Here is the list of the most popular stocks on Xearn today:
AAPL
GE
GOOG
V
BAC
C
SBUX
VZ
WMT
YHOO
BRK-B
JPM

YHOO and BRK-B made it in. PG and PM dropped out.

There are only 2 industries that have 2 entries in the top 10 most popular stocks on Xearn - Search Engines (GOOG and YHOO) and Banks (BAC and C). Does that mean that it's a good time to buy these industries or that people are interested enough in them to be holding prices up?

The most loved bank stocks are BAC, C and JPM and the least loved (but still loved a bit) bank stocks are WB, BBT, NCC, IBN, HBAN, BK, RY, PNC and BNS.

Any thoughts on which group will do better - the most loved or least loved?

I checked on what the most popular stocks on Xearn are. Here's the list and with current prices:

AAPL   $159.03
GE  $28.71
V  $70.08
GOOG $475.62
BAC  $30.64
C $19.06
PG  $64.51
PM  $52.46
SBUX  $14.54
T $31.70
VZ  $35.09
JPM  $39.14

Any thoughts on how these are likely to perform?

Got another mailing from the Intelligent Investor Report today (remember 5 out of 6 of his stock picks have been winners?). This time he's recommending ENVI. It's $2.68 today and he expects it to be $15.41 this year and $80.40 next year.

Fine print says he got $750,000 to put out this edition of the Intelligent Investor Report, paid for by a company with a million shares of ENVI.

I got another newsletter called Intelligent Investor Report, which is similar to the Natural Contrarian newsletter I posted about a few months ago. The Intelligent Investor Report claims that 5 out of every 6 of its stock picks are winners and that it has averaged 44% returns in 2006 - 2007. I wonder what's happening in 2008! The latest Intelligent Investor Report says BioShaft Water Technology (BSHF) is a great stock. The fine print says they received $800,000 to support this report from a company that owns 500,000 shares of BSHF.

I checked on AMNT which the Natural Contrarian had recommended in March. It's lost around 60% of it's value since then. I also found out that the SEC has been trying to check on his claimed performance since 2002.

Scott Fraser (from Natural Contrarian) and Jarret Wollstein (from Intelligent Investor Report), please create portfolios on Xearn.

We're really sorry for the website problems on the 22nd and 23rd. We had multiple issues that made this take much longer to resolve than it should have - an OS failure, incorrectly setting up a new server, having to serve on a jury all day (for a weeks already and a few more to come!!) and bad scheduling of support staff.

We're making changes to address these and hopefully we won't have another outage. But if we do, I hope we respond much better next time. 2 sleepless nights with the days spent twiddling my thumbs in the jury box haven't been much fun at all.

In order to bring the site up for today's trading, we didn't retroactively execute orders for the time when the site was down. If you notice any problems, particularly with order execution or ending values, please send us an email: support @ xearn . com and we'll correct the problems with your portfolio.

Thank you all for using Xearn.

This is Cramer's take on Bear Sterns before the shares went down to $2.00. He'd be another great candidate to maintain a portfolio on Xearn. I couldn't find the performance of his picks on thestreet.

I get this piece of mail from the natural contrarian...it lists 10 picks that went on to double and then recommends Amish Naturals (AMNT). So I go straight to the fine print - which says they got $450,000 to make and distribute this recommendation. I check their balance sheet, they had $1.5 million at the end of Dec. So about 1/3 their money went to hype their stock!! Luckily some of the insiders hold over 4 million shares each...so if the stock goes up atleast someone could make money.

Now if The Natural Contrarian would manage a portfolio on Xearn, I wouldn't be soooo skeptical. Scott S. Fraser...are you reading?

You've got to love this - out of the 8 portfolios with 30 days history, the Random Walk Test is #1 and Buffett is at #8! You could argue that 30 day performance is very volatile...but I think you're likely to see something similar whenever the market drops like crazy.

The random selector chose securities like IDJ and KOS, which are outside the universe that most investors would consider. They hardly dip when the market falls, making the perform relatively better.  I wonder how long before Buffett tops the Random Walk Test again.