This is the fifth year that I am posting my stock picks for the year. There is a lot of foolishness in doing so because each year that I have made such suggestions, including 2009 when I owned all of the picks, it is assumed that I would hold all of the positions without responding to market conditions, or changes in the specific company. No adding to, or cutting a position. This is not the real world.

It is not possible for everything to remain static. For example, you might find that you hold a stock that made a great run through three quarters, beyond your wildest expectations, and decide it has passed a point where the metrics cannot support anything close to the price. Under normal circumstances you might sell it, except you cannot. By the end of the year the profit you might have realized fades away and you end up reporting on something that is not a true measure of your objective strategy. Nevertheless, once again I will stick with this approach because this seems to be how its done in every publication's annual picks. This year there are eleven.

The year 2010 has come and gone and my results are in. This is my fourth annual stock results to be reported on BlogginStocks, so something of a track record is starting to form. This past year ended with a modest improvement over the unmanaged Standard & Poors 500 index

The original story, Chasing Value: 10 Stock Picks for 2010, took readers through a review of many candidates, concluding with the ten picks, using prices from Dec. 28, 2009.

The third quarter of 2010 is in the books and the results are in. My picks have sagged behind the Standard & Poor's 500 Index after surpassing it by a large margin for most of the year. The original story, Chasing Value: 10 Stock Picks for 2010, was the culmination of a process presented to our readers and finally narrowed down to the select group using final prices from Dec. 28, 2009. For comparison, I tracked the S&P 500.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is the new star of the show and Brasil Telecom (BTM) remains in the dog house.

The first quarter of 2010 is closed and the results are in. My picks surpassed the primary indices by a large margin. The original story, Chasing Value: 10 Stock Picks for 2010 , was the culmination of a process presented to our readers and finally narrowed down to the select group using final prices from Monday, December 28, 2009.

For comparison I tracked the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the NASDAQ. Each of these produced positive results for the quarter.

In about three weeks I will be reporting the results of my 2010 picks through the first quarter. One of those picks and the leader of the pack Grubb & Ellis (GBE), a real estate brokerage and investment company, reached a new 52 week high yesterday of $2.20, topping the previous high of $2.17 set last October.

At the time I initially wrote about the stock, in December, it was trading at $1.33 a share, the lowest priced stock I have ever included for consideration. The 65.41% gain, to date, will most assuredly help my annual batting average. Grubb & Ellis is besting the 2.93% YTD gain of the Standard & Poors 500 by more than 60%. Absent some unforeseen black swan, I expect it to finish the year higher still.

Analyst Upgrades

• Keefe Bruyette upgraded MSCI Inc. (MXB) to outperform from market perform on valuation following Monday's sell-off as it views the acquisition of RiskMetrics (RISK) favorably. The firm has a $36 price target on shares. UBS also upgraded MSCI, to buy from neutral, and raised its target to $40 from $34, citing the recent pullback in shares and the accretive acquisition of RiskMetrics.
• Deutsche Bank upgraded Suncor (SU) to hold from sell on valuation and raised its price target on shares to $28 from $20. The firm continues to prefer Canadian Natural (CNQ) to Suncor, however, and raised its target on shares to $80 from $78.
• JMP Securities upgraded Grubb & Ellis (GBE) to outperform from market perform based on the improved operating environment and balance sheet, and valuation, among other reasons.
• Dell (DELL) was upgraded to buy from neutral at UBS.
• FEMSA (FMX) was upgraded to overweight from neutral at HSBC.
• Westar Energy (WR) was upgraded to outperform from market perform at Wells Fargo.

During my tenure at BloggingStocks I have expressed my opinion often about the contribution that dividends make to your overall return. Most shrewd investors, and especially "my pal Warren," know this and understand why I re-emphasize the point when I make my annual selections.

By now I hope you have had a chance to peruse my picks for 2010. If not the links below will give you another opportunity.

Where as my fist pick, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is a large cap diversified conglomerate, my second, Grubb & Ellis Co. (GBE), is a micro-cap stock of $90 million.

GBE is a network of nearly 130 owned and affiliated offices, providing commercial real estate services to property owners, institutional investors, and tenants. Its 1,800 brokers and some 6,000 affiliated real estate professionals offer advisory and brokerage, property management, construction consultation, and other services.

The company has been devastated by the bursting of the residential real estate market bubble, lost equity value, illiquid capital markets and the still impending concern over the commercial real estate market facing rising vacancies as hundreds of billions of dollars in loans must be rolled over.

To arrive at this years ten picks I scoured business journals and editorials, online and off. I also ran through a series of stock screens repeatedly over the last few months filtering for five primary value metrics identifying stocks worthy of further consideration.

The 5 data points were price-to-sales (P/S), price-to-book (P/B), price-to-cash flow (P/CF), dividend yield and return-on-equity (ROE). I did look at other things but these were the subject of my initial focus.

Today it's time to do some trimming of the fourteen stocks and four options on the contenders list. This review will prioritize the companies by price-to-book (P/B), price-to-sales (P/S) and return-on-equity (ROE). This does not preclude more possible stocks being added and the final list will not be done until the end of the month.

We will also compare recent stock prices to three-year highs to give us a relative idea where the stock floated in rosier times.

In this installment of our search for the ten picks for 2010, I will risk my reputation (and money) as I head in a more speculative direction. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed breaking up my potential picks into three categories: "Contender", "On the Fence", and "Out of the Running", until the 10 stocks have been identified.

The following lists the first ten stocks I discussed and the current standing after Part 2 of this series, plus four new stocks reviewed today.

You can learn a lot from your elders and when it comes to investing, you best listen very attentively. I often refer to 'my pal Warren' in my posts and I credit Mr. Buffett's investment advice and parables over the years for much of my gains in 2009.

There is another mentor, though, one I have not referred to often but that I have gleaned some wisdom from in terms of value investing and courage, and that is 'my pal Sir John.' While Buffett has been very straight forward in his position that you should buy on fear and this was the year to do that, it was Templeton that preached buying far and wide and diversifying broadly into out-of-favor companies. As he did when he started out.

Analyst upgrades:

• Citigroup upgraded shares of Consol Energy (NYSE: CNX) to Buy from Hold following the company's lowered guidance as 2009 is fully contracted with a 26% price increase. The firm raised its target to $40 from $38.
  
• Deutsche Bank upgraded AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) to Buy from Hold on valuation as it thinks the sell-off on the company's Q4 miss and cautious guidance is overdone.
  
• Wachovia upgraded Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) to Outperform from Market Perform because the firm thinks the outlook of the company's two main markets is improving. The firm believes the company's valuation is attractive. Thomas Weisel upgraded Boston Scientific to Overweight from Market Weight citing valuation and improving fundamentals.
• Goldman added MasterCard (NYSE: MA) to the Conviction Buy List.
  
• Accuray (NASDAQ: ARAY) was raised to Buy from Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
  
• KLA-Tencor (NASDAQ: KLAC) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Banc of America/Merrill.