The Stock Picker’s Corner Farm Team
An exclusive benefit for members of SPC Premium ...
In the early 1900s, Major League Baseball (MLB) teams lacked a systematic way of finding and developing talent – to create their future superstars.
Back then, minor league teams were independent operations. So there was no player-development process. And when minor-league stars flashed big-league potential, MLB teams engaged in pugnacious bidding wars. Costs spiraled as the rich teams got richer … and the other teams lost out.
That just didn’t work for St. Louis Cardinals GM Branch Rickey, a former player whose “tightwad” reputation spawned the nickname “El Cheapo.”
Rickey might’ve been tight-fisted, but he was also an innovative thinker. In 1919, while running the “Redbirds,” he unveiled a plan to grow talent from within – neutralizing the bidding wars and creating a development program that molded future stars, as well as Hall of Famers.
Today, Rickey’s breakthrough plan is known as a “farm system.”
“When the Cardinals were fighting for their life in the National League, I found that we were at a disadvantage in obtaining players of merit from the minors,” Rickey said, according to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). “Still, I do not feel that the farming system we have established is the result of any inventive genius — it is the result of stark necessity. We did it to meet a question of supply and demand of young ballplayers.”
The Cardinals made their first World Series appearance in 1926 – and won. That started a 21-season run that included nine National League pennants and six World Series championships.
At Stock Picker’s Corner (SPC), we’ve developed our own “development program” with our top-investing prospects – our Farm Team.
Much like a baseball farm team, our SPC counterpart lets us evaluate prospects, track their progress, and decide when – or if – they are ready to get “called up” to our Model Portfolio … our version of the “big leagues.”
You benefit, too. It’s a systematized “development pipeline” – one that gives you a starting point for your own investment research and lets you decide which “players” you want to promote and how much you want to spend.
We keep this simple – with a Farm Team “roster” of five to 20 at any moment in time. And while we may openly talk about these companies in our free issues, only SPC Premium members have access to the actual roster names – and the more detailed progress reports that go with it.
Current SPC Premium members can access our Farm Team on the Model Portfolio tab.
And if you’re curious about the full range of features and benefits that come with an SPC Premium membership, you can learn more here.