Almost a year

It has been very nearly a year since I started investing. My first round of MFI picks have done really well. Let's recap. Viropharm was my first stock to hit a 100% increase, and then backed off to end at about 55%. I was pretty interested to learn about what they're doing. True Religion was a bit of a rollercoaster, up, suddenly down, gradually back up and today it was up 10%. I don't pay too much attention to retail, and this was partly an introduction. Baldwin was mostly flat all year, and luckily it ended up about 10%. Image Sensing Systems was up and down in fits and starts, but mostly up. It ended up about 20%. Finally, there's Decker's. I knew of Uggs, Tevas and Simples, but never had any idea that they were all owned by one company, and that company was going to be a rockstar of my portfolio. It's up about 150%. So, to summarize:

VPHM - 57%
TRLG - 27%
BLD - 12%
ISNS - 20%
DECK - 150%
The weighted average return is 55%

By comparison, here are some indices:

Wilshire 5000 - 18%
Dow Jones - 20%
S&P 500 - 18%
Russell 2000 - 15%

Obviously I'm pretty thrilled with these results. Now I have to ask one question. I've generally tried to use additional criteria to choose from the top 100 MFI stocks over $1 million. At the start it had a little more to do with looking only for insider trades, with a preference for smaller cap stocks. Over the course of each round of picking stocks, I tried to incorporate more analysis of the fundamentals of each company. (I've still got a ways to go on learning how to analyze businesses and opportunities, but on the way to learning that, I've looked at a lot of underlying stats.) Has it helped?

My second round of picks are up about 28%, annualized to about 34%. The third round is up about 2.5%, annualized to 4%. Finally, my last round of picks is up 19%, annualized to about 55%. Altogether, my MFI portfolio is up about 24%. Hm. I don't think this tells me anything. For my next round, I think that I will focus mostly on what made my first round a winner. We'll see.