Will Barrington's Best Stock Picks for 2011 Deliver?

Retirement investing is a "hair on fire" problem -- especially for baby boomers for whom retirement is a near and present danger. Investment decisions are easy these days. Buying stocks has the risk of losing money, but with interest rates being what they are and inflation being a present reality, not investing means certain reduction in assets in real terms.

Conventional wisdom for long term (retirement) investors is that they should build a diversified portfolio of mutual funds or ETFs. At the same time, we are barraged with the best stock picks showing amazing results that make these more diversified portfolios look pedestrian.

To help provide some context, we are initiating coverage on some of these stock picks to see how they do over the coming quarters. We go back a year or so to show how they have done with simulated results and we will start reporting live data going forward.

Barrington Research has updated its market-beating list of Best Ideas for 2011, which includes stocks such as Sirius XM (SIRI), Imax (IMAX) and others it expects to rise up to 65%. A full description of each of the stocks they selected and why can be found here.

Holdings on 04/13/2011

Annualized Return

Name	Last 1 Year	Last 3 Years	Last 5 Years
P Barrington Updates Best Stock Picks for 2011	30%
VFINX (Vanguard (S&P 500) Index)	10%	2%	2%
VBINX (Vanguard Balance (60% stocks/40% bonds)	9%	4%	5%

Historical Portfolio Chart

With a one year return of 30%, that is going to beat any balanced portfolio but with it you also get increased volatility and risk.

We will now watch this portfolio and report on its returns over the coming month.

Disclosure: MyPlanIQ does not have any business relationship with the company or companies mentioned in this article. It does not set up their retirement plans.

Disclosure: Author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.