2009 CFA Exam Results

Hi everyone,
hopefully everything went well for those of you who wrote the Level I, II, or III of the CFA exam last weekend. For your information, results of the 2009 CFA exams will be available on July 28th (Level I) and August 18th (Level II and Level III).

Share your stock pick

As you know, we have been doing a Best Stock Picks competition for a little while here (the results will be updated soon by the way). This gave us a great idea: create a site where you, the individual investors, can share your top stock picks with thousands of readers!

The newly created Your Canadian Stock website will feature analyses sent to us by ordinary investors who wish to present there favourite Canadian stock. Our hope is to create a place where intelligent opinions can be shared. We believe that exchanging information with other members of the financial community is a great way to learn, educate and profit.

Please visit yourcanadianstock.blogspot.com to learn how you can share your top Canadian stock pick!

CFA Exam

Well, the CFA exam is officially 2 month away. We hope that your exam preparation is going well. Remember to consider all the tools available to you: sample exams, prep courses, videos, mp3s, study groups, internet forums, etc.

Visit CFA Institute's website for more info.

Best Stock Picks - 5-week returns

It has now been 5 weeks since the start of our Best Stock Picks competition. One month ago, we presented the 1-week returns and today we update the results. As you will see, things have changed a little bit. Most notably, the random portfolio is no longer the best performer. It has fallen to third place while the choices of the 3 strategists are now in first place. The Stock Market Investment Partner portfolio is still in last place. The worst stock pick comes from the Equity Research team and it is Manulife with a 5-week return of -39.66%. Once again, the best performer comes from the random portfolio. This time it is Southwestern Resources (45.76%). Here is the 5-week performance of the portfolios

1- Strategists: -7.25%
2- Business Channel: -8.69%
3- Random: -13.80%
4- Equity Research Team: -14.54%
5- Stock Market Investment Partner: -18.00%

Now that you know the most recent results of our Best Stock Picks competition, go back to your CFA prep!

CFA Exam

The final countdown until the Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 CFA exams has started. June 6, 2009 is the date where nervous candidates will spend 6 hours answering questions. Unfortunetaly, most of them will fail. Indeed, the CFA exam pass rates are usually low. For the June 2008 exams, the pass rates were 35% for the Level 1, 46% for the Level 2, and 53% for the Level 3. We highly suggest that you study hard with the CFA material of your choice. There are plenty of options available like the CFA Institute volumes and the many CFA prep courses.

For more information on the CFA program and the CFA exams, please visit CFA Institute's official website.

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.