March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2024

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Dear Mr. Market:

If your alma mater or favorite college team did not make the tournament on Selection Sunday, we’ve got another option for you!

Even if you don’t like or follow college basketball, we think you’ll enjoy what we pioneered and have put together.

My Portfolio Guide, LLC was the first investment firm to publish a March Madness investing bracket where we share our picks and match them up against each other.  We break down and assign each of the four “regions” with an asset class and then pick teams (stocks) that we think have the best chance at doing well relative to others. 

Not only is this “exercise” a way for us to share our ideas from a macro perspective, but it offers a fun platform to dig into a couple specific investments and themes we are following or excited about in the year ahead.

Click here or below to see or enlarge the entire bracket for 2024. 

Our Final Four Investing Bracket slots 48 positions against each other and we mainly want to show why we see one investment doing better than another over the course of the next year. One caveat to keep in mind is that while there are 48 total investments within our bracket, it does not mean we like them all; some are there for illustrative purposes or to discuss a certain theme playing out in the stock market. Lastly, the way these are initially “seeded” does not reflect our current confidence in them. For example, a #1 seeded investment could lose right out of the gate just as a #12 could potentially win it all. In other words, these investments (or “teams”) are ranked and seeded on a number of factors but one of the main drivers is how hot they recently performed within the past few months or recent year.

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Bulls, Bears, and Ballots: Election Years & the Stock Market

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Dear Mr. Market:

If you’re watching an NBA basketball game and you have one player to take a final shot to win the game, who do you choose? Like him or not the guy who has scored the second most points in the history of basketball is LeBron James and he has made 50.5% of all shots he’s ever taken. Let’s switch sports to much worse odds, like baseball, where the average hitter is around .250 for a batting average. Even the best the game has ever seen was the great Ty Cobb who hit .366 for his career. Speaking of winning or losing, the mecca of odds making is in Las Vegas of course, and if you’re ever interested in losing money, just know that on average you can come out with a winning blackjack hand only 42.4% of the time.

New year, fresh canvas, but pretty much the same problems….So what are the odds of the market going up, down, or sideways in 2024?

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Remember this the next time the Stock Market is down

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Dear Mr. Market:

Can you imagine how you would be feeling if you had acted upon the advice from all the doom and gloomers the past year? How some of these financial “gurus” and economic pundits still have an audience is fascinating!?! Want to know why they still have a platform and hold many people’s attention?

Fear sells.

That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Normally we don’t run victory laps or spend any time patting ourselves on the back, but this year we’re going to be blunt. We’re going to remind people that if you listened to everyone and followed all the fearmongers your portfolio would be sitting in cash and you would have missed one of the better and least expected positive years ever. We’re not running around with rose colored glasses but if you listened and followed the steady hand of My Portfolio Guide, LLC this past year instead, you’re in a very decent spot and hopefully learned something for when (not if) this happens again.

The stock market WILL go down again…but it will also always eventually finish higher. Sure, 2022 was a dismal and quite frankly unprecedented rough year, and couple that with all the worrisome headlines of massive debt, inverted yield curves, geo-political issues etc., you would naturally be influenced to run for the hills. We were crystal clear that we thought, albeit not a popular opinion, this year would finish positive and we would see a strong Q4. We’ve held onto this stance even through a very negative late summer (August through October) where the market pulled back considerably.

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RIP Charlie Munger : Farewell to an Icon of Investing

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Dear Mr. Market:

In the world of finance and investing, the passing of a visionary figure leaves an indelible mark on the landscape they helped shape. Today, we bid farewell to an icon, a man whose wisdom and wit transcended the realms of business and life itself. Charlie Munger, the renowned investor, philanthropist, right hand man of Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, passed away today, but his legacy endures through the profound insights he shared with the world.

Charlie Munger was a man who not only navigated the complexities of the financial world but also imparted invaluable lessons on success, rationality, and the pursuit of knowledge. Join us as we explore the essence of Charlie Munger’s wisdom through ten of our favorite quotes he shared over his 99 years of life:

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100 Reasons Why Your Financial Advisor Should Not Use Mutual Funds

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Dear Mr. Market:

The stock market is made up of thousands of choices and one easy way to gain exposure to it is via mutual funds. While we don’t want to broad brush the topic, we’re going to get right into it and explain 100 reasons why you or your financial advisor should not be using mutual funds versus ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds).

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Fed up

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Dear Mr. Market:

The past two months in the stock market have been treacherous and truly tested the average investor’s nerves. Most of us are close to being “fed up” with the headlines, inflation, political division and ensuing market volatility. Before we get into the headline of the day, let’s quickly touch on the operative word, “Fed” and how completely wrong the Federal Reserve has been at just about every turn. The following timeline comes from The Kobeissi Letter, an industry leading commentary on the global capital markets:

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Gold: The Shining Star or a Fading Glitter? Unveiling the Pros and Cons

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Going Long in Two Fields: Why TLT Could Be Your MVP During Recessions

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Dear Mr. Market:

First off, if you want to know how amazing Artificial Intelligence is, the following list of article titles were generated for this article in the matter of four seconds! (we picked the first one and the rest of this article is typed with regular human toiling!)

FYI: If you’ve never used ChatGPT, before try it! Much of its delivery is on what and how you ask things and in this case here is the prompt/reply that we asked of it:

Certainly! Here are a couple of article title ideas that play on the “going long” football reference while discussing extending bond allocations, especially in a recessionary context and using the TLT ticker symbol:

  1. “Going Long in Two Fields: Why TLT Could Be Your MVP During Recessions”
  2. “Huddling Up for Stability: TLT’s Game Plan for Going Long in a Recession”
  3. “Scoring Big in Bonds: Going Long with TLT Amidst Recession Signals”
  4. “Touchdown for Investors: TLT’s Playbook for Going Long in Uncertain Markets”
  5. “Bonds and Touchdowns: TLT’s Strategy for Going Long in Recessions”
  6. “From Gridiron to Portfolio: Going Long with TLT’s Defensive Play”
  7. “Executing the Long Game: TLT’s Endurance in a Recessional Season”
  8. “Tackling Recession Risk: Going Long with TLT’s Defensive Line”
  9. “The Bond Field Advantage: Going Long with TLT Amid Market Turbulence”
  10. “Scouting for Opportunities: Going Long with TLT’s Recessional Defense”

Now…on to business and what we’re talking about today, which is not related to football but rather recession worries, market strategy, and in our opinion how one should consider adjusting the bond piece of their allocation to hedge what we see coming. If you’re in the growing and increasingly popular camp of preparing for a stock market crash or just a general recession, here’s one adjustment and hedge that you may want to consider.

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Bull Market Respite or Bear Market Rally?

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Dear Mr. Market:

Let’s first remind our readers again of who this “Mr. Market” character is. Our investment blog and star personality is in reference to Benjamin Graham’s metaphor in his book “The Intelligent Investor,” where he personifies the stock market as Mr. Market, an emotional and erratic character. Over the past few decades, rarely have we seen such unprecedented market action but also a total tug of war between emotions, volatility, politics, and who will win ; the bulls or the bears. If you’re in the camp of being scared, confused, or frustrated…you are definitely not alone.

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Halfway to the Most Terrible Recession Ever Telegraphed!

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Dear Mr. Market:

It is with a sense of awe and intrigue that we find ourselves reflecting upon the first half of 2023. In the world of finance and investment, prognostications and predictions often hold sway, shaping the decisions of market participants. However, it seems that the experts and pundits who were convinced of an impending recession this year may have misjudged the situation. Indeed, we are witnessing what could be deemed as the most telegraphed recession that never happened, at least not yet.

Throughout the past year, a chorus of voices emerged, proclaiming that the global economy was teetering on the edge of a precipice. They cited various factors, including rising inflation, geopolitical tensions, and lingering effects of the pandemic, as harbingers of an impending economic downturn. The warnings were dire, and many investors began bracing themselves for the storm.

Yet, as the months unfold, the predicted recession has remains elusive. Economic indicators have displayed some resilience and even showed signs of strength in certain sectors. Employment numbers continued to improve, consumer spending remained robust, and corporate earnings surprised to the upside. It became evident that the narrative of a looming recession is not unfolding as expected.

So why did so many experts and pundits get it wrong? One could argue that the very nature of predictions is inherently flawed. The global economy is a complex system influenced by countless variables, and attempting to distill its trajectory into a neat forecast is a formidable challenge. The interconnectedness of markets, the intricate dance of supply and demand, and the psychological aspects of investor sentiment all contribute to the unpredictability of the economic landscape.

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