Barron's Round Table

Every January Barron's Magazine has a roundtable of noted investment sages give the world their take on what they see for the coming year and then they generally offer a list of stock recommendations.  Below are their results for 2011.  I thought I would do as I have periodically in the past a report card on how they did.

To arrive at my results I simply take the percentage results for each stock in the recommended portfolio add them together and divide by however many names are included under a particular person's recommended list.  For example Mario Gabelli had 11 picks so his total return was measured by me adding up the percentage gains/losses he incurred in 2011 and dividing by 11.

One other caveat with this sort of portfolio view is that it makes the assumption that you would hang on to all of these names for the entire year.  It is likely that these investors would perhaps in the real world have sold some of these names as the year progressed.  Never-the-less Barron's makes the assumption that these names are held for the entire year so here are the results from last year's roundtable:

Scott Black:                                8 Recommendations     -13.63% return.

Abby Joseph Cohen                    8 Recommendations     - 2.68%

Marc Faber                                20 Recommendations    -14.26%

Mario Gabelli                             11 Recommendations       6.07%

Bill Gross                                    2 Recommendations       8.35%

Fred Hickey                                 5 Recommendations      9.24%

Archie MacAllaster                      6  Recommendations    -27.82%

Oscar  Schafer                            5  Recommendations    -  6.14%

Meryl Witmer                              5  Recommendations    -  3.94%
Felix Zulauf                                 5  Recommendations    -13.28%

Average  Return:  -5.809%

*Source:  Barron's, January 16, 2012.  Page 31.