Here is our (annually) updated track record document for the six years ending March 1, 2009. Click the gold bar above for a 600-row spreadsheet logging all of our trades since beginning operations on July 1, 2003. The top section of that file lists our current open positions (105) with recommendation dates and prices. The bottom section lists all closed positions (223) with open and close dates.

We closed out 231 trades from July 1, 2003 through March 1, 2009. There are 223 unique tickers and eight that were reinstated and closed at a later date. Those are designated in the bottom section in gray. Of the 105 open positions we are currently recommending, 23 are reinstated recommendations. Those are designated in the bottom section in orange. There are 27 tickers highlighted (lilac, in column B); those were either takeovers, mergers, discontinued or had their tickers changed.

160 of 231 (69.3%) closed positions were closed with a gain. 98 of 231 (42.4%) were closed with gains of at least 40%. 22 of 231 (9.5%) were closed with losses of at least 40%. 21 of 231 (9.1%) were closed with gains of at least 120%. 10 of 231 (4.3%) were closed with losses of at least 60%.

For the six years ended March 1, 2009, Standpoint Research is ahead of the S&P-500 by more than 1800 basis points. That is good for 2nd place among more than 50 small-to mid-sized research firms (as tracked by “Investars” since July 1, 2003). The 1800 basis points figure would also place us in the ‘top five’ out of more than 40 firms in the large-size firm bracket. It should be noted that many firms have dropped themselves off the system because they did not want their poor performance publicized. For the six years ended March 1, 2009, “Investars” has logged more than 300 “buy” recommendations issued by Standpoint Research. Adjusted for splits and dividends, ~ 60% of our recommendations beat our S&P-500 benchmark.  The 60% figure is quite impressive when one takes into consideration the fact that we do not take big sector bets at Standpoint Research. 

Average gain on the 231 closed positions is 36.30% with a standard deviation of 63.44%. Holding period was an average of 23.8 months. Average holding period on our (105) current open positions is an average of 15.9 months. Average gain on the 160 positions closed with a gain was 65.16% with a standard deviation of 53.55%. Average loss on the 71 positions closed with a loss was 28.73% with a standard deviation of 22.00%. We did check, and found that approximately one-third of the gain versus the S&P can be attributed to our ADR recommendations from 2003-2005 as the market rose and high-beta ADRs beat the market. We were one of the first research firms to recommend aggressive investment in Brazil, Russia, India, China and other countries. We exited many of those positions in the second half of 2007 and re-established them in late 2008-early 2009.

For the four years ending February 1, 2009, Standpoint Research is ahead of the S&P-500 by 1151 basis points. For the three years ending February 1, 2009, Standpoint Research is ahead of the S&P-500 by 356 basis points. For the two years ending February 1, 2009, Standpoint Research is ahead of the S&P-500 by 293 basis points. For the 52 weeks ended March 1, 2009, Standpoint Research is ahead of the S&P-500 by 166 basis points. We beat the S&P via stock-picking and industry bets; we do not take big sector bets. We are diversified and currently have 105 stocks on our open list of recommendations spread out across all ten sectors. At the time this document was prepared, the two-, three- and four-year tables at “Investars” were not updated to reflect February performance.

We have done quite well during the last 12-18 months because we were in a defensive (bearish) mindset for most of that time. We are very pleased with our performance during our first six years since the development on our 155-variable model was completed. We ran the model more than 300 times to date. We have added new people to the firm in the last year, learned from past mistakes and hope to (at least) match our 2003-2008 performance in 2009-2014 (and beyond).  

We update this page/section with attachments annually.  Next update will be in Q1, 2010.  Click the gold bar at the top of this page for our track record document and trade log for all “buy” recommendations made since July 1, 2003. Click the link below for our most recent recommendations and performance of those recommendations.  There were 44 recommendations since October 15, 2008.  They are logged and shown here.