Battered but still standing and holding value stocks, the 2018 trading year is mercifully over. Here are the results of last years picks as of 12/27/2018.

Dow Jones Industrial Average 23,327.46  (Down)  as of 12-27-2018
S & P 500 Index  - 2506.85  (Down)

Like Rocky Balboa the famous Philadelphia fighter we are battered and bloodied but refuse to go down and remain standing with our Value stock holdings. Some of them had been up during the year where you could have sold them off, two of them actually got bought out but if you continued to hold the stock of the purchasing company you ended up being down. 

Truth be told, if you had closed out your positions at the end of September you would have been up on most of the stocks.

So here are the results for better or worse:

Alaska Airlines- Symbol ALK   (-19.12%) add 2.12% dividend offset
J.P. Morgan - Symbol JPM        ( -10.17%)  add 3.13% dividend offset
Andeavor ANDV, bought by Marathon Petroleum Symbol MPC - (12.79%)  add 3.16% dividend.

InTEST Inc. - Symbol INTT    (-33.18%)  
Express Scripps-  Symbol ESRX , bought be CIGNA Symbol CI -( 7.11%)
Gilead Sciences-  Symbol GILD - (14.62% ) add 3.68% dividend offset

.... and now the three winners: Mastercard -Symbol MA - +22.66% plus 0.71% dividend add
                                              Square - Symbol SQ - +59.04% 
                                              Discovery Communications -Symbol DISCA - + 9.27%

and then there were three more losers..........

Manulife Insurance Symbol MFC (-33.43%) add 5.31% dividend offset

Jazz Pharmaceutical - Symbol JAZZ - (-10.89%)

Brown Forman B issue - Symbol BF.B - (-13.82%) 

If you wring that all out overall,  and count the dividends in,  you end up with a (-14.34% Loss for the year for the overall portfolio.  That is better than the 16 % YTD loss for the S &P 500 and the 21.5% loss for the NASDAQ, but if you add in the dividends they are about on par with the average losses in the market. (I.E. Value investing this year was no better at protecting you than what the Index averages would have given you.)

But remember Howard Marks said that the top performing value mutual fund managers are often in the lowest quarter percentile for some years, so some hope there.

Next week my Value Picks for 2019.

 "Good time to buy some Value stocks, but only in small increments."

Have a great 2019 investing year,

Freewilly