Everything I Learned from My Hot Chart Summer, and How My 21 Stocks Picks Have Performed.

If you had told me at the beginning of May that I would spend part of my summer scanning thousands of stock charts every morning, writing daily stock analysis, and putting my technical reputation on the line across 21 individual picks, I would have been very skeptical.

As a veteran portfolio manager, my career has been defined by viewing the investing world from 30,000 feet. I’ve spent decades focused on asset allocation, macro risk defense, and helping self-directed investors navigate volatile markets. 

I am, at my core, a portfolio constructor. In fact, when people ask me what I do for a living, I occasionally respond “I’m in construction.” If they follow up and ask what type of construction, I take off my proverbial hard hat and explain: I construct investment portfolios. 

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are the lead players in that work, which is why the majority of my writing for Barchart relates to that type of analysis, truth-telling and myth-busting. With me, stock picking is a side dish, not the main course.  

Writing a daily column in a specific layout, as straightforward and consistent as that is, tends to be seen as binary. That is, you’re either right or wrong. 

That’s not how I have rolled in the decades I managed other people’s money. In real-world portfolio construction, single-ticker decisions are all just one piece of a bigger puzzle… referred to as a portfolio. That’s why constructing, not picking, is the world I’m more accustomed to. 

I’ve learned over time that the former is both a lost art and distant concept for many DIY investors. I hope to change that, one investor at a time, perhaps.

Yet when I agreed to step in for Jim Van Meerten as the guest columnist behind Barchart’s “Chart of the Day” newsletter for two separate stints, I treated it as a logistical challenge and an exercise to really hone in on applying my technical analysis chops to individual securities. And by doing so, try to help anyone who reads those articles. 

Now that the dust has settled on those 21 guest columns I authored, I could not help but look back at the performance of my picks through Wednesday, Aug. 19. I intentionally waited a couple of months to write this, and only started tracking the numbers a few days ago. And, while I don’t expect everyone to believe this, I was prepared to present this table, regardless of what it showed. 

The Standings: 21 Single Stocks Under the Microscope

Below is the complete ledger of all 21 “Chart of the Day” features published during my summer stints, tracked from their publication baseline (the previous day’s close) through the close on Aug. 19. 

• The average stock saw a high-low range of 24% during this period.
• On average, these names offered a 15% potential gain to their peak while risking a 9% drawdown to their trough.
• The overall average return sits at +7%.
• The articles were published across an eight-week period, with a two-week gap in between, since Jim’s time away was in two separate stints. Roughly speaking, it has been about three months on average since this set of articles posted to Barchart.

In a live account, position sizing would vary dramatically based on volatility, market cap, and other risk factors. That includes my level of conviction in the chart work for each stock, as well as the timing of earnings releases. (There was a period in which I ran a mutual fund that included about 20-25 stock positions. I avoided earnings like the plague!)

The most revealing column in that table above isn’t the final return. It’s the “Lowest Close” column. Look at Tesla (TSLA), for instance. It saw a 28% drawdown down to $298 before moving back toward $351. 

Or Zscaler (ZS), which suffered a 29% drop down to $124 before rebounding back to $185. 

JD.com (JD) fell 25% before recovering part of its move. Would I like to have that one back? Of course I would!

Now, speaking as a risk manager first and return-maximizer second: In a real portfolio, I would not have held through some of those deep drawdowns. I’ve managed through enough bear market cycles to know the difference between risk management and leaving things to chance. 

While holding through a 29% drop in Zscaler worked out in hindsight, relying on “hope and recovery” is not an investment strategy. For a tiny position size, sure. But not a true, “core” portfolio position.

The fact that names like SailPoint (SAIL) (+46%), Baxter (BAX) (+40%), and DexCom (DXCM) (+34%) moved straight up without ever breaking their initial support levels demonstrates why I think strict exit rules are necessary to cut the laggards and protect capital. 

As I’ve written here many times, the past few years have been more a case of winners and losers balancing each other out, as roughly one-third of S&P 500 Index ($SPX) stocks have not made much or any gains. Just look at the index itself, where a small number of stocks account for the full gai of the benchmark. 

Renting Jim’s column for two weeks in May and another stretch in June was more than just fun investment journalism. It was a catalyst for me. It re-engaged my passion for individual equity selection and reminded me how powerful single-stock tactical setups can be when combined with macro overlay risk management (my usual fare). 

In recent months, I’ve consolidated a lot of my research and model portfolio construction into a single “best ideas” ETFs plus stocks portfolio, which I affectionately refer to as ROAR FLEX. It takes my go-to 10-ETF model and adds greater position weight flexibility and yes, some tactical stock and ETF picks. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

What I Hope Readers Took Away

This is a direct result of my embracing the vast tool kit that Barchart offers. I write about that here, but it only scratches the surface. As I told my editing team recently, I used to spend maybe 25% of my day on Barchart. Now? It has flipped to 75%. 

The outcome is less about short-term performance and more about tightening one’s investing process to include whatever personalized features any individual investor adopts for themselves. 

If there is one key lesson I hope readers took away from following along with my picks this summer, and this post mortem analysis: A good single-stock chart is just raw material. A successful portfolio is the finished house.

Spotting a great chart setup is only step one. The rest comes from knowing how much to buy; what has to occur for you to want to sell it (upside and downside); how to balance it with ETFs without being redundant; and when to harvest profits without being a pig. That’s where stock-picking transitions to investing. 

It has not mattered as much in the buy-the-dip era. But it will at some point. 

Rob Isbitts is a semi-retired CIO, former fiduciary investment advisor, and Barchart columnist. Check out his other work at ETFYourself.com (featuring the Fresh Charts weekly trading post), and ROAR.PiTrade.com, helping investors to better-manage their own portfolios.