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Writer's pictureAustin Preece, CFP®, EA

Stock Picking - Difficult, or Near Impossible?

Updated: Aug 13


"Did you see Intel today?"


I got this message in early August from a friend of mine who’s also a financial advisor. Intel’s stock (ticker: INTC) closed on August 1st at $28.87 per share and declined over the next 24 hours to a price of $21.34.


That’s a one-day loss of over 26%! 


Put another way, if you had $1,000 invested in Intel stock, it turned into about $740 just about overnight.


This is one of the risks of investing in individual stocks. It can be fun, and I’ve made some trades in my time, but it’s always with a small portion of my portfolio (which is what I generally recommend to people who want to pick stocks).


Because I’ve had many conversations about investing with this friend of mine, I know that he’s been holding Intel for quite some time - and it’s had a seemingly good story!


For those of you who don’t know, Intel makes semiconductors (aka computer chips). In fact, my laptop operates on an Intel chip, so I’m using one right now.


If you think back to 2020-2022, there was a worldwide shortage of semiconductors - this is part of the reason that car prices increased so much during that time frame. Car manufacturers could build pretty much an entire car, but they couldn’t get the semiconductors that new vehicles require.


You’d think that a company that makes semiconductors would be able to capitalize on a situation like that, right?


Then at the end of 2022, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom started, and guess what that caused - Lots of demand for semiconductors! 


All along, Intel has at least been in the right industry, but as some of you may already know, the main beneficiary of these trends has been Nvidia (ticker NVDA).


So what if you had $1,000 to invest 5 years ago, and you were planning to invest in one of these two companies? 


If you chose Intel, you’ve lost about 58% and now have around $420 (excluding dividends for easy math - it wouldn’t have been quite this bad because of the dividends).


If you chose Nvidia, you’ve made about 2,728% and now have around $28,280.


The Nvidia story is why people try to pick stocks. Can you imagine if you bought that at the right time? 


The issue is that throughout that 5-year period, Nvidia had a peak in November of 2021 (when you would have been up 750%). At that time, your $1,000 would have turned into $8,500 - not bad. 


But over the course of the next year - from November 2021 to October 2022 - your $8,500 would have gone down to about $3,000. Still not a bad gain, tripling your money since the start, but less than half of what you had a year ago.


What would you have done? Stayed in Nvidia all the way down? Or would have you hopped out, thinking that the upside for Nvidia was gone? Maybe you would have held until you got back up to $8,500 and then sold it all.


That type of thing can happen in individual stocks. It could have taken Nvidia years to come back to its November 2021 high - it could have had a performance more similar to Intel’s. 


Of course, it didn’t. But it’s important to recognize how difficult it is not only to pick stocks but to hold onto them for the right amount of time.


Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) has some interesting research regarding single stocks. You can find it here, but I’ll provide a couple of the main points about individual stocks.


Over 5-year periods, about 1 in every 5 stocks delists - meaning you can no longer invest in it. About 60% of those happen for “good” reasons (maybe because they were bought), and the other 40% delisted for “bad” reasons (maybe because they went out of business).


Of the 4 stocks that survive the period, less than 2 of them outperformed the overall market. Meaning that over a 5-year period, your chances of buying a stock that’s still around 5 years later AND has performed better than just investing in the market is about 35%. Not great odds.


Over 20-year periods, less than half of stocks have survived, and of the half that survived, less than half outperformed the market. Your chances of buying a stock that both survives AND outperforms the market over a 20-year period? About 1 in 5. I would call those BAD odds.


So what’s the lesson? Don’t try to pick stocks with a bulk of your portfolio. If you want to use some “play mon



ey,” try to keep it to less than 5% of your portfolio. It’s better than gambling! Just not by a whole lot.


Big thanks to Yahoo Finance for having free charts!

 

As always, keep in mind that you don't have to go it alone. I’m Austin Preece, a financial planner in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and I work virtually with people across the US. Check out my website to see what it's like to work with me and reach out if you have any questions.


If you found this post helpful, help spread the word! Share with friends and family that you think may benefit as well. But remember, this is solely for educational purposes - it's not advice.


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