Beat the Benchmark 2026. Update: I wish I had never bought these two stocks.

Hello dear friends. My name is Clive

Thompson. Today I'm going to be talking

about my beat the benchmark portfolio

2026 and I'll be talking about the best

and worst stocks. And I'm going to tell

you about two stocks I really regret

putting in the portfolio.

Let's quickly start with a risk warning.

Nothing in this video is meant to be

investment advice. I'm not an investment

advisor. Stocks may go down as well as

up and you may not get back what you

started with. Stocks and portfolios that

I mentioned today may fall in value and

you may lose money. Let's get on with

it.

Every year I publish a specimen

portfolio called beat the benchmark.

It comprises 40 stocks.

These stocks are very carefully chosen.

They are designed to be as diversified

as possible. Now, this year's portfolio

went live in December 2025 and quite a

few of my viewers have been asking

questions about its yield, its PE ratio,

its growth, and its safety. Today, I'm

going to answer those questions and I'm

going to show you how I answer them and

walk you through how you can find the

metrics and fundamentals of your own

portfolio very quickly and easily. Let's

get into it. The portfolio philosophy is

simple. I want exposure to as many

countries as possible. I want exposure

to as many industries, currencies,

countries, and company sizes as

possible.

Not the 40 fastest growing stocks, but

40 stocks that fit together like a

jigsaw puzzle. And I want to

deliberately avoid duplication while

avoiding concentration risk. Now, how is

it performed? We started with $400,000.

We've got $47,000

now, slightly up. Um, but we had a very

good January and February, up about 9%

as you can see here on the chart. Uh,

but then after the war started here, we

fell back heavily and we're currently up

about 1.4%. Uh, which is where your

48,000 comes from. Uh, that's very

slightly behind the benchmark. Um, but

I'm very confident and you're going to

see the reasons why in a minute.

So on the 28th of February, the war

came. Of course, with hindsight,

everybody says we could have known it's

coming. Uh perhaps plenty did, but that

changed everything. Some stocks surged

and others fell hard.

Here's a quick summary of what moved and

why. The winners were largely in defense

and energy. Singapore Technologies

Engineering surged on demand for

battlefield vehicles, drones, and cyber

security. Norway's Norbit Asa rose

sharply. They make underwater threat

detection equipment. Uh they protect

subca infrastructure. DO Aviation in

France, Indra Systems in Spain, and

Leonardo SPA in Italy performed or

benefited from the dramatic increase in

European defense spending. On the energy

side, uh, Shell Transport and Trading

performed well, um, as did the

alternative energy companies, Vestus

Wind Systems and Kazak Tomrom, the Kazak

uranium producer.

The losers were the more painful story.

Hermes, the luxury goods manufacturer,

uh, fell as luxury spending came under

pressure with the war. Betsson uh

dropped heavily after Turkey cracked

down on online gambling and its currency

collapsed and the Chinese collectibles

company PopMart mart suffered from

rising tariffs and higher shipping

costs. Coming up, I'm going to tell you

about two stocks I should never have

bought and why. But first, let me show

you the metrics and the fundamentals of

the portfolio. And I think you're going

to agree that they're pretty good.

Now, most investors know simply Wall

Street for its snowflake. That's the

visual score you get when you click on

any individual company. It rates that

company from 0 to six across five

dimensions: health, value, future

growth, past performance, and dividends.

What very few people realize is that you

can generate the same snowflake for your

entire portfolio at at once. So, here's

the snowflake for my entire portfolio,

and you can see that it scores really

well on health. It's got an average

score of 4.72 out of six, and I would

say any score above two out of six is

good uh or good enough, and three out of

six is very good. Uh it also scores well

on the past track record, well on the

future growth, and well on the value

section. On the dividend section, maybe

doesn't score so well, but dividends

wasn't an important part of this

portfolio. across the board the

portfolio's got pretty good fundamentals

I think.

There we are. That's the so strong

health value and future and growth past.

Now let's look at the growth picture. So

to get that I'm going to click on

analysis and I'll scroll down to the

charts here and let's go across to look

at the growth that's coming. So let's

just go there. So as we can see the

historical growth of the portfolio,

we're talking about the earnings per

share growth or the earnings growth was

19.7 compared with the US market of

8.2%.

And the projected future growth is 24.9%

growth in earnings compared with the US

market of 16%. We got a similar picture

in the revenue growth of 16% past growth

uh versus 12 for the US market and

revenue growth forecast uh in the future

at 12% compared with 10.9% for the US

market. And if we come to the earnings

per share growth, we get a very picture

uh very similar picture to the earnings

growth of 19.9 historical 24.4 for

forecast earnings growth much higher

than the US uh forecast for the whole

market of 16.6%.

So I can say that across the board this

portfolio is expected to grow faster

than the market average. That's not

guaranteed, it's an expectation. And

here is one of my favorite views. We'll

scroll down here. Uh it's the

diversification across holdings. Look at

that ring of holdings. Every company

represented there represents a different

segment. There's no single stock

dominates. The largest holding KPL

represents just 3.9%

of the portfolio. Most of the holdings

sit in the 2.1 to 2.9% range. That's

genuine diversification. Diversification

by name, by numbers, by country, by

industry. And finally, valuation. This

is where it gets interesting. So to get

to the valuation, I'm just going to

scroll up here and we'll go to this

section and scroll to the left.

Nearly there. There we are. So this is

quite interesting because we can see

that the value of the portfolio is

$47,750,000.

But based on the discounted cash flow

value, these businesses are actually

worth based on the cash they are

expected to generate $851,780.

That's a figure which can change daily

of course. Um so the current portfolio

is currently priced at 52.1%

below its estimated intrinsic value. So

we have a theoretical value of $851,000.

intrinsic value $851,000 on a discounted

cash flow basis. Current market value

less than half of that very cheap in

terms of the portfolio and also as we

saw earlier high growth expected.

Now this brings me to what's called Mr.

Market or Benjamin Graham and Warren

Buffett.

Now Benjamin Graham was the mentor for

Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett wouldn't

be the hero he is when it comes to

investing if it wasn't for Ben Graham.

So Benjamin Graham in his book called

the intelligent investor introduced a

character he called Mr. Market.

Mr. Market is sometimes rational and

sometimes very euphoric and sometimes

he's deeply pessimistic willing to sell

you perfectly good businesses for far

less than they're worth.

Warren Buffett once said, "Mr. Market is