Weekly #37: Am I a Good Stock Picker? Let the Numbers Speak.

How Beating The Tide outperformed the S&P 500 by 5.09% in H1 2025, with 5.01% of that edge coming from stock selection.

Jul 06, 2025

Hello fellow Sharks,

We started July strong, with a gain of +1.7%, and our year-to-date performance now stands at +12.5%, nearly double that of the S&P 500. (If you want to skip ahead to the Portfolio Update, click here.)

Early next week, I will be sending my trade alert, closing some positions and including a new pick. I will follow up with a deep dive on the new position after that.

This week, instead of a ‘thought of the week,’ I’m reviewing portfolio performance from the first half of 2025, using hard data from the Interactive Brokers H1 2025 report to answer three key questions.

The questions are:

Enjoy the read!

~ George

H1 2025 Review

Now that the first half of 2025 is behind us, I figured it was a good time to review performance using the Interactive Brokers report.

We closed the first half with a return of 10.59%. The weakest months were February and March.

The jump in May’s NAV, as highlighted below, came from closing the Canadian portfolio and transferring three positions to the new Global Portfolio (explained here).

Stock Performance in H1 2025

Below is the portfolio heatmap for H1 2025 positions. As you can tell, I follow a strategy of letting my winners run (eg, CLS, TSM and AGX) and closing my losing positions once the thesis is broken (eg, AMPH, read the post-mortem here).

Am I leveraging my competitive advantage?

The portfolio is heavily skewed toward technology, industrials, financials, and consumer goods.

This shows I practice what I preach. Those sectors fall within my circle of competence, thanks to my background in engineering, finance at CPGs, and strategy at a telco (check my LinkedIn profile for my full background if not familiar already). As I previously explained, remember to stay within your circle of competence and leverage your competitive advantage.

And the contribution by sector follows the same line, where most of the returns are from the sectors where I have a competitive advantage.

Compared to the S&P 500, we overweighted the best-performing sectors and underweighted the weakest ones (green areas below). The red areas reflect either underweight positions in strong sectors or overweight positions in weak ones.

We were underweight in healthcare (which had a positive return) and overweight in utilities (which had a negative return). I was surprised to see technology in the red square, even though the portfolio is heavily weighted towards technology (~29%). The reason is that the S&P 500 is even more weighted towards tech (~38%).

Am I too US-focused?

In terms of country allocation, we remain heavily concentrated in the U.S. and Canada. But as recent trade alerts show, I’m diversifying geographically via ADRs. I believe other countries offer better value, and if the U.S. doesn’t get its fiscal house in order, we may see a steady decline in its global competitiveness.

That being said, the portfolio still has 2/3 invested in the US and is driving almost half of the returns.

While I’ve focused on ADRs, I do have access to global markets via Interactive Brokers. Before starting Beating The Tide, I used to invest in global equities, but since I started this newsletter, I haven’t looked at non-ADRs yet, as I suspect most of you have only access to US stock exchanges. Let me know via the poll below whether you have access to global stock exchanges. If a majority of you do have access, I could start recommending non-ADR international equities as well.

Am I good at picking stocks?

The portfolio outperformed the S&P 500 by 5.09% in H1 2025 (+10.59% vs. +5.50%), but the attribution analysis accounts for 4.40% of that outperformance. The remaining 0.69% gap likely comes from factors not captured in sector-level attribution, such as individual stock effects within unclassified sectors, cash drag, rounding, or timing differences in entries and exits.

Selection drove most of the outperformance, contributing +5.01%, while allocation detracted -0.61%. The bulk of the selection alpha came from Technology (+6.31%) and Industrials (+1.49%), reinforcing my belief in focusing on sectors I know best.

So to answer the question, yes! The data supports that I’m a strong stock picker.

Portfolio Update

Markets are dancing again, and we’re still leading the rhythm.

Another steady week for the sharks.

Month-to-date: We’re up +1.7%, slightly ahead of the S&P 500’s +1.2%.
Year-to-date: Our lead has widened. +12.5% vs. the S&P’s +6.8%, putting us nearly 600 basis points ahead.
Since inception: We’re now up +21.0% compared to the S&P 500’s +9.2%. That’s 2.3x the market.