I did a quick analysis for various stock recommendation posts I found on r/stocks that were dated close to but prior to the year in question and figured out what the most recommended stocks were based on mentions and also based on # of upvotes.
The data is here.
In essence for 2025, the top 10 recommendations based on mentions returned 68.3% versus 18% for the SPY.
For 24(and based on returns since 24), the top 10 recommendations based on mentions returned 58.6% versus 46% for the SPY. The top 20 actually hit 116% and if you went by upvotes, the top 10 hit 195%.
Yes a lot of that is mostly due to the inclusion of certain stocks like RKLB, NVDA, ASTS and PLTR which carried the but still pretty interesting data to look at.
I do also have the data for 22 and while those recommendations did terrible the year of(down 47.1% for the top 10 versus SPY being down 19.9%), they recovered quite well and the top picks are up 92.3% since 2022 versus 44.5% for the SPY.
Is r/stocks actually good at stock picking? Analysis of recommendation posts for the past few years.
byu/timeinthemarket instocks
Posted by timeinthemarket
9 Comments
Anything AI. Why? Because robots will replace humanity.
I bought few Bank preferred few months back..as interest rates were coming. bank stocks are keep going up but preferred are down in a big way. someone help me to understand
you’re telling me that r/wallstreetbets is better at stock picking than r/stocks ? lowkey not surprised
what are the 2026 recommendations
Are the recommendations made before the year started or in the year itself? Because that would mean ofcourse they might already have had a run up.
Meaningless – you need to know the stock price, the day they recommended it.
I’ll probably be more interested to see the recommendations in 2024 and how they did in 2025.
As soon as the stock becomes hot everyone talks about it and recommends it, it’s the herding instinct
We should be measuring performance AFTER mention. I highly suspect this is just people talking about the stocks that already increased.
i use r/stocks as an inverse index. it worked every single time.
rklb, rcat, acher, axon and mu.
whenever you see bunch of folks jumping out recommending a single ticker, upvoted like crazy, no data support, get out that stock immediately.
on the countrary, read the most downvoted comment if the comments have no sexual slurs personal attacks. follow them.
i used this to buy meta, lly, lnth, and a few others. all successfully turned around quickly.
reddit is a wonderful sentiment check