This year has been one of the worst financial years in history. We are going through the worst credit crisis since The Great Depression and a historic Housing Market Crash. At the moment of this writing both the major indices and the vast majority of stocks are still in a major downtrend. This is very much a significant bear market.

While it is not the objective of this site to pick investment stocks, once a year we will select a set of 5 investment stocks to hold of for approximately 6-7 months. The selection is based on a proprietary stock selection algorithm based on valuation that I’m currently testing. The purpose of this blog entry is to “keep me honest” six months from now.

Here are my top-5 Dow stock picks.

-Alcoa (AA)
-General Electtric (GE)
-Walt Disney (DIS)
-Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
-American Express (AXP)

Note: At the moment all these stocks are in a significant downtrend. The ADX still shows significant integrity to the downtrend. We need to wait for a reversal and use an appropriate entry technique.

This portfolio should be re-evaluated at the beginning of the month of May 2009. The benchmark for this portfolio is the Dow Jones Industrial. We should compare the performance of these 5 stocks combined as a single portfolio against the Dow 30 exiting from the positions in early May.