I know, you're probably getting sick of these at this point - but what's the point of maintaining a website for 6 years if we don't go back and check out some of the silly/smart claims we made in the past? Also, this will be the last one for a while, at least until we talk about our savings rate around tax time: a retrospective looking at how we've done in our friend Nelson's stock contest (of Financial Uproar fame).
So, let's make this quick: in a somewhat unrealistic take on investing, notably:
- Dividends aren't reinvested
- Purchased stocks (or tickers that stop trading, as in BXUC below...)
- Holding period of one year
Of course, this being a retrospective, we've extended the holding period to now. Or, Friday's close, whatever. We purposefully put it after our Monday retrospective on our actual returns because... well, our fantasy picks beat the S&P 500.
Funny, eh?
Stock Contest Results!
These picks are from our:
Full disclosure: we've owned a few of these, but we currently still own PDLI.
| Stock Ticker | Stock Name | Open Price (Split Adj) | Close Price (1/16) | Value |
| PDLI | PDL BioPharma Inc. | 6.23 | 7.51 | 3013.64 |
| VASC | Vascular Solutions, Inc. | 11.3 | 29.79 | 6590.71 |
| IQNT | Inteliquent Inc. | 10.73 | 18.41 | 4289.38 |
| AFL | AFLAC Incorporated | 44.48 | 58.18 | 3270.01 |
| Dividends | 3090.71 | |||
| TTM | Tata Motors Limited (ADR) | 29.45 | 45.21 | 3837.86 |
| KLIC | Kulicke and Soffa Industries | 12.21 | 14.43 | 2954.55 |
| EBIX | Ebix Inc. | 16.73 | 22.19 | 3315.9 |
| CACC | Credit Acceptance Corp. | 103.55 | 139.84 | 3376.15 |
| Dividends | 79.31 | |||
| ARLP | Alliance Resource Partners | 38.645 | 39.37 | 2546.9 |
| BXUC | Barclays Long C Leveraged S&P 500 | 258.47 | 299.86 | 2900.34 |
| SVXY | Proshares Trust II | 66.45 | 53.42 | 2009.78 |
| XIV | VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term | 33.91 | 27.25 | 2008.99 |
| Dividends | 120.81 | |||
| Total | $43,405.04 |
Compare that to the S&P's total returns, which is, of course, based on the S&P Total Return Index from S&P. It's a little unrealistic - it doesn't count timing, slippage, fees, taxes and the like, but it's a good proxy for buying, holding, and reinvesting. We built a calculator which does the math on reinvesting in the S&P 500, the Wilshire 5000, and (almost) any stock you can dream of if you don't want to do the math in a spreadsheet. But here it is:
| Date | SPTR Price | Shares |
| 01/03/2012 | 2158.93 | 4.6319241476 |
| 01/02/2013 | 2504.45 | 3.9928926511 |
| 01/02/2014 | 3311.58 | 3.0197066053 |
| 01/16/14 | 3699.79 | |
| Total | $43,082.29 |
R-E-L-A-X
Well, I find it humorous that not having skin in the game beat the S&P, even with the in-built advantage (and the fact you can't sell or reinvest in the stock picking game). But you? You're probably ready for us to return to the net worth series - so I hope these retrospectives were at least an interesting diversion!
