The Stock Of The Year Portfolio

One of the opportunities my job has afforded me is being a part of Investor Place’s Best Stock of the Year contest for the past three years. The idea is simple: Pick your favorite stock for the given year, put it up against noine other stock pickers and may the best man or woman win. I’ve been part of the contest for the last three years and will gladly keep doing it until they tell me to stop.

My first pick in 2016 was Ellie Mae and while it didn’t win it still did well. Last year I went with TripAdvisor which didn’t have such a hot year. This year I called out Twitter as my idea to beat and so far it’s having a great year.
The important part to note with all three (and any future) picks is that while I’m picking them for a one-year contest, I’m also picking them as businesses I like well beyond just a year. Anyone who knows me knows I invest with a longer timeframe in mind and these are businesses that I think have the potential to do well for years to come. With that in mind I’ll be keeping track of the portfolio’s performance over time for posterity. Below is a snapshot of how the portfolio is performing to date:

So as it stands my portfolio of picks is doing quite well returning 68.7% since inception versus the market's 25.1%; let's hope this continues. For my tracking purposes I kept it simple and assumed $1,000 invested into each individual position based on the closing price on the date each recommendation was published. This was equally weighted with $1,000 also going into the S&P 500 (SPY) based on the closing price of the same date. I use the SPY as it is dividend adjusted. I’ll come back here on occasion to update the returns or offer any opinions on concerns that may arise.

*DIsclosure: At the time of writing I hold shares of ELLI, TRIP & TWTR in my personal portfolio.

​JMo