How We’re Doing Vs. The S&P June 3, 2013June 2, 2013 Patrick Johnson: “At last I have finished the update I promised you weeks ago. I compared the return of someone buying and selling [the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, symbol SPY] on the same dates you recommend buying and selling your 194 picks. Here’s the file: Tobias v S&P v2 05 updated thru 04092013. The S&P is on rows 286 to 479. SPY grows $194,000 to $258,000. But your picks grow to $346,000. Both figures count dividends.” ☞ The only things about this I know for sure are: (1) This had to be a lot of work. Thank you, Patrick! (2) If it’s accurate and fairly constructed — as I know Patrick intended, but if the entire Republican case for austerity can rest on a faulty Excel spreadsheet, who am I to assume I really did beat the S&P? — then it’s worth noting that past performance is no guarantee of future success. Though I have to say that I’m more hopeful about that lottery ticket we call Borealis now, at $8 and change, than I was when I first suggested it 14 years ago at $3. Yes, in some ways, it just gets more and more laughable — e.g., it looks as though the stock will finally be listed for trading on a national stock exchange . . . in Prague. Click here for links to the prospectus . . . the 1200-page prospectus. Headquartered in Gibraltar, located in the U.S., traded in Prague, still sitting on hoped-for mineral wealth in Canada . . . you can’t tell me that, at the very least, this is not a colorful lottery ticket. But as faithful readers know, the company’s WheelTug subsidiary does seem to keep signing up airlines you’ve heard of, like El Al, Alitalia, and KLM, and partners you may have heard of, like Parker Hannifin. And you may by now have watched the video of the thing seeming to work. So I continue to imagine a $50,000 annual profit from what could theoretically be equipment leased to airlines with more than 10,000 planes — which right there would make the the company worth billions. It’s market cap today? Forty million. That’s barely more than the $35 million they’re asking for this gorgeous 4-bedroom penthouse at 55 Central Park West (I’d grab it, but the $157,006 monthly maintenance is a little out of my league) and just more than half the price to which the Versace mansion has been reduced (from $125 million to $75 million) on South Beach. But I digress.