Thu, January 2, 2020 | 1:45PM ET

Report Card: Signal From Noise '19 Picks: 74% Win Rate, Beat SPX

Name: FS Insight
Price range: $$$

Vito J. Racanelli

Senior Editor & Market Intelligence Analyst

- SFN picks average return 11% from publication date, beat SPX by 30 bps

- Winners: TGT +46%; WW +67%; CAT and OSK + over 20%; ARCO +27%; SKX +21%

- Losing stocks include BYND, ZS, EYPT, GWPH. Bull market helps

The turn of the new year is report card time for those of us foolish (brave?) enough to handicap the market and stocks. I won’t keep you waiting: the average return of our calls since the relevant publication date is 11%. Outperformance versus the SPX, again from date of publication, is 30 bps. Since the end of May SFN made 24 calls of which 19 are evaluated. The win rate is 74%. It’s too early to tell on the remaining five calls.

Signal from Noise (SFN) and www.fsinsight.com use data, history, fundamental and technical analysis and common sense to publish a view of which stocks might—or might not—do well and why, over the intermediate term. I try to incorporate the known risk factors. Gains are what we want, but preservation of capital is just as important.

Report Card: Signal From Noise '19 Picks: 74% Win Rate, Beat SPX

SFN inaugurated May 31 last year, and if I might be allowed to say, it was a good year for SFN. I list the specific picks made into three buckets: Winners, Losers and Too Early to Tell. I will focus on those that did spectacularly well—or badly—and leave the middling returns for readers to see in the table below. Not every single SFN column has been evaluated numerically as some, like “Low Rates Could Spur M&A Surge,” Aug. 14, are not directly amenable to a return calculation. Even so, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, the value of U.S. deals rose 12% to $1.8 trillion in 2019.

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