Nate Pile

While there is no set formula Mr. Pile uses when choosing stocks, the first screen is always done at the fundamental level. For a company to even make it onto Nate’s list for consideration, it must have a compelling long-term growth story (be it a new product or a significantly better version of an existing product or service), and its management team must have a clear and sensible business plan against which investors can measure the company’s progress over the years. When looking at a company from this standpoint, Pile always asks himself a question he first saw posed several years ago in a book on Warren Buffet’s investment philosophy, namely “if the stock market closed for five years and we could not trade the stock again until the market re-opened, would we be still be happy buying the stock today?” If the answer is “yes,” then there is a chance the stock will make it into his portfolio.

Generally, speaking, Nate tends to build positions in stocks with a three- to five-year time period in mind, though as long as a company is continuing to execute on its business plan, he is likely maintain at least a partial position in the stock for a much longer period of time based on the old Wall Street maxim "When is the best time to sell a great growth company? Never!"  In fact, many of the stocks in Nate's Marketocracy portfolio have been there since the early 2000s (albeit with some scaling-in and scaling-out along the way in response to changed market conditions).

Along with the above, it is also worth noting that, given his background, a majority of his picks tend to come from the biotech and high-tech sectors.