The Buffoonery Portfolio is underway in its quest to beat the S&P/TSX 60 index through the random selection of six stocks from the S&P/TSX 60 index.

On the Canadian side, my six randomly-selected stocks are (drum roll please):

BVF	Biovail Corporation 	(bvf.to)

CTR.NV	Canadian Tire Corporation Ltd.	(ctr-nv.to)

FHR	Fairmont Hotels & Resorts	(fhr.to)

NRD	Noranda Inc.	(nrd.to)

RY	Royal Bank Of Canada	(ry.to)

T	TELUS Corporation	(t.to)

Was that ever easy! And diversified!

(Confession: In the interests of full disclosure, I said I was going to choose the stocks by throwing darts at a newspaper. I didn't actually throw darts. I didn't even use a newspaper. I downloaded the constituent stocks of the S&P/TSX 60 from standardandpoors.com and then used a random number generator on my spreadsheet to pick from the list).

In the further interests of full disclosure, I own absolutely none of these companies' shares. I do shop at Canadian Tire from time to time, though. Usually to buy things like a car battery, or a hockey stick. I have no idea what Biovail does, though I think it's a drug company of some sort. Fairmont owns hotels, but I haven't stayed at any of their hotels recently. Royal Bank is a bank, and in fact I think it's the largest bank in Canada, but I don't bank there. Telus is a phone company. I don't use them either. Noranda is a mining company. Who uses mining companies?

Interestingly there are no oil companies in the portfolio. Oil companies are a significant part of the index. They're also quite highly priced now too - though who's to say that oil prices can't go higher?

This is not a real-money portfolio, just a tracking portfolio for interest's sake. It is a completely unscientific means of debunking the myth that investment analysts are worth their salt.

Now I just have to buy 'em and I'm ready to go. I think I'll buy about $5,000 (Canadian dollars) of each stock, or a little less than $30,000 in total. I'll buy as many whole shares as I can without going over my $5,000 limit, and I'll factor in a $29 brokerage fee per trade which is pretty typical for Canadian discount brokers (you should see what the full-service brokers charge!). My hypothetical purchases will occur at about noon Eastern on Friday April 8, 2005.

I will also track the index from Friday onwards as a reference point. There are two ways to track the index. One is to use the actual index itself. The other is to use an index ETF (exchange traded fund) such as the Iunits tracking shares. I think I'll go with the Iunits share, since I'm really comparing investment choices - the choice between my randomly selected stocks, compared to an index ETF. The index ETF (xiu.to) is the closest I can get to buying the "index".mortgage calculator