January is over, so we’re officially 1/12th of the way through the 2019 Fantasy Investing season. I had written previously about my own FI2019 portfolio, but now you get to see the portfolios of our other entrants!

We had 4 brave souls submit portfolios to challenge yours truly and I’m happy to report that the first month results have gone a lot better for me than the Freedom Portfolio has gone so far. Here are the current standings (overall portfolio return is in parenthesis after the person’s name):

Paul (29.6%)

Ticker	Company	Starting Price	Current Price	Percent Change
AMZN	Amazon	1465.2	1718.73	17.3
IQ	iQiyi	14.56	20.12	38.2
MELI	MercadoLibre	285.61	364.0	27.4
SQ	Square	54.1	71.35	31.9
TDOC	Teladoc	48.19	64.2	33.2

Adrian (25.1%)

Ticker	Company	Starting Price	Current Price	Percent Change
AMD	Advanced Micro Devices	18.01	24.41	35.5
AMZN	Amazon	1465.2	1718.73	17.3
NFLX	Netflix	259.28	339.5	30.9
NVDA	nVidia	130.64	143.75	10.0
SQ	Square	54.1	71.35	31.9

Gurkie (19.9%)

Ticker	Company	Starting Price	Current Price	Percent Change
AMZN	Amazon	1465.2	1718.73	17.3
C	Citigroup	50.68	64.46	28.0
DIS	Disney	108.1	111.52	3.2
GE	General Electric	7.46	10.16	36.2
TCEHY	Tencent	38.865	44.61	14.8

Matt (8.3%)

Ticker	Company	Starting Price	Current Price	Percent Change
FZROX	Fidelity ZERO Total Market	8.79	9.53	8.4
TSLA	Tesla	306.1	307.02	0.3
VGSLX	Vanguard Real Estate	103.48	118.14	14.2
VTI	Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF	125.75	138.53	10.2
VTSAX	Vanguard Total Stock Market	62.15	67.43	8.5

Daniel (7.9%)

Ticker	Company	Starting Price	Current Price	Percent Change
VBTLX	Vanguard Total Bond Market	10.46	10.53	0.7
VFIAX	Vanguard 500	231.73	249.98	7.9
VFWAX	Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US	28.27	30.52	8.0
VIMAX	Vanguard Mid-Cap	170.59	189.11	10.9
VSMAX	Vanguard Small-Cap	63.17	70.72	12.0

A few things immediately jump out:

It’s been a good month for the market – By my count there were 22 different tickers picked and every single one of them is positive so far (although some are just barely…. I’m looking at you, Tesla). That’s pretty incredible. The worst performing portfolio is still up 7.9% in a single month. Extrapolated over the entire year, that would more than double the value of a portfolio over the course of the year. The 29.6% monthly return for the best portfolio (*cough*mine*cough) in January would turn $100 into over $2,000 in just one year. While that’s a fun example of the power of compound interest, it’s also a completely ludicrous pace to expect to keep up.

There are a lot of different ways to passively invest – We have two portfolios which are almost entirely dedicated to index funds. Amazingly, there is no overlap between the two portfolios. Just goes to show that there can be a lot of variety in style even when dealing with passive investing.

The stock pickers are winning… so far – Obviously I wanted to lead with this, but I didn’t want to brag too much. As I mentioned previously, we essentially have two portfolios which are proxies for the market. Those two portfolios are doing really well, and yet they’re also being crushed by the three portfolios that are based around individual companies. However, just like how I wasn’t too worried about the Freedom Portfolio under-performing the market after one quarter, I’m certainly not planning any ticker tape parades just because my portfolio is winning after one month. It’s a good start, but there’s a lot of time to go.

I’ll check back in at the end of February. Hoping we see another month like January.