Now we come to the awkward part. Our difficulty is not that performance was poor - but rather that it was really good and some would suspect that we have cooked the books. But what we are about to say is just what happened and the following comments are just the plain fact.
There are two factors that greatly helped us in our stock ratings; the first is the platform itself, and the second is that we started this service at an opportune time on Nov 1 2002.
There were four top picks - Noranda at $14.65; Telus at $13.01; Baytex at $8.20; and Pacific Northern Gas at $14.40.
The following month (on Dec 5 2002) we rated the following stocks as No .1 (substantially undervalued); Bank of Nova Scotia at $24.42; Brascan at $20.00; Canadian Natural Resources at $10.67; CIBC at $42.80; Cott Corp. at $27.26; Encana at $43.68; Suncor at $23.56; SunLife at $29.15; Talisman at $18.77; Canfor at $8.30; Ketch at $3.50; and Falconbridge at $14.27.
Since we started on Nov 1 2002, there have been 39 top picks (substantially undervalued) and 37 went up and are still up. These 39 stocks - including the two losers - have far outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite Index.
