The Inaugural AIA Stock Picking Contest

At the 2017 National Conference in August last year, we asked a number of speakers to give us their stock picks. This was intended to be a serious contest but with a light-hearted edge to it. We said that we would award a prize to the winning stock-picker. The stock picks were not published to the general membership, so you had to attend the conference to be ‘in the know’. We allocated a notional $20,000 to each stock, and we tracked the total return from the Friday of the conference week, up to the 30th June this year.

The winner was announced at the 2018 Conference last month, and the results are shown below. The top prize goes to Paul Rickard who achieved a 51.8% return, and in equal second place are Henry Jennings and Charlie Aitken with a 49.1% return. We think you will agree that these are very fine results. Interestingly, if you were to invest an equal amount in all of the picks, you would have achieved 22% for the period. So, even with the not-so-good picks, you would have achieved a result nearly double the increase in the ASX200 index.

We ran the contest again at the Conference this year, and we will award a prize again next year.

Staff Writer