Stock picking champs 2025

Katie Martin (0:06)

Pushkin. The best way to invest in stocks, honestly, is to buy a big index with a cheap tracker thing and forget all about it for as long as possible. But just for fun, every year, the FT runs a stock picking competition. You pick five stocks, you bet that they will either rise or fall, and you leave them to run for a whole year. Now, if you're actually investing your life savings in this way, then really, honestly, you are doing it wrong. Stop it at once. But it's a fun game and all you have to win or lose is your dignity. Long time listeners may remember that this time last year, I have to sit in the corner with a dunce's hat on. I bombed pretty badly, came close to last out of literally thousands of people. It was honestly quite embarrassing. Today on the show, which bets did well, which did badly, who's looking ridiculous and who's looking clever? This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin.

I'm Katie Martin, a markets columnist down in the basement of FT HQ in London, and I'm joined, yes, by that great big Rob Armstrong person from the Unhedged newsletter in New York. Rob, say hello to the nice boys and girls.

Rob Armstrong (1:18)

Hello, boys and girls. I'll note that I also sat with the dunce cap last year.

Katie Martin (1:25)

It wasn't as big as mine, unfortunately. But I'm also joined in London by the very excellent, Alan Livsey. Alan, welcome back to the show.

Alan Livsey (1:36)

Hey, nice to be back.

Katie Martin (1:38)

Listeners, think Stanley Tucci, but writing about asset management for the FT.

Alan Livsey (1:42)

You are too kind.

Katie Martin (1:44)

You have basically got Alan. Now, listeners, I want to be very clear at the top here, that none of this is investment advice.

Alan Livsey (1:52)

None at all.

Katie Martin (1:53)

Get an advisor, listen to this for fun, and remember that we are mostly wrong about pretty much everything. So Alan, you're writing up the competition results this year. What has worked for people?

Alan Livsey (2:07)

So it was a year where mining stocks, particularly in precious metals, did well. And our winner had five precious metal mining stocks.

Katie Martin (2:19)

Amazing.

Alan Livsey (2:19)

Yeah. All pretty much focused on one precious metal.

Katie Martin (2:23)

Which was?

Alan Livsey (2:24)

Silver.

Katie Martin (2:25)

Do you know what? Hats off to this person. If you were just purely long silver at the beginning of 2025, you killed it.

Alan Livsey (2:35)

If you liked gold and really thought about it, which I didn't enough, but because I liked gold at the beginning, you would have probably would have picked silver. And that is why that contestant did that. He saw it as a high beta play, a more sensitive play on gold.

Katie Martin (2:54)

What kind of returns did they get?

Alan Livsey (2:57)

He was up, I think, 200 plus percent. And he had one stock, which is actually a FTSE 100 company, Fresneo. And it's known as a gold company, but actually if you look at it, it's 50-50 gold-silver. And it was one of the top performers of all the picks. I mean, it was number two, it was up 300 plus percent.

Rob Armstrong (3:20)

This gold-silver thing is a good instance of a general rule in markets. That if thing X has a great year, thing Y, which is a lot like X, but is slightly crappier, will have an even better year.

Katie Martin (3:40)

Well, they got that so right.

Alan Livsey (3:42)

I mean, there has been, to be fair, at the end of the year, there was a bit of a kind of, whether it was just a narrative or not, a bit of a short squeeze on silver. You know, there was talk of of reducing imports into the United States.

Katie Martin (3:55)

Yeah, so that kind of forced it higher.

Alan Livsey (3:56)

Yeah, so there is a number of sort of last quarter melt up, as you like to say.

Rob Armstrong (4:02)

I would like to utter the L word at this point.

Katie Martin (4:06)

Which is?

Rob Armstrong (4:07)

Luck.

Alan Livsey (4:09)

Yeah, well, no, there's always a lot of that.

Katie Martin (4:12)

Well, if it was you, Armstrong, like sitting on like 200%.

Rob Armstrong (4:15)

I've never experienced luck. I'm just a man who plays bad cards brilliantly. But in the case of everyone else, luck plays a huge role.

Katie Martin (4:25)

I take my hat off to this person. But like what else work for people, Alan? Were people just like all in on the AI trade? Or like what really worked out for people?