Our Top Picks and Stock Pickers

This article is part of our Rising Star Portfolios series.

The last time we checked in on the performance of our Rising Stars, Alyce Lomax had established a small lead over her fellow analysts and the market. Since that time, Alyce has expanded her lead considerably over both. If this keeps up, some folks may conclude that women really are better investors than men. They may also start truly believing that socially responsible investing pays, since that's the investing style that Alyce pursues.

Below, you'll find the top five performers since we started on Nov. 1, 2010.

Source: Motley Fool CAPS. As of March 24.

Alyce has earned her outstanding performance by investing in socially responsible companies such as Timberland (NYSE: TBL) and SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWRA), which are up 86% and 18%, respectively. Early on, Alyce identified Timberland as the perfect example of a company that can "do well and do good in the world." And so far, it has followed through on that promise.

Meanwhile, Eric Bleeker has delivered excellent returns by identifying promising tech investments such as Cirrus Logic (Nasdaq: CRUS) and EMC (NYSE: EMC), which are up 66% and 15%, respectively. Eric focuses primarily on tech ideas for his portfolio, and so far that strategy has paid off very well for him.

Overall, our Rising Stars are doing a fine job in identifying superior investing ideas. The percentage of their stocks outperforming the market is a robust 64%, according to Motley Fool CAPS. And 15 of the 16 portfolios are delivering positive returns at the moment. Only three of 16 are outperforming the market itself thus far, however, as the S&P 500 has produced white-hot returns of 10.62% since Nov. 2, 2010. We remain extremely confident that more and more of our Rising Stars will outperform the market over a longer time frame.

On an individual-pick basis, our Rising Stars have done extraordinarily well with Bryan White having earned our very first double in ION Geophysical (NYSE: IO). Below are the top five recommendations so far:

Source: Motley Fool CAPS. As of March 29.

The energy sector has been on fire over the past six months, and our Rising Stars have capitalized on that trend by selecting a number of solid companies from that area for their portfolios. In addition to ION Geophysical and GulfMark Offshore mentioned above, they've selected solid performers such as El Paso Corp. (NYSE: EP) and Transocean (NYSE: RIG), which are up 26% and 25%, respectively. For a complete list of all of our selections so far, check out TMFRisingStars on Motley Fool CAPS.

A journey of a thousand miles ...
A couple of months ago, I had the tremendous pleasure of chatting with David Einhorn, one of the all-time investing greats. He told me that his firm was very committed to investing in "day-one" managers who don't yet have track records, as he believes there's a significant opportunity there.

We agree completely, and our Rising Stars are our equivalent of "day-one" managers. I'm convinced that several of them will be investing luminaries at the Fool someday, so this is a great opportunity for you to invest alongside them as they establish their own track records. To get started, visit us on our Rising Stars intro page. You can also follow a few of the companies mentioned in this article by clicking the links below.

• Add ION Geophysical to My Watchlist.
• Add Timberland to My Watchlist.
• Add Cirrus Logic to My Watchlist.

This article is part of our Rising Star Portfolios series, where we give some of our most promising stock analysts cold, hard cash to manage on the Fool's behalf. We'd like you to track our performance and benefit from these real-money, real-time free stock picks. See all of our Rising Star analysts (and their portfolios).