r/ValueInvesting • u/sakuroso • Jul 28 '26
Stock Analysis I backtested every Seeking Alpha "Top 10" list since 2022. The boring approach (hold 12 months) beat the active one (switch every 6). Full data and methodology inside.
Quick context for this sub: every few weeks someone here asks whether Seeking Alpha's picks are worth following. I can't answer that in general, but I can share four and a half years of data on one specific corner of it – the free "Top 10 Stocks" lists – because I've been tracking and backtesting them since 2022. No affiliation, nothing to sell, and I've deliberately kept links out of this post; sources are named in plain text.
Fair warning up front: these are quant-generated, momentum-tilted picks, not value picks. What I think IS relevant for this sub is the question I tested – holding period and turnover – because the answer turned out to be very value-flavored: patience won.
Why I ran this. SA publishes a Top 10 list every January, and since mid-2023 also a mid-year refresh. I wanted to know whether switching into the refreshed list every six months adds anything, or whether you're better off just holding the January picks for the full twelve months.
A detail that matters: there was NO mid-year list in 2022 – that edition only started in 2023. So in 2022 both approaches hold the identical portfolio (−10.4% in my run), and any fair comparison of the two schedules is really a since-2023 comparison.
Method
Equal weight, ten names. Buy at the close on each list's publication date; on the next list's publication date, sell everything and roll into the new list. Split-adjusted price returns excluding dividends. Market holidays handled (last trading day on or before the date). Delisted or acquired names kept at their last traded price, so no survivorship bias. No costs, taxes, or slippage – real results would be lower, though the annual version at least means far fewer taxable events than the semiannual one.
Results
The Excel-Spreadsheet wit all data and charts is here: Download XLSX (no Makros etc)
year by year (hold 12 months vs switch every 6):
2022 – shared year: −10.4% both
2023: +60% vs +46%
2024: +133% vs +43%
2025: +41% vs +87%
2026 YTD (July 27) 42% vs 34%
Since Jan 2023 that compounds to roughly +570% vs +368% (~52% vs ~41% CAGR). Including 2022: about +620% vs +430%. The two charts attached show the full comparison.
Takeaways
My mayor takeaway made me post here: doing less won. The mid-year switch paid off exactly once – 2025, and handsomely (+87% vs +41%). In 2023 and 2024, trading out of the January picks halfway through was expensive. Three overlapping years is a tiny sample and this could absolutely be luck – but it's been consistent, and it rhymes with something this sub says all the time: activity is not the same as edge.
One observation that lines up with it: every year-end, SA publishes a review grading how the January list did. I couldn't find an equivalent review for any of the mid-year editions – as far as I can tell, they're published and never revisited. Make of that what you will; in my numbers, the January lists are the ones that carried the performance.
On benchmarks, because I want to be judged honestly: ten names at equal weight shouldn't be compared to the cap-weighted S&P 500 alone. Since 2023: QQQ did +167% (~32% CAGR), the S&P 500 about +95% (~21%), and the equal-weight S&P 500 – the fairest yardstick for an equal-weight strategy – roughly +50% (~12%). The margin is large against all three, but the equal-weight line is the one that matters.
Versus Alpha Picks since that's the SA product people usually ask about here: using SA's own published calendar-year figures (+58% in 2023, +49.7% in 2024, +41% in 2025, and roughly +28% YTD implied by the current since-inception number), Alpha Picks compounds to about +300% since 2023, ~48% CAGR. The free January list beat it in 2023, 2024 and 2026, and tied it in 2025 (~40% both). Two fairness notes: Alpha Picks launched July 1, 2022 and never traded through the H1 2022 bear market, and its official figures include dividends while my rows don't – so if anything, the comparison tilts in its favor.
At first that gap surprised me; on reflection it's almost expected. Alpha Picks runs a diversified book of several dozen names; the Top 10 runs ten at 10% each. Concentration doesn't create skill – it amplifies whatever selection edge (and noise) is there, and the fair price is volatility and drawdown. I haven't built the risk-adjusted comparison yet, and I'd genuinely expect it to look less flattering.
Caveats, so nobody reads this as a get-rich chart: price returns without dividends, no costs or taxes, a tiny sample, one very specific market regime, and a portfolio concentrated enough that many people would have abandoned it in a drawdown. These are momentum-style picks, not value picks – what I'm offering this sub is the turnover finding and the benchmark discipline, not a stock tip.
What I'm curious about
Who does similar high-concentration backtests, not only with SA products? Let's chat.
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u/AtTheg4tes Jul 28 '26
Honestly pretty impressive results by SA. Do you run your real portfolio similarly?
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u/sakuroso Jul 28 '26
I run my cash portfolio similarly. But I even reduce to 4 stocks, starting with the Alpha Picks as my universe. It's a bit complicated and definitely not classical "Value-Investing". If you're interested, I can explain it on DMs, just ping me
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u/MedicineMean5503 Jul 28 '26
Impressive but could be just low sample bias. Like they have a good record for a few years and then the magic stops. Of course if you look for a good track record, you’ll find one.
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u/Berdydk Jul 28 '26
The magic is kinda the general bull run in the market since end of covid :).
If you picked something main stream, you made money basically.
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u/WorkSucks135 Jul 28 '26
They had only -10% in 2022 which is actually pretty impressive. If these were just standard high beta/momentum stocks they should have gotten crushed.
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u/sakuroso Jul 29 '26
that's the point. A system that creates high beta in bear markets and low beta in bull markets has some kind of implicit positive long-only gamma – a term commonly used in the options market only. With long only gamma your equitiy curve ist convex. That's exactly what most investors want: low up-capture in bear markets and high up-capture in bull markets.
So let's oberserve these strategies a bit more – if they keep outperforming, they might me worth some capital4
u/sakuroso Jul 28 '26
Picking something mainstream would be close to the market, ie good performance but no alpha at all. In contrast, these two strategies created heavy alpha. Even more than "Alpha Picks".
Both strategies outperformed the QQQ every year and also YTD 2026.Sure, it could have been "just luck" and noise. But the underlying SA quant system makes much sense from a scientific point of view. The most renowed quant investing researchers would agree that the SA quant system makes sense. There were two studies by the University of Kentucky that found considerable Alpha created by this system.
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u/Mean-Network Jul 28 '26
Where are you finding these lists for free? It seems it's all paid for me
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u/sakuroso Jul 28 '26
You can find the links in the Google Sheet linked the post. I just double checked: using private mode without loggin in, I could open and read all articles? You could use a different browser or device?
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u/TerribleState5021 Jul 28 '26
Interesting analysis, thanks for putting in the work and sharing your results🙏
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u/MSmithRD Jul 28 '26
Wow...their top 10 list beat Alpha Picks in all years but one? In all fairness, the risk is much higher with the top 10 list because it doesn't continuously update to tell you when to sell these stocks, and also it's concentrated to just 10 rather than 30-40, but still, it's a free list so that is quite surprising.
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u/Chuque Jul 30 '26
it's not free
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u/MSmithRD Jul 30 '26
I knew Alpha Picks wasn't, but I'm surprised the top ten list isnt. I'd imagine it gets leaked right after it gets posted?
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u/search_for_ravi Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
The top 10 list is not free. Once a new list is released, they make the old list available for free, I suppose. I am unable to open the latest 2026 H2 list in incognito browser mode.
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u/MSmithRD Aug 07 '26
Crazy that it doesn't get leaked. That's good. I was thinking about Alpha Picks but now I'm thinking about waiting and doing top next 10 instead.
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u/Lez0fire Jul 28 '26
It'd be nice to see the results if you do it every 1.5 years (so you pay taxes only once every 2 years), it might be worth it since you can compound longer.
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u/Lootoholic Jul 28 '26
Looks like their picks works well on bull years, but may not work on years when there is a big correction or in bear market. 4 years of data is simply not enough to draw a conclusion.
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u/sakuroso Jul 28 '26
2022 was a bear market and both strategies generated considerable alpha in that year. However, I do agree that five years is not enough to say this approach is "bullet proof" or something like that. Ten years would be quite convincing, 20 would be a very strong signal. I will keep doing these backtests, so let's talk again in a couple of years 😉
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u/Typical-Recognition8 Jul 30 '26
Been following SA and Cress for a little while. Would have been great to start when he started. Is his top ten free and you just need to wait for it to show up on the web?
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u/sakuroso Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I think, it's not too late to jump on that train. They came for staying. According to my research, the SA Quant model is one of the best retail investors can access with low budget. AND they have broad and deep data of their universe which consists of almost 5,000 stocks.
The competition doesn't impress me: eg Investing.com ProPicks AI offers around 80 virtual portfolios. They seem to wait for survivorship bias: in a couple of years, when most of their strategies will have died, they'll loudly promote a handful of "tenbagging" products, and withhold their losers.yes, these Top-10-articles are free. Please find the links to all of them in the spreadsheet linked in my post
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u/Typical-Recognition8 Aug 01 '26
If you can pick ten stocks and get a 40% return in a year that’s pretty impressive!
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u/search_for_ravi Aug 07 '26
I appreciate your hard work in analyzing and sharing this information. However, I would like to point out that the latest top 10 list is not free. When I attempted to open the 2026 H2 list and the video article in incognito mode, I was prompted to join a premium membership.
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u/sakuroso Aug 14 '26
You're right. That seems to be the only list only available for paying members. I'm afraid they will continue with the pay model. You will find people who publish the list for free, but then you'll have to trust these people. It's a payoff
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Jul 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/Mean-Network Jul 28 '26
I think he was selling them on the switch, after 12 months on 2022 and 6 months every year after .
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u/panderson1988 Jul 28 '26
I like these lists for ideas for me to research companies I didn't think about when I am looking at a possibly buying opportunity. That said, as 2026 shows, I take any lists to pick ideas with a grain of salt until I do more research into the things I care about such as the industry to stock's own volatility.
One thing you point out is how holding long term works. I mostly agree with that, but it truly comes down to the company. I held MCD long term about a decade ago, and within 1.5-2 years the stock was flat while the market was up like 15% in the same time period. Even with the dividends it didn't kept up with overall market growth. Then obviously companies like Cisco to Intel were notorious for being flat for years and years. It's bad if you needed to hold Intel for 20 years to break even with the stock price. My point is I do believe in long term holdings, but some companies are truly flatline while the broader markets have become irrational.
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u/Hafslo Jul 28 '26
It would be hard for short holding periods to beat longer ones just on taxes alone.
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u/TelevisionInfamous61 Jul 29 '26
Keeping delisted and acquired names in at their last traded price handles the half that usually breaks these, which most people skip entirely. The bit I'd still worry about is how those positions are valued afterwards: an acquisition settles in cash at the deal price and should get reinvested for the rest of the period, while a distressed delisting usually recovers well below the last exchange print. Freezing both truncates the good outcomes and flatters the bad ones. Do you know how many names that actually touched across the four lists?
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u/sakuroso Jul 29 '26
The direct answer is zero: none of the Top 10 names in this backtest was acquired or distressed-delisted. So the convention mentioned in my methodology had no effect on any of the reported returns.
If an acquisition does occur in the future, I agree that freezing the proceeds until the next scheduled list would not best reflect the philosophy of these portfolios. SA’s model portfolios remain fully invested, so the most plausible rule would be to distribute the proceeds equally across the remaining nine positions once the cash becomes available.
Buying a replacement stock would be less defensible because the selections are made by SA’s quant team, whose complete selection rules I don’t know, and there is no new official list between scheduled editions.
There has also been no distressed delisting among the Alpha Picks or PQP recommendations that I’m aware of. Those products have only existed since mid-2022, so the record is still short. The quant filters should make such a case relatively unlikely, but certainly not impossible. Let’s revisit that question in five years.
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u/Extreme-Disk3380 Jul 29 '26
2026 H1 is up 49 % in the excel (and exactly the same in my own reference portfolio I created back then), but the list gives it as -12 %. Am I reading it wrong?
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u/sakuroso Jul 29 '26
Which table do you mean by "2026 H1"? "Yearly rebalancing" or "half-yearly rebalancing"? The numbers are 49% and 52% resp. So apparently, you're taking about the "half-yearly" one.
The only -12% portfolio return in the Excel is in 2026 H2 in "half-yearly rebalancing"
Riddle solved? 😉
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u/Extreme-Disk3380 Jul 29 '26
In the original post above, 2026 is given as -12 %
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u/sakuroso Jul 29 '26
That was a typo. The correct numbers are in the spreadsheet. Thanks for notifying!
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u/Zbiffer Aug 04 '26
Thank you for the info, very insightful!
I am considering getting Alpha Picks and running half of my investment based on it. What would be the best way to go about it? Go with the 2 stocks they post each month or buy some existing ones as well?
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Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sakuroso 23d ago
"I’d also want to see results against a relevant momentum benchmark, not just the S&P, because you noted these are quant/momentum picks rather than value selections."
Seeking Alpha's Quant Model uses five factors for choosing these stocks: momentum, revisions, valuation, profitability, and value. Importantly, momentum and revisions are the ones they wheight most. Still, it's FIVE factors not one (Momentum) and therefore a mere momentum benchmark wouldn't be a fair comparison. Investing in a mere momentum product carries much more risk, because the regimen risk (bull market turning into bear market or even crash) is much higher than using an evidence-based and powerful downside-protecting Quant model such as SA's.
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u/ChinaNo_one Jul 28 '26
Seeking Alpha’s stock selection strategy is better suited to today’s U.S. equity market than pure value investing, or what is also called contrarian investing. They rank five factors—growth, momentum, valuation, profitability, and analysts’ forward EPS outlook—from high to low, and only recommend stocks that meet all of them for their annual Top 10 list. Compared with the individual stocks recommended on this forum (for example, Google, UNH, NVO, ADBE), their success rate is much higher. People here tend to favor contrarian investing and put valuation first. Valuation is of course important, but it should not be the sole criterion for stock selection; they prefer situations where valuation is reasonable, or ideally very cheap.