Profitable Spectrum of 2010 Stocks (in hindsight)

Another phenomenon: the transformation of the author by his own book. As I increasingly started living this book after the initial composition, I found luck in the most unexpected places. It is as if there were two planets: the one in which we actually live and the one, considerably more deterministic, on which people are convinced we live. It is as simple as that: Past events will always look less random than they were (it is called the hindsight bias).

~Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled By Randomness


2010 was a relatively good year for professional and amateur dart throwers to put the blindfold on and aim for the bullseye. Some of these "set 'em and forget 'em" stocks took aim at the top right corner of the chart and never looked back. A few of these were featured in this summer's 'beauty pageant' post.

Here is a very small sample of some maintenance-free winners...

Acme Packet Inc., APKT, +392.1% YTD
Entropic Communications Inc, ENTR, +284.3% YTD
Netflix, NFLX, +227.2% YTD
Axt Inc., AXTI, +216.9% YTD
Qwest Communication Int'l, Q, +91.8% YTD
Autozone Inc, AZO, +73.1% YTD



The flat line on the bottom is the NASDAQ.