who were the big hitters of 2024?

When requested to clarify his baseball prowess, legendary batter Wee Willie Keeler informed others “to hit ’em the place they ain’t”. The winner of the 2024 FT Cash inventory selecting contest, Alex Khan, took that recommendation to coronary heart. He positioned his bets the place few rivals dared tread. His five-stock portfolio, evenly weighted, soared 393 per cent. Nobody else got here shut.

The FT’s annual contest pits the experience of FT writers, together with specialists on the equities market, in opposition to readers, a lot of whom dug out lesser-known, small corporations which supply a horny narrative.

Our 1,364 contestants on this fantasy, each readers and FT writers, selected 5 shares, and will go lengthy, or quick, in all or any the positions. The portfolio was equally weighted, with out concern for forex actions or dividends. No ETFs have been allowed.

If that sounds a bit nuts, it’s meant to be. Such an excellent concentrated portfolio wouldn’t go well with {most professional} traders. As an alternative, this train is supposed to supply a little bit of enjoyable. The one prize is pleasure in beating a gaggle of dedicated contestants, to not point out fairly a number of FT scribes — and a tour of the newspaper’s HQ in London.

For Khan, it’s not only a recreation, although: he owns the shares he put ahead. As he places it: “I’m a perpetually investor and an proprietor of a inventory for the long run (not a renter). I desire when an organization grows and does what it guarantees and the inventory worth rises as a pure outcome.”

What sort of yr was 2024? It was not a yr to hedge, nor one for holding giant, well-known corporations. Going lengthy on small capitalisation, thematic bets labored finest — 2024 was a yr for the hitters.

As an indicator, the US benchmark S&P 500 index managed a really respectable 19.3 per cent, with out counting dividends. That return was within the thirty third percentile amongst this peer group, hardly horrible for an institutional portfolio supervisor.

However for our winners, a portfolio of high-beta small corporations, extremely delicate to general market returns, labored a lot better. On the different finish of the listing, about 38 per cent misplaced cash in a yr when purchase and maintain typically labored.

Loads of the quick sellers have been incinerated by some white sizzling rallies. In the true world, legendary quick sellers Jim Chanos and Hindenburg Analysis’s Nathan Anderson called it quits previously yr, too. Anderson described his process as “reasonably intense, and at occasions, all-encompassing”.

Each surrendered to the inventory market stampede. Those that guess in opposition to corporations — equivalent to Tesla or Nvidia — suffered badly. These two have been by far the preferred shorts amongst our gamers.

Of the massive hitters, Khan stood out with two large winners — Rigetti Computing and IonQ, each concerned with quantum computing — which have been held by only a few (if any) of the opponents within the area. One other Khan guess was Rocket Lab USA, a SpaceX wannabe, once more not broadly held.

As common, timing is all. Curiosity in all issues to do with quantum computing, AI and associated applied sciences pushed up share costs to crazy ranges within the final quarter of the yr. The truth that Rigetti leapt 1,300 per cent, principally at yr’s finish, made the distinction for Khan who now lives within the UK.

He stood out in different methods, too. He doesn’t take care of cryptocurrencies and had nothing associated to this market in his holdings. One expertise which he believes will probably be disruptive and transformative is quantum computing, which made up two of his 5 picks. “So far as I’m involved, quantum computing will probably be larger than the web.”

Having labored within the US, he admires that nation’s strengths and had no considerations with concentrating his investments there. Certainly, his solely European holding, Germany-based Lilium Air, an electrical jet developer, fell final yr.

Khan started as a non-public consumer dealer, initially with a UK-based Merrill Lynch HSBC three way partnership. Later he labored in America for different companies. He has since targeted on the US for his funding concepts. A fan of Warren Buffett, Khan eschews inventory tip websites such because the Reddit sub-thread Wall Avenue Bets. As an alternative he buys and holds, together with the entire shares he put up for this competitors. As he says: “I don’t observe any inventory tippers. I used to be one!”

Khan opts for a bottom-up method on inventory selecting, however inside bigger well-liked themes. How does he display screen out his picks? Key funding standards for him embody the corporate having minimal debt, plus sufficient money to function for at the least three years. He additionally seeks these with a proficient, charismatic founder or chief govt, ideally with a disruptive expertise or aggressive benefit.

In distinction, runner-up Iain Todd, who works within the UK pharmaceutical trade, admits his private funding fashion doesn’t replicate the comparatively aggressive holdings of his second-placed portfolio, up greater than 212 per cent. He thus didn’t have his cash in these corporations.

Main his picks was SoundHound AI, which produces automated responses for buyer name centres. Once more, not solely was his alternative a terrific one — it soared 978 per cent — he additionally managed to discover a winner which just about none of his rivals had. Sadly, a few of his different picks let him down, together with the lung most cancers detection hopeful Cizzle Biotechnology.

Just one different contestant selected SoundHound AI, and that was our third positioned finisher Bhavin Bhatt, additionally primarily based within the UK. That one choose helped him obtain a 209 per cent achieve, simply off second place. In contrast to Todd, he has put his cash to work on that and his different picks. Whereas he had one large US expertise winner, he then selected to unfold his bets amongst various sectors within the UK market.

His subsequent positioned winner, cyber safety group Darktrace, may need carried out a lot better by the tip of the yr. As an alternative, he felt it was acquired cheaply by non-public fairness group Thoma Bravo. His different UK tech play, Cab Funds, fell in the course of the yr.

Each left him bitter concerning the potential for UK equities. He now sees the UK as a short-selling heaven. “The UK inventory market stays damaged. There aren’t any incentives for smaller traders,” he laments.

What about these so-called specialists? What started as an in-house FT competitors years in the past might have unfold to our readership, however any inside rivalry has not dissipated. Among the many editorial workers, the champion inventory picker for the second yr operating was our UK information editor Kadhim Shubber who produced a really respectable 137 per cent return, twelfth amongst all contestants.

Whatever the editorial group’s cautious view in direction of cryptocurrencies, Shubber selected to go his personal means and profited, embracing US software program group and bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy. This soared 468 per cent. Shubber’s high three included Coinbase, a gutsy name given how properly it did in 2023.

Furthermore, he predicted all of this final yr, as famous within the write up: ‘I believed that bitcoin is the longer term and due to this fact I needed to place all my eggs within the bitcoin basket’, he mentioned, with tongue in cheek. He promised to stay with precisely the identical technique for his 2024 picks. And that’s precisely what he did.

After final yr’s nice run, has he been humbled by the fortune bestowed by the market gods? In no way.

“Folks say that previous efficiency isn’t any assure of future outcomes, however these folks haven’t yolo’d (you solely stay as soon as) into crypto two years operating within the FT’s inventory selecting competitors. I stay up for sharing my insights with you once more this time subsequent yr.”

No matter this achievement, he didn’t high the FT’s leaderboard. That honour went to staffer Radu Josan who deserves a hat tip as he got here in fourth amongst all contestants with a 191 per cent achieve. He too had his cash within the recreation, proudly owning his high three: MicroStrategy, Palantir — the data-sifting software program group managed by Peter Thiel — and Coinbase.

And what about these on the different finish of the desk? To spare any blushes, we gained’t disclose these readers with the largest quantity of egg on their faces — principally executed by shorting excessive flyers among the many “Magnificent Seven”. There have been some notable quick concepts that did properly. Whereas Rocket Lab USA practically quintupled, Virgin Galactic crashed 84 per cent. However on the very backside of the desk, quick positions on MicroStrategy seem often.

Sadly, one of many 5 worst performers general was Katie Martin, the FT’s market columnist. Her portfolio fell 127 per cent, not helped by her guess in opposition to MicroStrategy. None of her three lengthy positions might come near offsetting its highly effective leap. Solely a type of, Microsoft, went up.

“God, what an absolute prepare wreck,” says an abashed Martin. “The worst factor is that I by no means be taught — I’ve shorted Tesla earlier than and been hammered on it, and for some cause I believed I’d attempt it once more.”

Inventory selecting contest 2025 guidelines

• You have to choose particular person shares listed on a serious inventory market. 

•  The winner is the portfolio that generates the best general return by December 31 2025. 

•  If there’s a superb margin between the 2 high entries we’ll add dividends to the lengthy returns, and subtract them from the shorts.

•  Foreign money actions usually are not taken into consideration.

•  If your organization is taken over, you are taking the worth at which it’s buying and selling on the finish of the interval, or the ultimate worth whether it is delisted or suspended.

The three readers whose portfolios carry out finest will probably be invited for a tour of the FT’s places of work in London early in 2026. Good luck!

You may enter the competitors here. For full guidelines, phrases and situations, see https://help.ft.com/faq/legal-and-privacy/stock-picking-competition/

By no means a fan of bitcoin, Martin hoped that 2024 can be her yr. “The actual injury clearly comes from shorting MicroStrategy. I figured 2024 can be the yr it got here unstuck, and/or that bitcoin would lastly run out of patrons, and clearly I used to be completely improper on each fronts. In equity, I did suppose this was a dying or glory commerce. It simply turned out that I picked dying.”

One other notable loser among the many FT columnists was client editor Claer Barrett. The perpetrator once more was Tesla. “I used to be ready to danger shorting [the] shares, however I reckoned with out the US election. Would I quick them once more on this yr’s competitors? You guess!”

In final yr’s contest, greater than 60 per cent of portfolios generated a optimistic return, much like 2023. Our league leaders not solely prevented the pitfalls of shorting US megacap shares, but additionally discovered these winners which few others held.

And let’s face it, our winners additionally benefited from a bit of fine fortune, an end-year bull run in celebration of the approaching Trump administration. Among the profitable holdings went up a number of occasions in December alone. By yr finish one may count on the Trump-era exuberance to have misplaced a few of its vigour, maybe giving all our 2025 contestants an opportunity at profitable.