Ranking By Market Cap

As my faithful readers know, I have been tracking groupings of 50 MFI stocks once a month since the start of 2006. A little quick math will tell you that is 600 stocks a year, and at 6+ years I have over 3,600.  I have done some silly analyses in the past, such as performance by first letter in the alphabet and by quarter of the year the stock is bought and by month (to see if there is seasonality (not sure why there should be as you hold for a year).

So I took all the stocks I have ever tracked and split them into deciles and ranked them from 1 to 10 with 0 being the very largest stocks to be in the top 50 greater than 100m screen and 10 being the smallest (I know it seems backwards, but I am a bit lazy today).  There are actually some stocks smaller than 100m in the list as when I first started I had a lower threshhold.

What I found was a bit surprising.  Big stocks did the best. They have been up an average of about 10% per year since starting.  The Russell 3000 (for comparison) is up about 5% per year. So that says if you had just run the screen for top 50 over 100m, and then only picked stocks with market caps (note I have not made any inflationary adjustments) your performance would be "satisfactory. Check out the list:

 

Row Labels	Average of Percent Change	Min of Mkt Cap	Max of Mkt Cap2
1	9.8%	5,835	262,943
2	3.2%	2,572	5,798
3	6.4%	1,385	2,565
4	3.4%	928	1,385
5	4.7%	696	927
6	1.4%	473	694
7	2.5%	340	473
8	6.5%	242	340
9	-3.4%	163	241
10	5.3%	-	163
Grand Total	4.0%	-	262,943

Montreux Update

I know this isn't the travel channel blog, but I am having such a great time here I wanted to share with my avid followers.  This is probably the first time I have truly unplugged in years. Just me. Do whatever the heck I want.

I decided since I am in the Alps, hiking in the mountains and see the vistas seems like a reasonable way to pass the time.  My hotel is pretty cool, they gave me a "Montreux Riviera Card" that gives me discounts on a lot of things and free access to public transportation (bus and train) in the region.  So I thought I would take a train to Haut De Caux, which looked to be a very scenic spot.  But I messed up when I had to change trains, so I decided to try hiking up the mountain.  It was very steep (here is a standard picture of stairs, though most of hike was on rugged trails).

I climbed for over two hours, without a map and just one bottle of water.  I was pretty sore, tired and thirsty and decided to go just 20 more minutes and if I didn't see a place to stop, I would just backtrack.  With eight minutes left, I cam around a bend and there was this wonderful French/Swiss restaurant with a SPECTACULAR view. It was a godsend.  I do not know it was because I was hot, sweaty, thirsty and hungry or if the food was just most excellent, but it really hit the spot.  So if you are ever in Sonchaux, I would highly encourage you to stop atAuberge de Sonchaux.  It was also close to a paraglider school and you could watch paragliders descending into the valley.  To the right is the view as I enjoyed my French lunch.

After being refreshed, I was in a great mood as I walked back down the hill.  It was a lot easier that seeing my shoelaces on every step (as I had in the climb) and I did take a gentler more circuitous route.

I enjoyed the day so much, that I may try it again (assuming I am not too stiff/sore) tomorrow, albeit with a little more planning.  Looking at some brochures, Chamby to Les Avants seems like a reasonable "walk in the woods".