Carlos Portocarrero

Top Brand Names and Stock Returns

@ED K: You make a valid point, but the whole point of the WeSeed.com is to get people buying and selling fake stock. So yeah, the idea is for them to learn regardless of their stocks doing well or not.

Hopefully they can learn from their picks that do well as much as they can from those that don't. When they're ready to go into the real world, they'll be that much more prepared.

Top Brand Names and Stock Returns

Jake, I agree that simply "investing in what you know and love" is bad advice if you don't add some meat to it. You have to know the company, the management, the books (to some extent), and you have to do your homework. I don't think anyone would disagree with you on that.

But the study makes a strong point about the influence that brands have on stocks. Of course it's impossible to know which companies would be the top brands today back in 2000, but I still think the study makes a valid argument relating brands to stocks.

If you noticed everyone wearing an iPod or using a Blackberry before Wall Street crunched the numbers on these companies, you could've gotten in early and made a good investment in these brands/companies.

Is it a surefire way of picking stocks? Of course not. Is it another tool to keep in the arsenal, especially when it comes to novice investors scared away by P/E ratios and balance sheets? I don't see why not.