At the start of the year, I polled 33 bloggers for their top investment picks for the year 2016. The original post can be found here. The picks ranged from small- to mid- to large-cap investments and even one recommending holding cash. All in all, very interesting picks. As promised, here is a quarterly update on the picks.
Note that these picks are simply meant to be a fun exercise and should not be treated as investment advise one way or another.
Top Investment Picks for 2016 – Q1 Update
To see the spreadsheet with the picks on a separate window, click here.
Top Performers
Dividend Digger & Tales From The Tape: Inter Pipeline Ltd (IPL.TO)A pipeline company as a top performer. Who would’ve thought? Both Dividend Digger and Tales From The Tape picked Inter Pipeline as their top pick. The recovery in oil prices has brought some respite to the energy sector and mid-stream infrastructure operators have recovered well. In addition, exposure to the terminals business segment brings much needed diversification. Another aspect that has helped the stock is the Suncor deal to acquire Canadian Oil Sands for $6.6B. COS has been a heavy user of the IPL pipelines. IPL.TO’s YTD return (including dividends) is 22.20%
Angry Retail Banker: Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI)
ARB made a great pick with this one. Kinder Morgan was beaten down after the dividend cut in December and everyone was hating this stock. As is usually true in investing, “Buy when there is blood on the streets” is a good strategy and this seems to be case with Kinder Morgan. The stock price has performed well so far in 2016 after Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a 26.5M share investment in Kinder Morgan. At the time of writing, that position works out to be ~$475M. KMI’s YTD return (including dividends) is 20.76%
Simply Safe Dividends: HB Fuller Co (FUL)
HB Fuller Co is a small-cap (market cap $2B) company that has performed very well this year. The company focuses on adhesives used commonly in consumer and industrial goods, including food and beverage containers, disposable diapers, windows, doors, flooring, appliances, sportswear, footwear, multi-wall bags, water filtration products, insulation, textiles and electronics.
I am not very familiar with this company, so I will have to take a closer look. Read SSD’s full dividend stock analysis here. FUL’s YTD return (including dividends) is 16.75%
Dividend Hawk: Emerson Electric (EMR)
Emerson Electric lagged most of the other good performers until mid-March. EMR has suffered due to its exposure to the oil & gas market and now that oil has recovered a bit, investors are more bullish as the stock jumped 7%+ in one day after earnings guidance was announced. Emerson has been a popular pick in the Dividend Growth Investing community over the course of past few months, and Dividend Hawk has made a good pick here for 2016. EMR’s YTD return (including dividends) is 14.69%
Summary
Again, I like to remind readers not to take these investment advises blindly and ask you to perform your own due diligence before investing. Investing is a long term game, the performance of which should be measured in years and decades and not in days and quarters. As I said earlier, this is merely meant to be a fun exercise in investment picks. Having said that, hope you had a good quarter. Do you own any of the stocks mentioned? What are your thoughts on these investment picks. Share your thoughts below.
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