Forcerank Top Pick Weekly 5/9/2016

Welcome to week 6 of the 2nd quarter! Be sure to set up your picks now for next week’s contests.

Let’s kick it off by taking a look at this week’s Forcerank Consensus versus actual results for the US Sectors contests to get a feel for what outperformed and underperformed expectations and which way competitors were leaning in terms of risk on/off.

Besides the fact that the consensus was dead on accurate for 6 out of 10, what’s most interesting is that competitors moved to a very risk off stance this week relative to what has been fueling this rally. Consumer staples and Utilities were top picks while higher beta sectors Tech, Industrials, and the recent leader Energy were unloved. While competitors were dead on with much of this positioning, tech did make a comeback late in the week to outperform its #10 consensus rank.

Below we get another look at how quickly competitors shifted their stance on the Energy sector this past week from the #1 spot all the way to #8 and nailed the turn.

This week, we also wanted to take a look at what’s been going on in the Social Media contest given that it has become the most popular on Forcerank. When we took a look at the data one major thing stood out, the amazing consistency in how high Forcerank competitors rank Facebook.

Facebook (FB) has been the consistently at the top of the rankings since the launch of the Social Media contest on Forcerank, and competitors have been largely accurate with that stance. Because Facebook does not have as high a beta as some of the other names in the contest it isn’t likely to fall at the very top or bottom of the list in any given week, but the data here is very interesting in terms of the longer term sentiment from the Forcerank Consensus around Facebook being the consensus top pick on such a regular basis. It may not be each individual competitor’s #1 peek in any given week, but it’s likely that most competitors have it near the top.

It was another wild week in the Most Heavily Shorted contest as Square, Solar City, and Fitbit were all down more than 25%. Across the board short sellers had a great week in these names which hadn’t been the case lately. Square and Fitbit are two companies with quickly growing revenues, but many questions about both the long term viability of their business models and very competitive nature of their respective markets. The shorts have certainly been right in Fitbit to this point, but the verdict on Square is still up in the air.

Go crush it this week!