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Expert Recommendations In The ‘Dartboard’ Column, William Bertin, Laurie Prather

Laurie Prather

For many years the Wall Street Journal’s "Your Money Matters" column has conducted monthly stock selection contests where random "dartboard portfolios" have been pitted against professional stock analysts’ portfolios. In the professional portfolios, four stocks are selected by four experts, while the dart portfolios consists of four stocks randomly selected by Wall Street Journal staff members throwing darts onto a dartboard containing all stock listings from the NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ. In both portfolios each stock is given an equal weight of 25 percent. The returns for each stock are computed over a six-month holding period, and the portfolio returns …