Liar's Poker

I just finished reading Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker. This very enjoyable book is about the author's time at Salomon Brothers where he worked after studying at the London School of Economics. In a fun way, Lewis provides a behind-the-scenes look at the greed, crazyness, and sometimes sad incompetence of the young men of Wall Street.

I highly recommend Liar's Poker to anyone interested in the world of finance.

Best stock picks - 1-week returns

Well, the first week of our Best Stock Picks competition is over. We have a very special top performer. Indeed, the Random portfolio is in first place. It also achieved the only positive return. We, Stock Market Investment Partner, have had the worst performance of the week. We will put the blame on the Horizon Crude Oil Bull ETF which was the week's worst pick with a return of -26.16%! The best performing stock was ProspEx Resources from the Ramdom stock picks (+37.14%). Here are the rankings after 1 week:

1. Random: +1.92%
2. The 3 strategists: -1.83%
3. Equity Research Team: -3.73%
4. Business Channel: -5.89%
5. Stock Market Investment Partner -6.15%

Come back soon for the next update from our Best Stock Picks competition!

Barron's bashes Cramer

In the article "Cramer's star outshines his stock picks", Barron's shows that Mad Money's Jim Cramer's picks underperform the market by most measures. Is this a sign of things to come for the "expert" portfolios of our Best Stock Picks competition? Can we (or randomness for that matter) outperform the experts' recommandations? Come back very soon for the first performance review!

Best Stock Picks - Ramdom

This is the last portfolio of stocks that will participate in the Best Stock Picks competition. All the following investment picks were selected randomly:
- Capstone Mining
- ProspEx Resources
- BioMS Medical
- Canadian Life Companies
- MI Developments
- First Asset REIT
- Oncolytics Biotech
- Southwestern Resources
- Linamar
- Connacher Oil and Gas

The competition starts Monday February 9th, 2009. Let's who can make the best stock picks!

Best Stock Picks - Stock Market Investment Partner

Here are our own choices for our big study to find out who can make the best stock picks and make money in this difficult credit environment!
- ADF Group
- Rogers Communications
- SNC-Lavalin
- Genivar Income Fund
- Boyd Group Income Fund
- TransCanada
- Horizon Betapro Bear US 30-year treasuries ETF
- Atrium Innovations
- Research in Motion
- Horizon NYMEX Crude Oil Bull

The only remaining top stock picks left to reveal are the random stock picks.

Best Stock Picks - 3 strategists

The next 10 stock recommendations for our Best Stock Picks competition come from 3 market strategists who were interviewed by a major newspaper.
- Rogers Communications
- TransCanada
- BCE
- iShares S&P/TSX Energy
- Encana
- Bank of Nova Scotia
- Canadian National
- iShares S&P/TSX Financial
- Canadian Tire
- Canadian Hydro Developers

Best stock picks - Equity Research Team

The second portfolio of the Best Stock Picks competition comes from a major equity research department. The stock are their top picks as of February 5th.
-Barrick Gold
-Nexen
-Rogers Communications
-Manulife Financial Corporation
-Cogeco Cable
-Bank of Nova Scotia
-CGI Group
-Boardwalk REIT
-Mainstreet Equity Corp
-Thompson Creek Metals

Still to come: Random choices, choices from 3 strategists and Stock Market Investment Partner's choices.

Best stock picks - Business Channel

This is the first portfolio of our big Best Stock Picks Competition. This portfolio contains stocks who were mentionned as top picks on an important business channel between February 2nd and February 6th. In this competition, all portfolios will contain 10 picks and the performance will be reviewed on this site periodically. The top stock picks for 2009 of Business Channel are:
-Research in Motion
-Suncor
-Encana
-Aecon Group
-Viterra
-Metro
-TD Bank
-Thomson Reuters
-Stantec
-Petro Canada

Best stock picks

Coming very soon to this site, we will take a close look at 2009's best stock picks.

We will list many opinions on exactly which stocks are currently the best picks. You will find free stock picks from:
- Several investment experts from top investment firms
- The operators of this website (Stock Market Investment Partner)
- Randomness

All the picks will be available to you. Also, this website will monitor the performance of each portfolio. Will randomness beat the experts? Or worse, will this website's stock picks beat the experts' choice.

Come back very very soon to find out who can make the best stock picks.