Here are our stock picks for 2011:

APKT – Acme Packet. It is our stock pick for cloud-computing. We believe that cloud computing is the future and Acme Packet is a strong play in this area. Their technologies enable service providers to deliver real-time multimedia sessions across IP network.

LVS – Las Vegas Sands. This company operates a couple of big casinos around the world, including Las Vegas, Macao and recently Singapore.

MELI – MercadoLibre. It is the e-bay of Latin America. We pick this stock as a play for Latin American market.

YONG – Yongye International. It is a Chinese biotechnology company that research liquid and powder nutrient compounds for plant and animal products. We pick this stock because we are bullish on agriculture sector.

You can follow live-performance of our stock picks in this link. You can see how our stock picks compared to S&P 500 and Nasdaq. We are going to include stock picks from other bloggers once they have revealed theirs.

As you can see, our performance was not that good for last year. Our return was only –7.05%. We couldn’t even beat the benchmark, S&P 500, which returns more than 12%; and Nasdaq, which returns about 17%.

It’s time to update our stock picks. So far, we are behind S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index. It’s been proven that it’s not easy to beat the index.

• ASIA: –28.87%
• CAGC: –23.12%
• ITC: +0.5%
• PEGA: –8.68%
• Total: –15.04%

Here is the return of our benchmark:

• S&P 500: –8.30%
• Nasdaq: –7.82%

There have been also a stock picks competition among Canadian bloggers. Here is the result for first half of 2010.

• Dividend Growth Investor: +3.62%
• The Wild Investor: –8.61%
• My Trader’s Journal: –11.41%
• 1stmilliondollar.net: –15.05%
• Four Pillars: –16.69%
• Zach Stocks: –17.08%
• Million Dollar Journey: –17.08%
• WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com: –17.20%
• TheFinancialBlogger.com: –19.41%
• Intelligent Speculator: –19.76%

Jim had 10 stocks pick from the emerging market. However, be cautious, Jim warned that emerging market is quite volatile. There is always another entry point if you miss the boat now. Here is his 10 stocks pick:

• iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ETF (NYSE:FXI)
• Ctrip.com (NASDAQ:CTRP)
• China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock (PINK:CSRGY)
• Market Vectors Brazil Small-cap ETF (NYSE:BRF)
• AmBev (NYSE:ABV)
• Vale (NASDAQ:VALE)
• HDFC Bank (NYSE:HDB)
• Central European Distribution (NASDAQ:CEDC)
• Lan Airlines (NYSE:LFL)
• Standard Chartered Bank (PINK:SCBFF)

Here are the return of our stock picks year to date:

• ASIA: –6.7%
• CAGC: +18.32%
• ITC: +7.18%
• PEGA: -6.85%
• Average return: +2.99%

For comparison, here are the return of popular benchmark, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100.

• S&P 500: +6.42%
• Nasdaq 100: +8.46%

After beating S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 in the last 2 months, we got hit pretty hard this month. We are now behind S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100. Firstly, we got hit by bad earning result from PEGA recently. The stocks dropped about 20% since earning report. Secondly, we also got hit very hard by CAGC after Jim Cramer recommended selling this stock.

Recently we borrowed Jim Cramer’s latest book, Getting Back to Even, from our local library. There is one chapter where Cramer predicts the next big thing in the stock market. After high-tech bubble in late 1990s and recent real-estate bubble, what’s next? Here is the snippet from his book:

As we emerge from the financial crisis, I believe that the absolute best opportunities for you to make money are to be found among the banks. That’s right, the banks.

Cramer gives five regional banking stocks. He believes one of them will give very high return in the years to come.

• Glacier Bancorp (NASDAQ:GBCI)
• FirstMerit (NASDAQ:FMER)
• First Niagara Financial Group (NASDAQ:FNFG)
• NewAlliance Bancshares (NYSE:NAL)
• People’s United Financial (NASDAQ:PBCT)

You can learn more about CAN SLIM from William O’Neil book, How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad, Fourth Edition.

Today, we would like to run stocks screener on the first two letters of CAN SLIM, i.e.:

• C: Current Earnings. Current earnings should be up at least 25%.
• A: Annual Earnings. Annual earnings should be at least 25% in each of the last three years. Annual return on equity should be at least 16%.

Due to limitation of Yahoo Finance’s stocks screener as well as to keep the number of stocks below 100, we have to modify the criteria a little bit, i.e.:

• Instead of using the last 3 years annual earnings, we use the last 5 years.
• Market capitalization should be $500 million or more because we don’t want to speculate on micro-cap stocks.
• Profit margin should be at least 10%.
• Average daily volume should be at least 100k because we don’t want any illiquid stocks.

We have created a Google Docs that contains the complete result of this stock filter. Click here to view the complete result.

It’s beginning of the month; and we would like to update you with our stock picks at fool.com’s CAPS. This stock picks are different to the ones that we choose for the contest. The difference is that we can choose as many stocks as we can; not only limited to 4 stocks.

Our member rating is dropped to 34.40 compared to last month. Thanks to CAGC that has been performing not so good in the last 2 weeks, drop more than 20% already.

Here is the update of our CAPS account – the winners are highlighted in green color:

Here are the return of our stock picks year to date:

• ASIA: –13.04%
• CAGC: +77.89%
• ITC: +5.59%
• PEGA: +8.82%
• Average return: +19.82%

For comparison, here are the return of popular benchmark, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100.

• S&P 500: +4.87%
• Nasdaq 100: +5.68%

PS: You can follow the performance of our stock picks live on this page; and the live result of the competition on this page. Alternatively, you can click the links at the top of the page.

• ASIA: –19.80% YTD
• CAGC: +78.89% YTD
• ITC: +2.48% YTD
• PEGA: +5.88% YTD

On average, our stock picks return year to date is 16.86%.

Meanwhile, the return of our benchmark indexes are:

• S&P 500: –0.95% YTD
• Nasdaq Composite Index: –1.36% YTD

Our stock picks are still beating the indexes up until today. Let’s see how March performance is going to look like.