Being one month into the three month paired trade contest Tom, Mark, and myself are doing, I thought it would be a good time to give a quick update. If you’d like, you can go back and read the entries to see why each of us entered what we did. For now, here are the results:

Tom entered long Steve Madden (SHOO) and short Guess (GES) - a bet that beaten-down SHOO would reverse course and outperform hot GES.
Since, Steve Madden has announced buyout interest from still-unidentified third parties, and the stock has moved up nicely. Tom entered SHOO at $18.96, and the stock has moved up 16.72% since then to $22.13. GES started trading on the day of the contest at $49.03 and closed today at $51.21, an increase of 4.45%, so Tom’s net return for the month is 12.27%. He is currently accepting invitations to trading desks at hedge funds, or offers of private capital for his incubator fund. You can contact him via email at editor@collegeanalysts.com.

Keep in mind the following are three month charts, and the counting starts from the first day of October…

Mark Perkins entered a trade with two major electronics retailers - going long Best Buy (BBY) and short Circuit City (CC).

BBY closed today at $48.91, up from a dividend-adjusted open of $45.96 for a gain there of 6.41%. CC, Mark’s short stock, closed today at $8.11, up 2.79% since the open on October 1st. His gain for the first month was 3.63%.

My trade involved buying Syntax-Brillian (see all on BRLC) and shorting Sony (SNE). A lot has happened with Syntax-Brillian in the last month since I published my interview with Chairman and then-CEO Vince Sollitto. For starters, Mr. Sollitto stepped down the weekend after the interview, and was replaced by COO James Li. The company announced its 120-day action plan, and then proceeded to divest its LCoS operations. Overall, a rather busy month.
I’ll admit to getting a bad fill on the open, but I made the contest rules… who to blame? BRLC closed today at $4.48, up from my “purchase” price of $4.15 - a gain of 7.95% in a month. On the short side, SNE rose 3.38%, leaving me up a total of 4.57%.

The standings:
Tom Lyons, +12.27%
James Cullen, +4.57%
Nasdaq, +4.18%
Mark Perkins, +3.63%
S&P 500, +0.90%

Everyone handily beat the S&P 500, something that is good to see. The Nasdaq… I don’t even know what to say about the general performance of tech recently. It’s difficult to be out of touch at 19 years old. I’ve ran the numbers on stocks like Research in Motion (RIMM) and Apple (see all on AAPL), and I don’t see them making sense value-wise. Time will tell…

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Disclosure: Tom Lyons is long SHOO.