I've been tracking every public stock call I can find and grading them against the S&P 500. Some food for thought.
What’s good guys - so for the last few months I've been building out a dataset of publicly reported stock calls. Pundits, analysts, big name investors, politicians, CEOs. Basically anyone who goes on CNBC or tweets a stock pick that then makes headlines. I want to mimic the way 90% of retail investors would react, and that’s to news not SEC filing deep-dives.
Every call gets graded against the S&P 500 at two points: 24 hours after the headline hits, and 90 days later. I wanted to know two things. Does the market actually react when these people talk? And more importantly, are they actually right?
The dataset right now is 2,400+ calls across 211 figures. I filtered down to stock-only (++ blue-chip crypto), minimum 6 tracked positions, and for the deeper analysis I only looked at profiles with at least 5 matured 90-day observations so the numbers actually mean something.
Here's what jumped out >>>
**The 24-hour reaction is basically meaningless**
This surprised me the most honestly. The correlation between a stock's first-day move after a public call and the 90-day outcome is 0.067. Against the S&P it's 0.035. That's nothing.
And most calls don't even move the price. 34 out of 50 profiles had an average 24-hour move under 1%. The whole "market reacted therefore the call must be good" logic just doesn't hold up here.
**Who's actually beating the S&P with enough data to back it up**
This is filtered to 5+ matured 90-day calls so we're not celebrating someone who got lucky once:
| Name | Type | Picks | 90d Alpha vs S&P | Matured Calls |
|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
| Carl Icahn | Investor | 14 | +14.19% | 12 |
| David Tepper | Investor | 13 | +11.15% | 9 |
| Dan Niles | Pundit | 12 | +8.57% | 9 |
| Dan Ives | Pundit | 28 | +6.14% | 10 |
| Scott Wapner | Pundit | 34 | +4.75% | 26 |
| Bill Ackman | Investor | 17 | +4.83% | 8 |
| Jim Cramer | Pundit | 49 | +1.88% | 30 |
Icahn and Tepper aren't getting there off one big winner. These are broad across many calls. Wapner has the deepest sample at 26 matured calls and he's still positive which I genuinely didn't expect.
And yeah. Cramer is slightly positive. I know. I was surprised too. Guess thats why that Inverse Cramer ETF bombed haha.
**Who's consistently underperforming**
| Name | Type | Picks | 90d Alpha vs S&P | Matured Calls |
|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
| Cathie Wood | Pundit | 39 | -14.41% | 18 |
| Stanley Druckenmiller | Investor | 32 | -13.78% | 22 |
| Steve Cohen | Investor | 15 | -13.11% | 12 |
| Chase Coleman | Investor | 14 | -12.56% | 13 |
These aren't cherry-picked bad trades. Cathie has 18 matured calls. Druckenmiller has 22. The consistency is what's striking.
**The type breakdown is interesting**
When you group by type on the reliable subset:
* Pundits: median alpha +3.60%
* Investors: median alpha +0.65%
* Public figures (execs, politicians): median alpha -3.95%
Public figures are the worst group and once you dig into why it makes total sense.
**Executives aren't really stock pickers**
This was probably the most interesting finding. The median public figure has 76% of their calls concentrated in a single ticker. For everyone else it's 16%.
Reed Hastings: 100% Netflix. Sundar Pichai: 83% Google. Pat Gelsinger: 82% Intel. Dara Khosrowshahi: 93% Uber.
These aren't stock picks. These are executives commenting on their own company and the headlines get picked up as "calls." It's a totally different signal. If you're trying to evaluate stock-picking skill, these should be in a separate bucket entirely.
**The Roaring Kitty asterisk\*\*\***
He tops the leaderboard at +43% alpha. But his median 90-day return across positions is actually -3%. One GME call at +293% accounts for 81% of his total return mass. Legend? Absolutely. Consistent stock picker? The data says no. (duh)
**Some names look amazing but the sample is paper thin**
Ana Botin shows +27% alpha. She has 1 matured 90-day call. Noel Quinn has 2. Mike Wilson's brutal -24% is based on 1 observation. Any profile under 5 matured calls, take it with a massive grain of salt.
**My takeaway**
Most of these people, when measured properly across enough calls, cluster around zero. The outliers on both ends are real but they're rarer than the sheer volume of financial commentary would suggest. And the first-day price reaction after a public call is basically useless as a signal for what happens three months later.
The profiles with the most credible records are pundits and investors making calls across many names with double-digit matured observations. Politicians and executives are mostly noise.
Next step I am curious to dig into sector investments by pundit to see if there are any outsized edges in the mix there - I'd expect so.
(not financial advice. This is based on public headline calls, not SEC filings or verified portfolio activity. Past performance etc etc)