Strategy

In order to do the best job I can for the shareholders of my mutual funds, I've always wanted the most skilled investors in the world to be on my team. In 1999, after co-managing the top-performing mutual fund in the country for five years, I received thousands of résumés and interviewed hundreds of people, and I learned that interviews and résumés are of little help in finding the people I want for my team.

You see, a lot of people who have impressive résumés and polished presentation skills turn out to be terrible investors.

In 2000, I decided it was time to try a different approach. So I started telling people NOT to send me their résumés and not to come in for interviews. Instead, I challenged them to prove that they knew how to make money in the market by managing a virtual portfolio at my Web site Marketocracy.com. In the past five years, more than 80,000 people have responded to the challenge. That gives me an unprecedented amount of data -- the data I have needed to find the skilled investors I've always wanted on my team.

My All-Stars

I call this team the m100. They are 100 of the most skilled investors I've ever had the privilege to work with -- an All-Star Team! Since November 2001, I've used the m100 to select and research stocks for the mutual fund I manage, the Masters 100 Fund.

Regulations prevent me from saying much about the fund here, but you can find out everything you ever wanted to know about this fund at the Masters 100 Fund Web site. I highly recommend that you take a look because the best proof of how an investment concept works is how well it does in reality.

Since this round of Strategy Lab lasts only six months, I'm going to have to do something I've only done once before -- in the last round. I'm going to cherry-pick the m100 portfolio. The stocks I like best are those that can double in two years. The m100 has been extraordinarily successful in finding stocks like this. Over the past four years, our team has identified more than 900 stocks that were at least a one-bagger (meaning they doubled). More than 350 of them turned into two-baggers or more, and 21 of those stocks were 10-baggers or more.

I'm confident that many of the stocks currently in the m100 portfolio can double in the next two years, but picking the ones that will come to fruition in the next six months will be a challenge for me.

The secret to good stock research is to frame the right questions about the big issues. And then you ask those questions of the people who are best qualified to answer them. I'll be using the m100 to pick the stocks, identify the issues and frame the right questions. If you have any insight on these stocks, issues and questions, I welcome hearing from you. My e-mail address is kenkam@marketocracy.com.

I will reward anyone who sends me a useful insight about a stock I've written about with a free copy of Marketscope, our monthly newsletter, which normally goes for $25.