2009 Stock Picks – End of Year Review

At the beginning of last year I joined a group of financial bloggers for a stock picking contest that would last for 12 months with no adjustments allowed. We didn’t put any money on the line for the contest (luckily). My picks had a mixed year which helps explain why I rarely hold any single equity for more than a few months before moving on to what I think will move next.

To avoid filling this space with excuses, this is how my picks faired over the year:

DRYS – Closed 12/31/08 at 10.66. Closed 3/31/09 at $5.09. Closed 6/30/09 at $5.78. Closed 9/30/09 at $6.63. Closed 12/31/09 at $5.82. I picked it and then exited my position at the end of January when I saw its fortunes weren’t what I thought they’d be.
NDAQ - Closed 12/31/08 at 24.71. Closed 3/31/09 at $19.58. Closed 6/30/09 at $21.31. Closed 9/30/09 at $21.05. Closed 12/31/09 at $19.82. NDAQ finished lower for the year which was bad for this contest, but I traded NDAQ all year and finished the year with an overall profit on it.
USO - Closed 12/31/08 at 33.10. Closed 3/31/09 at $29.05. Closed 6/30/09 at 37.93. Closed 9/30/09 at $36.19. Closed 12/31/09 at $39.26. USO one of my winning picks for 2009. I also traded it for a good profit throughout the year. I might have done even better with a buy and hold approach, but can’t complain with the gains I took in trading USO and UCO.
SSO – Closed 12/31/08 at 26.27. Closed 3/31/09 at $19.73. Closed 6/30/09 at $26.14. Closed 9/30/09 at $34.32. Closed 12/31/09 at $38.24. SSO was my best pick of 2009 and proved to be a good one to sell options on too. I was in and out of SSO most of the year and probably would have done better if I just held onto it from the start.

While the results for the contest aren’t really important (if I was higher on the list it would be important of course), I’ll list them anyway in order of best to worst finish. Congratulations to intelligentspeculator.net for kicking our tails in this friendly contest.

IntelligentSpeculator, 81.56%
WildInvestor, 68.57%
Wheredoesallmymoneygo, 56.14%
TheFinancialBlogger, 41.37%
FourPillars, 35.16%
DividendGrowthInvestor, 18.17%
Million Dollar Journey, 16.05%
MyTradersJournal, -0.24% (I had a real return of +25.49% for this account I blog about and will detail that in a couple of days.)
ZachStocks, -9.36%

We didn’t include dividends in the 2009 contest (we remedied that for the 2010 rematch). Here are the results if we had included dividends in 2009.

IntelligentSpeculator 81.55%
WildInvestor 70.15%
Wheredoesallmymoneygo 56.14%
TheFinancialBlogger 44.62%
FourPillars 35.26%
Dividend Growth Investor 26.48%
MDJ 20.27%
MyTradersJournal 0.18%
ZachStocks -8.80%

We’re running the contest again next year, so check in tomorrow for all of our 2010 stock picks.

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