By William Gabriel Tuesday morning was very exciting for me. I knew I had some good portfolios, but I was completely surprised that I held all ten positions on the weekly leaderboard. Nevertheless, I knew my work was cut out for me because Joe Zheng, the previous week, had had many of the top weekly spots throughout the week but lost on the final day. So I did the work through the week, and when I checked the leaderboard Friday morning, I was quite delighted to see that I was still on top.
Not knowing what to expect, I checked my phone and email every minute to see if CNBC had left me a message. That afternoon, Skycastle Entertainment, the company managing the CNBC contest contacted me to inform me that I had indeed won the weekly prize and gave me instructions for filling out the necessary paperwork. Naturally, I was ecstatic and executed all of the documents as quickly as I could. Sunday night Skycastle told me that everything looked good and that they had given it all to CNBC.
Monday morning I eagerly awaited the call from CNBC for all of the fun stuff that weekly winners get to do, such as interviews and blog entries, but my phone stayed silent. Sometime at the beginning of Power Lunch (when they typically do the weekly winner interview), CNBC called. On the other end of the line was Kevin Goldman, Director of Corporate Communications for CNBC (aka PR guy), and he told me that he was sorry, but I wasn't the weekly winner. I sat in a stunned silence as he told me that because of the long weekend, there was an error processing some accounts and that someone else had a higher percentage gain than me. As consolation, he said, they were going to send me some CNBC gear and continuously apologized for the mistake. He offered to answer any question that he could, gave me his phone number and hung up.
I sat there for a few minutes as the shock wore off, and started to tell everyone who thought that I had won that I actually hadn't. As they started to ask questions, I started to have some of my own. So I called Kevin and asked some basic questions--what was the nature of the error, why wasn't I told sooner than Monday, and what did the updated leaderboard look like? In typical PR fashion, he answered the questions without actually answering the questions. His main statement was that because of the long holiday weekend, nobody was working at CNBC on Friday to catch the problem. The whole picture wasn't really fitting together, but Kevin didn't offer any more information. It started to feel like a conspiracy; it felt like they were unofficially disqualifying me due to my large number of portfolios even though it was not against the rules. I called again, asked a few more questions and insisted that CNBC release the updated leaderboard. If CNBC hadn't had their errors, it would have been public information, and I told Kevin that it would go a long way toward my piece of mind if I could see the new leaderboard.
As they released Scott Cole's name and trades through the week, it became clear that he was the true winner. My best portfolio sat at 72% and CNBC calculated his at 78% (though if I try the calculation on my own from the blog entry at http://www.cnbc.com/id/18137169, I only get about 73%, but that's still good enough). So I want to make it clear that I give all the credit in the world to Scott Cole for a fantastic week of trading and congratulate him on his win; I have no ill will toward him. However, I did notice some other issues once CNBC released his winning portfolio--Scott Cole should have been on the leaderboard all week! Kevin Goldman claimed that their system errors occurred "late in the week" and that the long weekend caused them to be missed. Because of his low portfolio value, Scott should have been in the number one spot on Tuesday's leaderboard. Kevin lied to me in two ways: the error occurred earlier than "late in the week" and they should have been able to catch it anytime that week, not just on Friday or the following Monday. CNBC was negligent in performing it's due diligence, and because of this, they led me on for three days allowing me to think I had won $10,000.
I share all of this as a warning to those playing the CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. CNBC has shown a propensity toward negligence, and it may permeate their entire system. Be wary of anything they tell you and don't trust the data they reveal. I don't understand why they couldn't be more honest and forthcoming, but as many have experienced these past 7 weeks, they choose to remain silent and ignore the emails and calls for help. I have no recourse against CNBC except to share my story with the public, and so I hope they pay a dear Public Relations price for their misdeeds.
