Paper challenge update

Less than expected! If this were a mutual fund you'd be on the cover of Barron's. After almost a year the 10-stock portfolio has a pile more money than "the monkey." It depends on how you define the returns and the effect of dividends but it looks to be something on the order of

BUT

It looks like it was all about Ingersoll-Rand. It wasn't that the dart hit 10 winners, it's that one dart hit one big winner. Throw that one out and here's what I get:

Site says (both, no-divs, correct?) Monkey: 32.47% return Darts: 50.77% return - Super!

Darts minus best pick: 35% average return for 9 stocks, no divs Darts minus best & worst pick: 40% average return for 8 stocks, no divs

It's a nice micro example of "the mutual fund manager selection problem." Is it that you have a method of stock-picking that is going to find an IR at least 10% of the time? Or was that Just Dumb Luck?

And what's the next move...?

-Tad

PS I love that the "dartboard portfolio" lives on MIFP, the WSJ having canned the feature. I'm curious how this will look 3 years from now, the WSJ only ran it in 6-month blocks

No, no, Tad. Ten stocks are ten stocks. You "Fundies" are just used to throwing perfectly good money away! :-) Like paying ordinary income tax rates on short-term distributions, guessing which stocks you might actually be invested in, relying on probabilities, fudging numbers ...:-)

Thanks for the compliments (but you confused me with the monkey and the darts). Excluding IR five stocks appreciated above the market, BP matched (if I recall correctly - 30% up). So in total, seven "winners" for this time period. A more thorough presentation would compare the earnings of the broad market to the earnings of the paper portfolio. There is no next move. These are sound companies with serious businesses. All were then and are now earning money. Hopefully they will do a bit better over the next three years.