We are now ready to unveil this month’s champion…
In our mid-month recap, we forewarned members that biotech/pharma stocks were gearing up to be the Stock Challenge story of the month.
The top two players in this month’s contest selected exclusively biotech/pharma stocks, with those picks combining for an average of roughly 82% returns in March.
We have not seen a victory like this in Stock Challenge for a VERY long time. Member ‘Lubie1953,’ our gold champion just 3 months ago, selected stocks of CTI Biopharm and Avenue Therapeutics, both of which combined for a net gain of 93.72%.
Two things stood out about Lubie1953’s victory: a) there was a gaping 20% separation between Lubie1953 and second place, and b) Lubie1953 held top spot for the entire month of March!
Ladies and gentlemen, a new bar has just been set for all future Stock Challenge champs. Congratulations Lubie1953! You can feel good about this one!
Sticking to biotech, Member ‘MrPhilly‘ finished the month in 2nd place with an average return of 71.01%. And finally, ‘Tom Weighell‘ completes the podium with an average return of 58.8% from two Calgary-based oil and gas exploration companies.
Congratulations you three! Your hard-earned prizes will soon be on their way. Please monitor your inboxes (and spam folders) for an email from our support staff.
Stock Challenge Index (SCI)
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the SCI, especially in the first two weeks of March. In almost identical fashion to the S&P 500 Index, the SCI managed to wade its way out of troubled waters after an ugly dip halfway through the month. Check out the charts below:
S&P 500 Index 1 Month Chart
Almost 60% of selected stocks reported positive yield last month; and all but two of the seven exchanges represented in the contest averaged positive returns. See the table below
Biotech/Pharma and Commodities Dominate Top Stocks
Six of the top 10 performing stocks were commodity-based picks featuring mostly oil and gas companies. For a combined average of 107.53%, those oil and gas stocks were the best performing natural resource stocks among March’s top 10 performers.
Final Top 10 Leaderboard
70% of the stocks chosen by the top 10 leaders belong to natural resource explorers. Although not mightily impressive, this month’s leaderboard average return of about 53.7% is a significant improvement from last month’s roughly 33% average.
From the looks of it, the markets are absorbing the much-anticipated rate hikes reasonably well. That said, it’s still too early to tell whether the turbulent days are finally behind us. You have less than 4 hours to sign up for April’s Stock Challenge! If you haven’t selected your stocks yet, click here to do it NOW!
