Does anyone like monkeys as much as I do? A blindfolded one could throw a dart and beat most fund managers you know.
The Wall Street Journal used to (do they still? I'm too cheap to subscribe) have the contest where the they threw darts at a list of stocks and they compared results to some picks from experts. The darts won most of the time it seemed like. Max
Yeah, it tells you that most people methods are WORST than random entry! hehe. However, a good trade depends on : Good entry. Good exits. Money management. Position Sizing. Risk Management. So, a random expert stock picks is not necessarily good or bad if you have a trader's mentality you can still bail out for a small loss or ride it up then get out before it reverses. These contests are too vague anyhow. There's no rules. Enron might be a good pick on the way up. And if you wait a year later it's a horrible penny stock. But if you had sold it on the first signs of weakness and gotten in on the early recommendation, then it still would not be bad. Actually, all these stupid Wall St analyst recommendations actually worked out great INITIALLY. If you had bought in all those dotocm stocks and see it triple or quadruple, then u would have done well if you had sold! The general public only thinks about entries. Not exits. That's why most people trade worst than random as Bill Eckhart noted in Market Wizard. trader99
The other fact about fund manager's performance was that they were inconsistent. That is, this quarter's, or year's - you pick any period - best performers were typically not next period's stars. Add to that the fact that these funds grew through marketing more than portfolio growth, and that managament made money from asset fees regardless of fund performance, and that their hands were tied by fed rules which affected possible performance, and you can see why, in a bull market, SEC-free monkeys throwing darts are in a better position.
The name of the infamous stock picking monkey was : RAVEN Back in '99 his big winner was PSI net. The bottom will be put in when BOBO, the red ass Baboon, becomes famous for short sales.
I saw an interesting project on a site called http://www.stockmonkey.org. I haven't tried the software yet but might give it a go.
My foose ball partner was the back up gutarist for the Monkeys! But there is probably no relation here.