Top 10 shares in David Shapiro’s 2024 Cristal Challenge

Sasol, Pick n Pay, Sibanye-Stillwater, Shoprite, and Naspers are the most popular shares in David Shapiro’s 2024 Cristal Challenge.

Shapiro, Sasfin Wealth’s chief global equity strategist, started the Cristal Challenge in January 2021.

Named after the famous premium champagne, the challenge is a fun and exciting opportunity to encourage outside participation within the stock market.

Shapiro initially started with ten players. The challenge has rapidly grown in popularity and attracted 371 participants this year.

Each participant picks five stocks, and their performance is tracked over the year. The winners are selected based on the return of their 5-stock portfolio by 1 December.

In the 2024 Cristal Challenge, participants can cash in one of their investments during the year.

At the end of the period, whoever has made the most money is awarded a bottle of Cristal and other prizes.

Many well-known media personalities, fund managers, analysts, and investors entered the 2023 Cristal Challenge.

Participants included big names like Keith McLachlan, Bright Khumalo, Mia Kruger, Marc Hasenfuss, Piet Viljoen, Giulietta Talevi, Nick Kunze, and – of course – David Shapiro.

Participants range from professional investors to retail investors without much knowledge of the market. This makes for an interesting mix of stock picks.

Familiar large-cap companies like Sasol, Pick n Pay, Sibanye-Stillwater, Shoprite, and Naspers were the most popular.

However, most of the popular stocks in the 2024 Cristal Challenge have not enjoyed a good start to the year.

Sasol is down 19%, Pick n Pay declined by 14%, and Sibanye-Stillwater is down 17%. Shoprite was slightly better and only lost 2% year-to-date.

Naspers was the best-performing among the five most popular picks, increasing 9% year-to-date.

Most popular share picks

The table below shows the ten most popular shares in David Shapiro’s 2024 Cristal Challenge.