Four years ago, we lamented the decision by Forbes to discontinue their annual Best Small Companies list. 36 years in the running, the list provided a number of actionable opportunities over the last couple of decades for many of us. That said, while sticking to their core criteria, we may have actually improved the discovery and screening process.
The Best Small Company tracking portfolio has now beaten the Wilshire 5000 in 10-of-13 years. The last four years have delivered 19.0%, 21.6%, 31.7 and 32.0% respectively. The 32.0% was achieved versus a Wilshire 5000 at 8.6% for 10/31/2017-10/15/2018. For 2006-2018, the average annualized return is 16.5% versus 10.2% for the total stock market.
Note: The year-over-year results increased to 36% with the surge in the stock market on Tuesday.
When thinking about our experience over the last four years since adopting the orphaned Forbes mission — essentially seeking excellent faster-growing companies through the eyes of George Nicholson — we might want to switch the name of this campaign to Better Small Companies going forward.
As of 10/15/2018, the following (20) companies are on the “leader board” for the 2019 roster of Better Small Companies. Keep in mind that some of the fundamentals will be updated and price changes will cause some “drift”. We expect that 5-6 of these companies will be dislodged from the list as we complete the search for actionable ideas among the best-performing small company funds, Red Chip Review and American Association of Investors Shadow Stocks.
Expecting Alpha 