Are preferred stocks more or less risky than convertible preferred stock?

What stocks should I buy for a stock market game in my US History class?

• My US History class will soon start a game for the rest of the semester. We are simulating an investment in the stock market. We have to choose 5 stocks from 3 sectors by this Monday. From then we will b monitoring the stocks' progress until the game is over. The premise is to earn as much money from the stock market as possible. The student with the most profit wins (and extra credit is 1% of your profit). We are given $1000 "dollars" to use to buy stocks (and you can buy as many bonds as you want as long as you have 5 different stocks from 3 different sectors and stay under the $1000 limit). I'm having a hard time deciding which stocks I should chose for the game. I've never really paid much attention to the stock market as I'm only 16 and I feel like I've been put on the spot. I was hoping the yahoo community would have some good ideas about what stocks I should choose for this game.

• Answer:

  So what does this have to do with US history? Some teachers... The time frame of a class is too short for most value investments, 5 stocks is generally too small for decent diversification. Not much to go on really. If you follow Joel Greenblatt author of "The Little Book That Beats The Market" you could go to his website magicformulainvesting.com and use his screens to find undervalued companies but he recommends 30 companies purchased about three a month and to sell them exactly one year after buying them. Doesn't really fit your game but maybe you can research some of the companies that come up and look for ones that are trending upwards in hopes they've found out what was wrong and fixed it already. With the Eurozone crisis, Germany is on hold so no one is buying solar panels so stay away from that. GM reported a loss in Europe so everyone in Europe is staying away from big purchases so no durable goods. Japanese stocks don't move much but that nuclear and tidal stuff though not really under control must be a little more manageable by now. The shortage of disk drives from the Thailand floods is going to drive down volume at companies like Dell. I think that these school stock games teach all the wrong things about investing.