For all those out there who are real "stock pickers", confident in your ability to beat the overall market index like a drum, I'm starting my own stock selection process.

I'm going to start tracking a new index - the Buffoonery Portfolio (**note to buffoons: follow my stock "selections" at your own risk**). There is a school of thought that all attempts at stock-picking are folly without some form of "insider knowledge". Thus, any random selection will do as well as any well thought-out selection.

I'm going to keep track of two separate portfolios. One will be comprised of a basket of six stocks from the S&P/TSX 60, the index comprising 60 of the largest public companies in Canada. The other will be a basket of six stocks from the S&P 500, which is an index comprising 500 of the biggest public companies in the U.S.

Why six stocks? It's enough to have a meaningful amount of diversity, especially when you consider that a good number of the stocks in these indices are diversified in and of themselves.

Now for the good part - the selection process. I'm going to pin a copy of the newspaper to my wall, take my darts and choose my stocks! No messy research, no angst about whether the P/E ratio of this one is better than that one, no worries about cash positions, forget about management experience or whether stock options are expensed - nothing! Just pick 'em and sit back and relax.

I'll keep track of both portfolios in Canadian dollars. For the Canadian portfolio, that means it's in the local currency and no conversion is required. For the U.S. portfolio, however, there will be exchange rate risk from a Canadian standpoint. That is, the value of the U.S. portfolio, expressed in Canadian dollars, will fluctuate based on two factors. The first is the actual value of the underlying stocks. The second factor is the relative value of the Canadian dollar compared to the U.S. dollar.

I'll measure the performance of the Buffoonery Index monthly against the benchmark index, and see how they compare.mortgage calculator