Virtual Mutual Funds: Introduction

So, I've created a number of "virtual" mutual funds on Marketocracy.com and will be posting here a monthly update for each fund and stocks within those funds. I've started these funds at the end of September, so October has been the first full month that I can report performance for.

The funds that I currently have are:

• Energy Fund
• Financial Fund
  
• Healthcare Fund
• Technology Fund

Admittedly, the screening process I used for selecting stocks for each one of these funds was a little bit on the ad-hoc side...

• First, I've started with a list of about 100 stocks mentioned and recommended in magazines such as Forbes, Fortune, and SmartMoney, throughout the past 12 months or so.
  

• Then, I broke down those 100 stocks by sector, Energy, Financial, Healthcare, and Technology turned out to be the most populated sectors in my stock universe.
  

• So, I looked at all stocks that turned up for each category on Morningstar.com, then eliminated about 70% of original picks after judging them to be either too overpriced, too volatile, or lacking the strong potential for growth.
  

• Eliminated stocks were replaced with their "peers" (stocks in the same sector and industry) that Morningstar gave the highest ratings as far as Growth, Profitability, and Financial Health within the given group of stocks.
  

• Finally, I added the selected 10-11 stocks to each fund and left them alone.
  

Each fund has cash of about 20-25% of total assets in case there are other opportunities within each sector that I'd like to take advantage of. So far, I have not changed the original set of stock picks.

Instead of a one long post, I figured it might be more "user-friendly" to break it up into separate posts in regard to each fund's performance and provide more details about each one. You can expect to see them shortly.