with a “|” between them. Advantages of the dropdown (besides ease of use) are that it ensures you spell a cardname correctly as well as helping you remember what set a particular card is from.

Another awesome thing is the dropdown for your botlist. This helps make sure you use a consistent naming scheme for the bots. If you alter capitalization/spelling, the sheet will consider your entries unique (CARDHoarder and cardhoarder would be listed as separate bots). With the dropdown, you can simply select the correct bot, without need to remember your spelling/capitalization. Of course, if you shop at a new bot, just type that in and it’ll be added to the botlist and then the dropdown for future transactions.

Current Portfolio: Some changes here. Cardname/Set are, of course, a single cell, as in the transaction log. Collector numbers no long have to be manually entered for the MLBots link to work correctly. I’ve also added a link to the MTGOTraders card page. Thus, you can rapidly go to the set/card website page on MTGGoldfish, MLBots, and MTGOTraders for cards in your portfolio. Additionally, the Hotlist field was added, see below for use of this field.

Closed Positions: Only the Cardname/Set thing changed here.

Data1: Again, only the field for the hourly time dropdown was added to this hidden sheet.

Collector Numbers: This is where the Cardname|Set data is pulled from, as well as the collector number for generating the MLBots card link in your Current Portfolio Sheet. As I mentioned above, it’s currently set to the ~5500 most valuable MTGO cards, which should be sufficient for most. If you want EVERY MTGO card, then change the formula in the yellow highlighted field to be “A1” rather than “A2” and it’ll pull the data from a different source.

One great thing about how I implemented this feature was how it pulls from a separate, public sheet I set up. This allows me to edit that sheet (add new cards when sets are released) and rapidly disseminate that to everyone who uses the Portfolio Manager. I believe all that would be required is for the user to visit the “Collection Numbers” sheet and let it sit for a bit to update (I don’t think it’ll update if you don’t visit the sheet). So, when new sets come out, just visit that sheet to get an update for this database.

Hotlist: I’ve added the ability to, using the vlookup command, search MTGOTrader’s "hotlist" for cards in your portfolio. Then, conditional formating will highlight the cell if MTGOTraders is buying the card for more than you purchased it for. You need to manually copy the data from MTGOTrader’s site and paste it into the hotlist sheet. Then, you can analyze within your Current Portfolio sheet. Conditional formatting is set up to highlight if the Hotlist price is larger than the price you paid, you can modify this how you see fit (adding a discrete or percentage-based margin, for example) by going into the Conditional Formatting rules.

Personally, I think this is turning out to be pretty freakin’ sweet. I hope you’ll agree and find it useful. The only trick transitioning to this sheet would be concatenating your old data (Cardname + | + Set). This can be done with a simple formula: If Cardname is in cell D4 and Set is in cell E4: =D4&”|”&E4 Using &, you can combine the data from multiple cells, adding a “|” between. You can then simply paste that output to the new sheet. I’ll add a sheet that gives an example of this process, for those of you that already started using the sheet from two weeks ago and would like to transition to this sheet.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions (particularly about features you’d like in a spreadsheet), I can be contacted via reddit, Twitter (@MTGKaioshin), or email (MTGKaioshin at gmail dot com)