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%

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.

For those who don’t know, Motley Fool (fool.com) is web site for for long-term investor. It features news, commentary, stocks rating, community and many more. One of their services is called CAPS; where we can pick stocks for compared our performance with other CAPS members as well as S&P 500.

We have been using CAPS to track our stock picks for quite a while now. Our CAPS address is:

http://caps.fool.com/player/1stmilliondollar.aspx

Unlike the our stock picks at the Canadian bloggers contest that has limitation of 4 stocks; we list all stocks that we think is a good investment in CAPS. Our current stock picks are:

• PEGA
• CAGC
• BIDU
• ITC
• EW
• CTRP
• ARD
• ASIA
• CHK
• POT
• DAR

If you look at our picks as of today (February 13, 2010); 9 out of our 11 picks have beaten S&P 500.

Links

• Our Stock Picks for 2010
• Our Motley Fool’s CAPS account

It’s actually a little bit too late to publish our stock picks for 2010. We’re in the second week of February right now.

Anyway, since we just started this blog last week, it shouldn’t hurt to publish our stock picks for 2010. Although we invested our real money to invest in these companies; it doesn’t mean it’s buy recommendation for you. Please consult your financial advisor before invest in any of these companies.

• AsiaInfo (NASDAQ:ASIA). AsiaInfo Technologies delivers high quality software and solutions to China’s telecommunication carriers.
• China Agritech (NASDAQ:CAGC). China Agritech is a US company operating in China. It is a leading developer, manufacturer and distributor of environmentally friendly liquid fertilizers.
• ITC Holdings Corp. (NYSE:ITC). ITC is a utility company that delivers high-voltage electricity throughout the central of United States and some parts of Canada.
• Pegasystems (NASDAQ:PEGA). Pegasystems is the industry leader  in Business Process Management software with their patented Build for Change technology.

As you can see, we have 2 technology stocks, ASIA and PEGA. One is for the Chinese market and the other one is for the US market. Then we have an agriculture stock, CAGC. People still need to eat even in recession. Lastly, we have a utility company, ITC. Why utility? We are still not sure how fast we’ll recover from the recession. That’s why; we add a utility company as kind of “hedge”.

We also publish a page that monitors the performance of our stocks pick compared to S&P 500.