What a month! This one went right down to the wire…

As of noon EST on March 31, there were 15 Stock Challengers with a realistic chance of winning. It was that tight. After a handful of lead changes on the last day, our winner finally emerged.

Please join us in welcoming our new champion: Member ‘MIC’!

With exclusively commodity-based stock picks (Trillion Energy International Inc. and Kootenay Silver Inc.) MIC finished the month with an average return of 71.56%, roughly 15 percent ahead of our second-place finish. Member ‘ERICC1948’ eeked out a second-place finish with an average return of 57.68%. He was trailed only slightly by third-place finisher ‘Ry’ who closed the month out at 57.37%.

Congratulations, you three! March was a tight month, and your well-earned prizes, which include silver bullion for 1st and 2nd, will be shipped out shortly.

There are a few noteworthy points from this month’s challenge, some good and some bad…

March 2021 was the worst average return for our Stock Challenge since March of last year, when the onset of the pandemic crushed valuations.

Of all the exchanges that our challengers picked stocks from, the CSE and OTCBB stocks selected this month were the worst hit. If you will recall, those exchanges (along with the Venture) provided the best returns for our Stock Challengers in February.

 

Stock Challenge chart Mar. 31

Roughly 30% of Stock Challengers finished the month in the green. Of our 448 participants, only 129 yielded positive returns.

Most Popular Picks in March

Top March stock challenge picks
percentages are approximations

Selected 16 times by contestants, Tesla was the most popular stock in March’s Stock Challenge. Forwardly Inc., last month’s best performing stock, was also popular with 11 picks, but it suffered a big tumble this month, losing roughly 28%.

Surprisingly, given that 2 of the top 5 performing stocks in this month’s challenge were blockchain/crypto-based, only Ry of our top ten finishers in this month’s contest picked a crypto-based stock.

Final Top 10 Leaderboards

March Stock Challenge Leaderboard

 

March’s challenge was one of the closest contests in the last year, and the average return (demonstrated by our Stock Challenge Index) from our challengers was nearly -7%. Ouch…

After several consecutive months of white-hot returns before March’s contest, Stock Challengers were reminded of just how unforgiving speculative stocks can be.