I learned about the UK Stock challenge this year for the first time.  Who runs the website is a total mystery.  In case anyone is interested I have listed my five stocks below.

The rules of the annual challenge are that you pick five stocks and they are held for the whole year.  The performance as of 26 March 2019 is below.

My five picks so far (performance stats from Stock challenge website)

1) Simplybiz - 39% gain  (article)

2) TCS Group Holding - 28.2% gain

3) Somero Enterprises - 18.2% gain (article)

4) Rightmove - 16% gain

5) Mortgage Advice Bureau - 10% gain (article)

I may update with a rationale for each of them.  I have written about three of them on Cube.investments

The www.StockChallenge.co.uk website says that the average return is 20.43% as of 26 March.  Just go to the website and click on 2019 and search for AndrewCube.

I monitor the stocks myself and have a slightly different result to Stock Challenge.  I may have entered the buy prices at a different time of the day.

The most important thing is to not suffer any major stock blowups.  You cannot exit any positions during the year due to bad news.

I tried to pick quality companies with the only exception TCS Group, which I picked because it was cheap.  In hindsight, I should have chosen AJ Bell instead.

I wrote about AJ Bell three times for Cube.investments.  It seems to offer both quality and growth.

Stock Challenge stocks so far

Source: SharePad

Against the All-Share

Source: SharePad