Four Stocks Headed to Chicago: Inside Our Round Table Picks

The Manifest Investing Round Table has been picking stocks in real time for 16 years. The tracking portfolio now holds roughly 130 companies, with a rate of return between 16% and 17% annually. That beats the Wilshire 5000 by about 2.5 percentage points.

We will be the first to tell you: 36% of our 912 individual selections are worth less than the $1,000 we put in. That is 328 picks that did not work out. The honest truth is that long-term investing does not require a perfect batting average. It requires staying in the game long enough for the winners to do their work.

Consider Microsoft. We invested $5,000 across multiple selections. That position is now worth $82,000. The gains from Microsoft alone nearly offset all 328 of those underperforming picks combined. Costco, a single $1,000 selection, is now worth nearly $23,000. Amazon, picked twice, sits at approximately $31,000.

That is the backdrop for our latest round of picks. At the April Round Table, four stocks earned their way onto the ballot for the BetterInvesting National Convention in Chicago. The voting was close. Three of the four finished within five percentage points of each other.

Boston Scientific (BSX): Sentiment vs. Fundamentals

Ken K. brought Boston Scientific back to the table. He had owned the stock roughly 20 years ago, sold it, and had not looked back until recently. What brought him back was a familiar pattern: a quality company trading at a discount driven by sentiment rather than fundamentals.

The numbers tell one story. BSX projects sales growth of 10% and earnings growth of 13%. The company has demonstrated strong, consistent growth across all three key metrics since the pandemic. Their investor presentation runs over a hundred slides deep, and the first quarter results blew their own plan numbers out of the water.

The stock price tells a different story. A 34% year-to-date decline, triggered by mixed clinical trial outcomes for Watchman, their cardiac monitoring product. That result shifted analyst sentiment and created heavy selling pressure. The stock dropped 9% on the earnings release and kept falling.

Then the scientific community weighed in. Experts in the field gave a unanimous, strong endorsement to the Watchman product. Ken's conclusion: sentiment, not fundamentals, is driving the discount. He recommended adding $1,000 in Round Table money to the tracking portfolio. The audience agreed.

Intuit (INTU): Quality at a Five-Year Low

Cy L. made the case for Intuit, and the data backed him up. Intuit ranks as the highest-quality company in the software application industry on Manifest. The company serves approximately 100 million customers across QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mint, and its professional tax products.

Revenue growth has been accelerating, from 8% twelve years ago to a pace where management is targeting 20% by 2030. They are doubling down on three big bets: helping consumers double the household savings rate, expanding from small businesses into the mid-market, and accelerating that top-line growth for what is already a large company.

Cy projected 12% growth going forward, which he noted is on the conservative side of recent history. Margins have been expanding. Share count has held steady. His projected EPS five years out lands at $23.30. Value Line projects potential returns of 25%, and Manifest's consensus numbers point even higher.

The stock is trading near a five-year low. For a company with this quality profile, that is the kind of mismatch that gets our attention.

Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM): Health, Wellness, and Value

Kevin from our D.C. regional chapter brought Sprouts Farmers Market. He owns the stock and believes it is undervalued. His case rested on durable tailwinds: growing consumer interest in health and wellness, plus a management team executing with discipline.

Sprouts focuses on the $290 billion annual food-at-home market, where it holds only about 3.5% to 4% share. That fragmentation is the opportunity. The company is growing its store count at 8% per year with no signs of slowing down. Margins run significantly higher than traditional grocery retailers, driven in part by a strong private label program. Kevin noted the company keeps every store within 250 miles of a distribution center, a logistical discipline that protects those margins.

The stock has pulled back roughly 50% over the past year, partly on concerns about competition from Aldi, which plans to open over 225 stores in the coming year. Kevin's view: Sprouts is not competing for the same customer. For something in the defensive sector, this is a strong opportunity to balance a growth-heavy portfolio. The visual analysis showed a classic triple play: depressed stock price, rising profit margins, and potential for P/E expansion.

Climb Global Solutions (CLMB): The One You Have Not Heard Of

Mark brought a name that most of us did not have on our radar: Climb Global Solutions. The company provides consulting teams to data centers and cloud-based enterprises. If you have not heard of them, you are not alone. That is part of the appeal.

CLMB emerged from a curated list of 16 companies ranked by the best combination of return forecasts and quality. It offers a high teens return forecast with reasonable growth projections, solid projected margins, and a fairly attractive P/E ratio. Mark framed it as a "launch position" for the portfolio. Not a swing for the fences, but a well-researched entry into a company that sits at the intersection of two durable trends: cloud computing and data center expansion.

What Happens Next

All four picks travel to Chicago for the 75th anniversary of the BetterInvesting National Convention (April 23-26). The voting was spirited. BSX, CLMB, and INTU all finished within five percentage points of each other. One participant lobbied to release his delegates. There were negotiations in the spin room. Democracy in action.

The tracking portfolio added $1,000 to BSX based on the audience vote, and the remaining picks stay on the watch list heading into the convention. We will report back from the floor.

Sixteen years of data tell us that you do not need to be right every time. You need a process, a community willing to do the work, and the patience to let quality companies compound. That is what the Round Table is all about. And this week, we take it to Chicago.