Robert McWhirter

This is one of my all-time favourite stock pickers. He also happens to be one of the least flashy, almost to the point of bordering on dull and boring. However, if you can avoid being put to sleep by his almost hypnotic monotone speaking style, you can find some tremendous investing ideas, particularly in the technology sector.

Mr. McWhirter uses a disciplined investment strategy that involves ranking stocks based on a 12-factor stock ranking model. What I like about this model is that it looks at both growth and value characteristics, as opposed to others who become blindingly attached to one type of model, usually being either quantitative or technical. He is practical and intelligent in his investing approach, not dogmatic. While he has made a number of great picks over the years, one of the best recommendations he has made recently was to shift into cash a month or so before the sub-prime mess got into full swing.

It isn’t just me that he is winning praise from. Mr. McWhirter’s Northwest Specialty Innovations Fund was awarded the Science and Technology Equity Fund of the Year in Canada in 2004 and 2005 at the Canadian Investment Awards. Despite these awards and his fantastic performance, he remains one of the most understated and modest stock pickers I have seen.

Jean-Francois Tardiff

I’ve always been partial to Market Call guests who have some new, original investing ideas to tell listeners about, as opposed to those who simply make a few vague, unoriginal comments about three of the most widely held stocks on the market. Jean-Francois Tardiff falls into the former group, and it was he who brought Scandinavian Minerals (SGL) to my attention, a stock you will never hear mentioned anywhere.

His interesting investing ideas aside, Mr. Tardiff is a bit too much of a gun-slinger for my liking and at times he has appeared to have recommended some stocks without having done a tremendous amount of due diligence or research. It seems as if he will sometimes buy a stock whose story he likes without worrying too much about the numbers, particularly with some of the income trusts. That may be fine for him as he can dart in and out of stocks very quickly, but it can be very dangerous for small individual investors looking to buy and hold stocks for the long term. My caution towards Mr. Tardiff’s picks go back to several years ago when he recommended Madacy Entertainment (MEG.UN), which sells the cheap bin CDs. The yield was very attractive at the time, so I looked at the latest quarterly report. Based on my analysis, the company seemed to be losing money and I could not see how it could continue to pay its huge distributions. In fact, I didn’t see how it could pay any distribution in the long term. Because of these numbers, did not buy the units and instead checked in on it from time to time to see if my caution towards the stock had been misplaced. It turns out that it wasn’t. The trust subsequently suspended its distribution and lost almost 80% of its value.

In fairness to Mr. Tardiff, this was just one of dozens of recommendations he has made. However, I would advise individual investors to look at him as a great source of new ideas, but to do an extra amount of due diligence before acting on his recommendations.

David Baskin

David Baskin is one of the guests that I am sure not to miss when he appears on ROBTV, not just because of his picks, but because I truly enjoy listening to him. He is an engaging speaker and seems to be one of the few genuinely nice guys in the industry. I can’t help but like him when he laments when a stock goes up after announcing massive layoffs. Readers should probably bear in mind when reading my commentary that I am somewhat biased in favour of him. Although Mr. Baskin focuses primarily on large cap, conservative stocks, he is not afraid to go a little ways off the beaten track to get some stock ideas, and a number of stocks that I own, I bought after learning about them from him. The best performer of those is GLV.A. He also seems pretty immune to hype, something which kept him from ever owning Nortel, even when it seemed like everybody owned it. The one big strike against David Baskin, and perhaps the only one, is that he once committed the cardinal sin of saying “it’s always been expensive” when recommending Loblaw. As I mentioned in my first column, this is even more dangerous than “it’s different this time”.

Michael Smedly

Michael Smedly is one of my all time favourite guests on ROBTV. He has by far the best sense of humour of any expert/analyst I have ever seen on any station and I would strongly recommend that readers who have trouble listening to boring analysts watch him whenever he appears on television. I should point out that I consider his somewhat self deprecating sense of humour a very important trait in an investment advisor. Investors should be cautious of people who think they are a little smarter than everyone else and have the market figured out. Another reason why I like him is that he has made me quite a bit of money over the past few years. While he has an appetite for high risk, high volatility stocks, his mutual fund has been a great out-performer for many years. Even though some of his recommendations can drop suddenly from time to time, such as March Networks (MN), he is a wonderful source of great investing ideas from stocks that are as yet undiscovered by the market. He was recommending HudBay Minerals before anybody heard of it, and I have him to thank for getting in somewhat early on WFI, one my best performing stocks. He is truly a can’t miss guest on ROBTV.

Ross Healy

Ross Healy makes a nice contrast to Michael Smedley. Whereas Mr. Smedley can be self deprecating, Mr. Healy often appears downright arrogant. While Mr. Healy is an intelligent, experienced investor who is not afraid to go against the herd (he made a great call on LionOre back when everyone seemed to hate it), his somewhat pompous attitude makes me reluctant to follow his advice. While this may not apply specifically to Mr. Healy, investors should heed the famous quote by George Bernard Shaw that "the ignorant are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." In the spring of 2006, Mr. Healy famously said that people investing money in the Canadian banks at that time were “fools”. Those fools have made a nice profit since then. If you look back over time, few investments have been as consistently strong as the Canadian banks. Even if they do have a violent correction someday soon, they still might not even get back to their price in the Spring of 2006.

Laura Wallace

Laura Wallace is a classic closet indexer. Of all the guests on ROBTV, she may be the dullest. She tends to recommend very large companies that have major weightings in either the US or Canadian indexes. Her picks tend to have very limited potential upside, so it is difficult to offset losses when some picks go bad, such as 3M. The rationale for following her advice is almost the same as buying an index or large run of the mill mutual fund. The only difference is that she has clearly demonstrated that she has enough sense to stay away from stocks like Nortel.

Brian Acker

Brian Acker is one of the more entertaining stock pickers you will find. Most people in this industry are painfully dull, so Mr. Acker is a refreshing change. More than anyone I have seen, he is completely unafraid to make bold predictions. Some of the more notable were that his grandchildren would not see $500 dollar gold (about which he was wrong, notwithstanding the fact that he does not have any grandchildren yet) and by saying that income trusts were “toast” (which turned out to be largely correct). Mr. Acker uses a quantitative model to value stocks and identify those that are undervalued. While a quantitative method is very useful, you should always consider other qualitative factors, like quality of management and any potential uncertainties surrounding the company. His blind devotion to his model has caused him to fall into some obvious traps in the past like General Motors and Ford.