The method should
be part of the evidence.

What is available today

The site uses a research summary dated 9 October 2026. The stated price source is Yahoo daily adjusted close prices.

The anonymised pick records include a month, a pick return and a matched index return. You can download the records. Original prices and calculation scripts are not included, so the underlying price research has not been independently rerun here.

Adjusted prices can reflect corporate actions and, depending on the instrument, distributions. An index symbol is not automatically a total-return series. The pick file identifies SPY as the S&P 500 benchmark. The exact price dates and dividend treatment still need documentation; the symbols for the other backtests are not listed.

Compare each pick over its own 12 months.

The sample contains 1,846 picks from a popular stock-tip newsletter, each followed for 12 months. Each pick is compared with the S&P 500 over the same holding period.

The basic return calculation is:

Return = (ending adjusted price ÷ starting adjusted price − 1) × 100%

A pick beats the index when its return is higher than the benchmark return over those same dates. The difference is reported in percentage points, not as a percentage of the benchmark return.

• 32 picks doubled; 715 lost money; 642 beat the index.
• The median pick returned +6.9%.
• The median benchmark return over the corresponding periods was +20.1%.

The median is the middle result after sorting. The gap between two medians is not necessarily the median of all the paired differences. Neither median is the return of a portfolio holding all the picks.

Counting rules still need documentation: duplicate recommendations, entry timing, non-trading days, delisted stocks, missing prices and whether every eligible recommendation was retained. Losing and index-beating categories may overlap. The newsletter sample cannot stand in for all stock pickers.

What the records file contains

The file gives months, not exact dates or stock names. In particular, the October 2025 entries cannot be checked for a full 12-month holding period by 9 October 2026 without exact entry dates. Missing months are not treated as zero returns.

How does the pick-your-ten game work?

You choose up to ten companies from a fixed list of 44 well-known US-listed shares. The comparison starts in the first month that every company you chose had a share price, so a company that listed recently shortens the window for all of them.

Each month in that window, we spend US$100 on each chosen company at its month-end adjusted closing price, and the same total on the S&P 500 total return index. Adjusted prices include dividends and share splits; dividends are treated as reinvested before tax. Everything is valued at the latest price, on 9 October 2026. There are no fees or taxes in the sums.

This uses hindsight. The list holds companies people know today, including some that later did badly. It is not a test of stock-picking skill, and the newsletter records on the scoreboard are not used in it.

The 70/30 mix is an index backtest.

The stated allocation is 70% Nasdaq 100 and 30% S&P 500, rebalanced yearly, from January 2000 to 9 October 2026. It is not a stock-and-bond portfolio.

The reported annualised returns are 8.88% for the mix, 8.37% for the S&P 500 and 8.76% for the Nasdaq 100. Annualised return expresses a cumulative result as a compound rate per year:

Annualised return = (ending value ÷ starting value)^{1 / years} − 1

The 201 rolling 10-year windows are overlapping stretches of history. The mix beat the S&P 500 in 185 of them. Median annualised returns were 13.7% versus 9.9%; the worst were -5.7% versus -1.9%.

Overlapping windows share observations. They are not 201 independent experiments. The starting-date schedule, exact rebalance date, index symbols, dividend treatment, costs, currency and tax assumptions have not been provided.

CSPX and CNDX are possible present-day fund implementations. The historical index result is not a claim that these funds delivered the stated returns from January 2000.

Measure the fall from an earlier high.

A drawdown is the decline from a previous peak. For the yearly table, track the highest value reached so far within each calendar year and measure subsequent falls from it. The largest decline is that year’s reported fall.

Drawdown = (current value ÷ earlier peak − 1) × 100%

The annual figures reset at each calendar year. They are different from the worst decline across the whole history, which may span several years. The 2026 observation ends on 9 October.

The 70/30 mix’s reported worst fall was -75%, from March 2000 to October 2002. Its reported recovery to the old high took about 14 years. The summary does not specify an inflation adjustment or exact recovery date, so no purchasing-power recovery claim is made.

Two timing questions, two tests.

Invest at once or use 12 payments?

The S&P 500 test covers 82 rolling one-year windows within 2019 to 2025. Investing at once beat 12 monthly payments in 69 windows. The exact start dates, payment dates, interest on uninvested cash, final valuation time and transaction costs need to be provided to reproduce it.

Invest at once or wait for a dip?

The separate dip test used starts near a market high, a two-year horizon and 3.5% annual interest on cash while waiting. Waiting won in 35% to 68% of cases depending on the rule. The reported average outcomes were within about 5% of each other.

“Near a high”, the dip triggers, deadlines, sample size and the denominator for the 5% gap are not defined in the summary. Without those details, this result is descriptive and cannot validate a particular waiting rule.

What would make this independently checkable?

These items are still needed before someone can reproduce every figure:

• Dated records of all eligible recommendations, including identifiers and exclusion reasons.
• The exact price series and benchmark symbols, download dates and corporate-action treatment.
• Code and explicit entry, exit, calendar and missing-data rules.
• Full allocation, rebalancing, tax, fee, currency and dividend assumptions.
• The timing-test start dates and rules, plus the per-window outputs.

Fund facts and tax explanations in the CSPX guide link to issuer and tax-authority sources. Those sources verify the product explanations, not the newsletter backtest.