The darts haven't won the race, but they have done respectably, Atkins says. In fact, in 79 contests between human stock analysts and human dart throwers, stock analysts have won 45 times, and darts 34 times. One month after the professional or the dart chose a stock, the experts had beaten the Dow by 1.41 percent. Darts, unfortunately for Samuelson, were 1.75 percent below the Dow. Not so great for the dart-throwers.
Darts are fun.
Darts don't make cold calls during dinner. On a slightly more serious note, Atkins notes that the results might have been skewed by the fact that after the Wall Street Journal published the Investment Dartboard, investors may have bought the expert-selected stocks, artificially inflating their prices. Still, this focus on expectations can lead to peculiar behavior. Since everybody would learn about the sale simultaneously, the stock price would rise accordingly to meet those expectations. Then, if The Why Files indeed announced a big dividend, there would be no dramatic change in price, because the price is already reflected in the dividend.