Replying to Mungofitch:
The problem is, of course, knowing in advance what a good pick might be. The three in that table are picked, one assumes, based on their past results. But apparently you didn't pick them 20 years ago.

Answer 1: No I didn't pick them 20 years ago, but I should have.

Answer 2: I should have gotten into them at least 10 years ago once they had established their Earnings and Revenue growth trends.

I have made the plots and seen the trends going back 20+ years. I have seen that the "noise" around the trend line gives you 3 year periods where you first lose money and then just break even before the trend starts being your friend again in a big way. I know that things that can't go on forever eventually stop, but that the only way to really make money is to find one of those updrafts and stay in it for at least a few thousand feet.

Mungofitch looks at 5 year average returns for some Value Line picks:
Amazon was their 436th from top pick. It has returned 8%/year.
Alphabet was their 762nd from top pick. it has returned 18.9%/year.
Apple was their 1377th from top pick, at 2%/year. (yes, lower than 84% of the stocks in the list). It has returned 16.7%/year

This result actually seems to support my fascination with the high returns of my little corner of FAANG. So yes, this particular 5 years was less than the IRR trend rates I reported over 20 years, but two out of three of them were meaningfully higher than "the market" (SP500) and our favorite BRK which both turned in ~11.5% a year averaged over the last 5 years. If you look at the last 5 years as a failure of the tripleA (Amazon, Apple and Alphabet) to meet its IRR trend, your punishment for having been wrong was significantly higher than market returns on two out of the three anyway.

YMMV. There's nothing wrong with making market returns, you get to keep all that money and use it as you will. But there are a lot of different ways of reaching for higher returns. Statistically, we expect those who reach for something different than market returns, 1/3 will do worse, 1/3 will do better and 1/3 will do about the same as the market. I don't think where you are in that distribution is random and neither does Buffett. I am obviously not one of The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville. But I know other humans who seem to consistently outperform the market, and I am willing to reach for the top 33%, hoping not to fall below the middle 33% but there you go, my hat is in the ring.

All I need is for some of my excess returns to make it into my retirement and I shall have won. So far so good.

R: