I always hated those articles that take a moment in time and provide the reader with the “best” stocks using just a paragraph of justification. They don’t seem to make any sense to me, but I am sure they sell magazines. Every year or so I take a look at the list and actually call out the authors since no one else seems to care about actual performance.
In the past I took look at Fortune’s Picks for 2011 4 months into that year and how Fortune’s 2007 and Money Magazine’s 2008 Lists were doing in 2012. Today’s it Kiplinger’s turn.
Taking a look at Kiplinger’s Stock Picks for 2013 at the end of 2013
Kiplinger’s James K. Glassman & Andrew Fienberg came up with 23 stocks to watch in 2013. The Year to date information was provided by google finance and was done half done on the night of 12/12/13 and morning of 12/13/13:
- COH – YTD up .02%
- COV – YTD up 13.79%
- JBSS – YTD up 33.39%
- QCOM – YTD up 17.57%
- TRW – YTD up 37.47%
- TOL – YTD up .96%
- VMW – YTD down 8.37%
- WFC – YTD up 27.27%
- CVO – YTD up 17.78%
- CMCSA – YTD up 30.27%
- SYK – YTD up 31.05%
- EDU – YTD up 50.28%
- KMB – YTD up 22.98%
- USB – YTD up 22.97%
- DELL – YTD up 36.96% (went private)
- TNGO – YTD up 29.06%
- RUK – YTD up 33.82%
- F – YTD up 29.31%
- OCN – YTD up 20.87%
- FIG – YTD up 97.49%
- BRP – YTD up 18.9%
- JOY – Down 40.06%
- AIG – YTD up 40.25%
Much better than year’s past! I am not sure what benchmarks to compare the stocks to since some are small cap some are large, some are on S&P others are not. Although an average return of 25.25% is pretty good!
Pretty cool that you call out the authors…I’m sure by the time the year is over, no one really remembers the article anyway so the authors probably aren’t too worried about bad performance. The Russell 2000 returned 36% this year and the S&P 500 is up about 25% so these stocks are just average. 25% sounds good but when everything is going up too…not too impressive that the authors picked those stocks.
Someone should call these guys out! Otherwise they are like weathermen who have ZERO accountability also.
I would have loved to realize FIG was going to double my money… but like you said, I just can’t get into the prognostications with the little blurb they provide. Thanks for posting Evan!
Although could be a good start to do your own research?