The Tortoise and the Hare

“The Tortoise and the Hare” is one of Aesop’s fables. It tells the story of a race between unequal partners. After about one year now of running the experiment, it looks like the Monkey Portfolio wants to play the role of the tortoise. It is early days yet, but so far the performance of the Monkey Portfolio is shockingly bad. Have a look at below chart courtesy of the Stockrover website;

It is clear the first two darts on the newspaper portfolio picks of the Monkey Portfolio have nothing going for themselves at the moment. European banks like Lloyds Banking Group continue to do what they do best; go south. On top of that suspending/cancelling the dividend took the one reason some investors had, to hold onto their Lloyds shares, away. Here are the details;

Both Cisco Systems and Lloyds Banking Group are solidly in the red versus a flattish S&P 500 index since the inception of the Monkey Portfolio. The Monkey Portfolio will need better dart throwing skills going forward that much is clear.

If the Monkey Portfolio is the tortoise, then the Cray On Portfolio is keen to take the role of the hare in this story. It is better to be lucky than smart. A time horizon of only one year clearly says absolutely nothing about skill. It is all luck for now. A time horizon for this experiment of between three to ten years will change the equation as the years go by from luck to skill. Here is how the hare has been racing out of the block in the first year. All charts in this blog are courtesy of the Stockrover website. The S&P 500 briefly caught up with the Cray On Portfolio in March 2020, but the Cray On Portfolio is now outperforming the S&P 500 index nicely again.

Corona or no Corona virus, it is clear the MSCI stock is the winning stock pick for the Cray On Portfolio so far. Ashtead Group is in the red since inception, but at least is keeping the damage under control as investors seem to agree for now the company will not go bust this year unlike some other companies. 

 Later this month it will be time for two new stock picks for both portfolios. To be continued….