James Warren at The Chicago Tribune writes:

In case you assume that the smartest stock picker on the planet lives in Omaha, prepare for word that he might actually reside in The Pas, a Manitoba town located near polar bear country.

June 16 Forbes introduces “The Oracle of Manitoba,” Randolph McDuff, whose track record (at least in recent years) appears to surpass Omaha’s legendary Warren Buffett. Indeed, “Since McDuff began running his RMG ValueCatalyst small-company fund eight years ago, he has earned a compound annual return of 36.4 percent. Not a single diversified stock fund in Lipper Analytical’s universe of 1,555 mutual funds can match that.”

By comparison, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has returned 11 percent over the same period. So the Canadian McDuff’s self-professed modus operandi? “The [securities] industry rewards analysts for boring, homogenous work and penalizes those who provide truly insightful views. I typically own companies the industry doesn’t cover, covers poorly or covers with largely plagiarized reports.”

Before you pick up the phone, there’s a hitch, namely that his fund is only on paper because he created the simulation on an investing Web site called Marketocracy.com, where one can monitor his results and where he’s ranked the best of 70,000 managers.

If you have at least $50,000, Marketocracy Capital Management will ape McDuff’s portfolio for a fee of 1.9 percent of assets each year. Those now on his buy list include American Pacific Corp. (specialty chemicals) and Nestle SA (consumer products).

Tags: Marketocracy