Objective research to aid investing decisions
Login Join
Value Investing Strategy (Strategy Overview)
Allocations for February 2026 (Final)
Cash TLT LQD SPY
Momentum Investing Strategy (Strategy Overview)
Allocations for February 2026 (Final)
1st ETF 2nd ETF 3rd ETF

Performance of Barron’s Annual Top 10 Stocks

Steve LeCompte | | Posted in: Investing Expertise

Each year in December, Barron's publishes its list of the best 10 stocks for the next year. Do these picks on average beat the market? To investigate, we scrape the web to find these lists for years 2011 through 2026, calculate the associated calendar year total return for each stock and calculate the average return for the 10 stocks for each year. We use SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) as a benchmark for these averages. We source most stock prices from Yahoo!Finance, but also use Historical Stock Price.com for a few stocks no longer tracked there. Using year-end dividend-adjusted stock prices for the specified stocks-years during 2010 through 2025, we find that:

Subscribe to Keep Reading

Get the research edge serious investors rely on.

  • 1,200+ research articles
  • Monthly strategy signals
  • 20+ years of backtested analysis
$17.99 /month

Cancel anytime

Subscribe Now

Further Reading

Investing Expertise Great Stock Picks from Forbes? Do “great stock picks” from Forbes beat the market? To investigate, we evaluate stock picks for 2022, 2023,... Calendar Effects Year of the Decade Effect? Are some years of the decade better than others for equity markets? To investigate, we look at average... Size Effect Big 10 Effect? Have we entered an era when only the biggest firms can afford the massive investments needed to field... Individual Gurus Stock Picking Track Record of Steven Cress A subscriber asked about the track record of Steven Cress, VP of Quantitative Strategy and Market Data at... Fundamental Valuation Usefulness of P/E10 as Stock Market Return Predictor Does P/E10 (or Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings ratio, CAPE) usefully predict U.S. stock market returns? Per Robert Shiller’s data, P/E10 is inflation-adjusted S&P... Equity Premium, Fundamental Valuation Stock Market Valuation Perspectives Is U.S. equity market valuation outrunning its productive value? For perspective, we compare the trajectories of S&P 500...