The Stocks You Follow: December 2012 Update

We’ve always believed that the collective decisions made by our community of long-term investors is worth huddling over … a place where ideas are born.  Your MANIFEST 40 is a tracking portfolio of the forty most widely-followed stocks by the community of long-term investors at Manifest Investing.

Apple (AAPL) continues in the pole position in our quarterly update.

One of the biggest surges comes from Bio-Reference Labs (BRLI) as the company moves from #7 to #3 in the new rankings. Microsoft (MSFT) slipped from #4 to #6?

Coach (COH) also has been quite popular of late — since the price pulled back — and has moved from #18 to #10.

Performance Results

It is here that our community shines. The average annualized RELATIVE return for the current tracking portfolio is +4.5%. (The absolute return for the tracking portfolio since inception is 6.3%.) The accuracy rating (% of outperforming picks) of the current selections is 62.2%. (!) Including all selections since inception (7.25 years), the annualized relative return of the MANIFEST 40 is +3.3%.

The figures in parentheses are the position of the company during the September 2012 listing of the MANIFEST 40. For example, Fastenal (FAST) moved from #15 to #12 over the last three months.

Chargers

What companies are making the strongest gains among this consensus collection? This may be indicative of strong fundamentals (combined with attractive prices and returns) and probably warrants further study.

The companies making the largest advances (by percent of dashboards) since 9/30/2012 are: Res-Med (RMD), Coach (COH) and Bio-Reference Labs (BRLI).

The newcomers this quarter are Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Paychex (PAYX) and QUALCOMM (QCOM).

Strongest Performers

The top performers in the MANIFEST 40 since inception are shown here:

The tracking portfolio (dashboard) for the MANIFEST 40 can be found here.