Invest like an All-Star

Welcome to one of our most impatiently awaited issues. Most stock rankings tell you about last year’s biggest gainers. Our long-time readers love the All-Star Stocks list because it uncovers buys ahead of time—when you can actually make decisions and share in any upside. Of course there are absolutely no guarantees, but these picks have now outperformed the broader market by three-and-a-half times over the past 11 years on average. It’s why we regularly field requests from readers imploring us to share the list before it goes to print. Sorry, no.

The list of stocks for the Top 200 is just the starting point; we begin with the largest stocks based on revenue. The fun comes when Contributing Editor Norm Rothery starts with the number crunching. There are several ways to leverage his findings in your own investing strategy. Readers get:

■ Letter grades for each of the Top 200 Canadian stocks. Given these are the top blue chips in the country, these are stocks that just about every Canadian holds, either directly or indirectly through their pensions.

■ A short list of 20 stocks that rate an A grade for their Growth prospects and the same number which do so for Value plays (accounting for duplication, just 37 of the Top 200 stocks make the cut).

■ A total of just 11 All-Star Stocks (those with at least one A and one B in Value and Growth). This is the All-Star portfolio.

Why should you care? Before dividends, the annual roster of All-Stars has averaged annual gains of 15.8% over the past 10 years, compared to 4.4% for the S&P/TSX Composite. Proving it’s no fluke, the same All-Star system for the Top 500 U.S. stocks has outperformed the S&P 500 18.5% to 10.3% over the past seven years—although by a much smaller margin over a full decade.

This is what MoneySense does best. Rankings like our All-Star Stocks portfolio are the kind of value-added research readers look to us for. Subscribers can even work the tables online. And we have lots more where that came from. Last issue, we presented the Top 100 dividend stocks. In this issue, check out the Top 100 Charities, which helps you direct your charitable dollars to the organizations that do the most good.

Of course, as always, we are also jam-packed with our regular features. They run the gamut from taxes (Evelyn Jacks calculates what a Liberal government will mean to your pocketbook), to personal finance mythbusting (we’re introducing a new column called #MoneyHacker with Robert R. Brown) and the best pickup you can buy. And while we’re all about helping you invest and build your wealth, we are also invested in the human side of money. Read Julie Cazzin’s story of one man’s efforts to get his financial plan back in order after a double whammy of divorce and cancer diagnosis, with a career change on top.