Five pundits, 41 picks, marked against the index
Every top pick from five television regulars since February, entered at the close on the day it aired and marked every night against its market’s index. 15 of 41 are ahead. The average is 1.8 points behind.
Since February we have logged 41 stock picks from five people who give them on television: four BNN Bloomberg Market Call guests and Jim Cramer of CNBC. Each pick is entered at the closing price on the day it aired and marked every night against its own market's index, the S&P 500 for a US name and the S&P/TSX Composite for a Canadian one. As of the September 4 close, 15 of the 41 are ahead of their index. The average pick is 1.8 points behind it.
That is the whole scoreboard in two sentences. Here it is by person, best average first.
Rebecca Teltscher, Newhaven Asset Management: +3.9 points
Six picks, all Canadian, all from July 8 or August 6. Three are ahead. Agnico Eagle is up 20.3 percent since August 6 against 1.0 for the TSX, a 19.3-point lead, and Canadian Natural is 11.6 points ahead since July 8. The three behind are AltaGas, Tourmaline and Telus, each between 3.5 and 3.7 points under the index. A gold miner and an oil producer carried the average.
Jim Cramer, CNBC: +0.4 points
Seventeen picks, the most of anyone, all since July 13. Nine are ahead, eight behind, and the spread is enormous. Summit Therapeutics is 33.4 points ahead of the S&P 500 in five weeks. Senseonics is 25.6 ahead. Carvana and Coherent are up 11.2 and 9.4. At the other end, nLight is 44.5 points behind since July 13, and Howmet, Carpenter Technology and Lockheed Martin are each about 10 points behind. Take out the best and the worst pick and the average barely moves, which is the point: the record is a coin flip with very wide tails.
Chris Blumas, Raymond James Investment Counsel: −1.4 points
Three picks, all made August 12: CGI, Stantec and KKR. None is ahead. The gaps are small, between 0.5 and 2.5 points, and three weeks is a short window.
Barry Schwartz, Baskin Wealth Management: −5.6 points
Twelve picks between February 2 and August 19, the longest record on the board. Three are ahead: Microsoft, 7.4 points up since February, plus Berkshire and Meta by about a point each. Nine are behind. MSCI, FICO and Netflix, all picked on February 2, trail the S&P 500 by 18.9, 16.7 and 16.1 points. The S&P is up 10.6 percent since that date, so a pick that merely went sideways lost by double digits.
Brian Madden, First Avenue Investment Counsel: −10.7 points
Three picks on August 7: Booking, Aptose and Couche-Tard. All three are down about 10 to 12 percent in a month in which their indexes were flat. Three picks in one sitting is a small sample, and a bad month is a bad month.
How to read this
Every pick here was a buy. Nobody on television is scored on the names they told you to avoid, and neither are these five. The windows run from three weeks to seven months, so a good early number can vanish and a bad one can recover. And picking against an index that rose 10 percent this year is a high bar; Schwartz's record is mostly good companies that did not keep up with a strong tape.
What the scoreboard does show is variance. Cramer's 17 picks range from 44 points behind to 33 ahead. If you copied all of them you finished about where the index did, with a much rougher ride.
[ADAM: your read]
Each pundit has a page with every pick, its entry, and its mark as of last night: Pundit Scores. The same method scores this site's own calls on the Board, which is only fair.
Opinion and personal record, not investment advice.