Each year, around this time, I try to come clean about my investing calls over the last 12 months. It’s a ritual I like to keep because any good investor needs to revisit their arguments for (or against) a stock … and any pundit worth a dime should be willing to subject their ravings to public scrutiny, even if it makes them look bad.
And believe me, there’s plenty to make me look bad.
On the whole, however, I think my calls were mostly fair. A many stocks outperformed by a hair, many stocks underperformed and a handful were either tremendous winners or tremendous losers
If you want a complete accounting of all 1,589 ( as of this post) articles I’ve written for InvestorPlace.com, feel free to dig into my personal archive here.
Otherwise, just follow these select links back to the original article for proof of my wisdom or tomfoolery.
The Good
4/28 – 9 Tech Stocks to Buy Even at All-Time Highs
Quite a list of high fliers here, though the S&P 500 is down about 4% since publication. The entirety of the list of picks, and their performance, is:
- Apple (AAPL) — Down 17%
- Ebay (EBAY)/Paypal (PYPL) — Down 3%
- LinkedIn (LNKD) — up 11%
- Electronic Arts (EA) — up 15%
- Expedia (EXPE) — up 24%
- Facebook (FB) — up 33%
- Netease (NTES) — up 42%
- Netflix (NFLX) — up 45%
- Amazon (AMZN) — up 57%
The Bad
9/8 – GPRO Stock – Is GoPro a Bargain or a Bust After Huge Flop?
I said GoPro (GPRO) was a bargain … and it busted big-time, losing 30% since that article. I’ve since turned bearish on GPRO stock, but this call a few months ago was clearly very incorrect.
The Ugly
9/21 – 13 Big Consumer Stocks to Cash Out of ASAP
Not only are 10 of 13 stocks either flat or up since publication, one pick — Hormel (HRL) — is up over 30%. Two others, Clorox (CLX) and Lancaster Colony (LANC) are up double digits since publication. Oops.
The Broken Records
For those who actually read my stuff regularly, you’ll find I jump around topics and stocks a lot. But two companies I’ve been consistent about in 2015 have been on either side of the social media coin — Facebook (FB), about which I’ve been unabashedly bullish, and Twitter (TWTR), which I have maligned all year.
And with FB stock up 35% YTD and TWTR down 37%, both those calls were the right ones.
While I mentioned both stocks frequently in passing, here’s a good list of clear and unequivocating calls on both stocks across the last several months:
Twitter:
5/4 – Sell TWTR Stock – Twitter Has Nothing but Narrative
7/29 – TWTR Stock Still Sucks – Cut Your Losses in Twitter and Sell
8/19 – TWTR Stock: New CEO or Not, Twitter Still Is Doomed
8/24 – TWTR Stock – Twitter Might Never Recover From This
10/6 – TWTR Stock: Twitter Is the Same Old Dumpster Fire
10/26 – Twitter Earnings Keep Confirming TWTR Stock is Doomed
Facebook:
7/22 – Facebook: FB Stock Will Surge Thanks to New Instagram Ads
8/18 – FB Stock Just Can’t Lose – 5 Reasons to Buy Facebook Now
8/24 – FB Stock Still Soaring – Buy Facebook Before Next Breakout
11/5 – Facebook Inc: FB Stock Is a Lock for 2016
Honorable Mentions
A few big-picture calls also worth remembering were my bullishness on the airline sector and warnings about big coal over the summer:
7/14 – Coal Stocks Will Only Get Worse – Don’t Bargain Hunt
7/31 – Am I Crazy to Like Airline Stocks Here?
As always, I welcome your feedback — positive and negative — on anything I write, this included. If you have particular articles you want to call out for their merit (or lack thereof) feel free!
Jeff Reeves is the editor of InvestorPlace.com and the author of The Frugal Investor’s Guide to Finding Great Stocks. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. Write him at editor@investorplace.com or follow him on Twitter via @JeffReevesIP.
