2006 Review

2006 was a pretty good year. The GTI finished up 15.8%, well ahead of the NASDAQ's 9.5%. But it wasn't the breakout year we'd hoped for.

LNOP won both the Most Valuable Player Award and the Comeback of the Year Award. In 2005 they were our worst stock. In 2006 they were our best. They had plenty of company in the turnaround department. In general, the stocks that did the worst in 2005 did the best in 2006. Unfortunately, the reverse was also true. 2005's high flyers were mostly at the bottom of the pile this year.

As with 2004 and 2005, it was a stock picker's year. If you owned the right companies, you did famously, but if you owned the wrong ones, you were toast.

One difference between 2005 and 2006 is that in 2005, companies added to the list during the year
generally did well, with two of them, NETL and GLW, leading the pack. The 2006 additions were
mixed, with good performances from SMTL and ANAD, but bad results from PMCS and ENER.

One oddity is that two of our top performers were removed from the list during the year. Both BWNG and KEYW suffered takeovers before they had time to ripen fully.

Finally, in 2006 the GTI stocks that don't pay dividends out performed those that do, for the first time in the three years I've been keeping that record.

Here are the company-by-company 2006 returns, listed in order, along with the 2005 returns (if any)
for comparison. (If a company was in the GTI for only a very small part of a year, I've left it out.)