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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (24981)	5/18/2000 1:09:00 PM
From: straight life	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

"I can't remember the name of the portfolio's manager, but he was no slouch. Immediately prior to managing the portfolio, he had won the USA Today national stock-picking context requiring short-term thinking and skills two years in a row! David Ryan won the IBD stock picking contest 2 years in a row (I think). Became the portfolio manager of USA mutual fund (an IBD project, again, a fallible memory at work here)... which I believe had embarrassing results and was mercifully pulled from sight. Any connection to your story?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (24981)	5/18/2000 1:28:00 PM
From: Bruce Brown	Respond to of 54805

RE: Trading vs. Investing... I'm not sure what has happened to the tracking of the Simpleton portfolio from 1995, I just plugged in the data from July using the prices of those ten stocks and the trade price in July which are all printed in the Rule Breakers/Rule Makers book. I think the exercise was derived from that Merrill Lynch commercial where the Dad holds the baby up in the air, a daughter is graduating, a wedding, people are sitting on the end of a dock somewhere looking at the sunset and so forth which hits the message that we are all too busy in our lives and have many more important things to do than spend the time to choose investments. Let the professionals take care of that mess for you. Tom's exercise was to pick ten companies that were Rule Maker types, buy them and let them ride. Wall Street thumbed their noses at it. Yet, the returns cannot be argued with at all. Of course, we know that the entire premise of the Fool is to thumb noses at traditional Wall Street theory. This was all before my time at the Fool, but it's in the book as I mention. Your recount of the Fool's employee being chosen as USA Today's top trader for 2 years in a row and maintaining a portfolio at the Fool is of interest to me. I didn't realize that had taken place. I wonder if it is in the archives? If you remember over the weekend while in Las Vegas the name of the tactician or the portfolio, send me a PM so I can look it up in the Fool archives. Plenty of experiments have gone belly up at the Fool, but I believe the positive by far outweighs any negative that has taken place. There are plenty of traders at the Fool who frequent all the message boards and preach their 'gospel'. Although I continue to wait for factual proof that trading can - even by the professionals - over time perform better than something like a long term Simpleton portfolio or a long term gorilla & king portfolio I simply have to remain skeptical. I see a lot of posts about people getting scared and trade in and out and in and out with that fear along the way. I don't know how many countless posts I have made on the subject in favor of not utilizing that type of strategy in an attempt to create wealth. I do prefer the method of tossing my kids in the air, watching a few sunsets with my wife, throwing a few baseballs to my son, roasting a few birds, reading a few books, watching a few movies with my daughter, singing a few songs and the endless chat with fellow gorilla game investors in the meantime. Maybe that seems simplistic, but I think there is a great lesson in the Simpleton Portfolio that Tom Gardner launched in 1995 to thumb his nose at Wall Street. Even if the next 62 months are not quite as lucrative as the previous 58 months were for those 10 companies, the compounding effect of wealth creation will continue to advance and no action was required outside of the initial investment in July of 1995. Likewise, the G&K index would probably get a few thumbed noses from Wall Street. Yet, a 10 year performance from the index will most likely be quite a fruitful performance in terms of beating the market. BB