Stock Guru: WN wins with RetailX

Nevertheless, WN’s portfolio fell from being $2,383.50 ahead a week earlier to $2,125.03 at the end of the third and final week.

That’s hardly surprising when you consider only two of WN’s stocks are in the money – another tidler, Pure New Zealand is up 25% since the game started, giving it a market capitalisation of $4.7 million.

There was no news from either company this week, although earlier this month pure said it had an agreement to buy Australian merchant bank Balmoral Capital for a mix of cash and shares.

Over the years, Pure has dabbled in a surprising array of businesses ranging from "nutriceuticals" including deer velvet and shark cartilage through to plastics reycycling and vending machines. In July last year, it talked about buying Australian gold explorer Greater Bendigo Gold Mines, which apparently is still on the cards.

Another of WN’s five picks, retailer Brisco Group, sank further this week. After ending last week just over 5% down, at the end of the third week it was down 8.2%.

While Brisco had nothing new to say this week, discount retailer The Warehouse Group, the second most popular stock chosen by 83 of the contestants, called for a trading halt in its shares on Thursday while it rushed to report its results more than a week ahead of schedule.

It’s 4.7% drop in net profit to $55.5 million for the six months ended February 1 was the result of its problematic Australian operations losing $13 million compared with a profit of $5.1 million in the same six months a year earlier. The Warehouse went from being 12.8% down at the end of last week to down 17.5% at the end of this one.

Telecom, the most popular stock chosen in 114 portfolios, went from gains of just over 1% at the end of last week to being up 3.2% at the end of this week.

And more of the 358 contestants’ portfolios were in the money by the end of the game, 111, up from 90 at the end of last week.

Among the worst performing portfolios, Ollie had the dubious pleasure of moving from last place to second last as their portfolio of CDL Hotels, down 14.6%, Certified Organics, down 12.4%, Sealegs, down 32.4%, Vertex, down 0.7% and The Warehouse crashed to a loss of $1,550.94.

But "risk it" had an even worse portfolio, down $1,553.43, Brisco, Botry Zen and GDC accounting for its underperformance. While GDC has lost crucial Telecom contracts, it announced on Friday a reduced $227,000 net loss for calendar 2003 compared with a $4.6 million loss in 2002.

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