Dilbert portfolio up 1%

I am sure you will have James Altucher adding Dilbert Portfolio to his site and will have a column on TheStreet.com about "How to invest like Dilbert" soon.

Dilbert Portfolio Update
Last year I asked my wise readers to recommend stocks that would be sure winners in the future. I compiled the best and most frequent suggestions into the Dilbert Portfolio. I confidently invested $75K in the portfolio. This seemed like easy money, given the crackling intellect and nearly godlike forecasting powers of my readership.

So how’s that portfolio doing in a market that is way up during the same period?

ADM: -23%
BHP: -16%
IN: -9%
PEIX: -56%

Overall: -26%

Ouch.

Luckily for me, three of the four stocks jumped in value soon after I bought them. I placed my stop orders and they automatically sold for tidy profits in just a few weeks when they changed directions:

ADM: sold for 9% gain
IN: sold for 10% gain
PEIX: sold for 9% gain

Not bad for a few weeks. Unfortunately for me, my largest holding (because I bought 500 shares of each stock regardless of price) was BHP. It never jumped in value and I held it. It’s down 16%. But with a forward P/E of 9.8, and growing demand for their products, it still looks cheap. So I’m keeping it. As with most of my stock picks, they become real bargains sometime AFTER I buy them.

My current overall return, including BHP’s drag, is up 1%. Had I not been too lazy to do the math when I first invested in the portfolio, I would have bought equal dollar values in each company, instead of an equal number of shares, and I would have been up a few percentage points more.

Still, by any measure, the Dilbert Portfolio has been a disappointment despite all of the good thinking that went into it.

Soon, many of you will be asked to cast votes in a major election. Good luck with that.