After yet another wild week, I’m pulling ahead in the family stock contest. Translation: I suck less than my family members.

Me	$87,694.07	-12.31%
Niece-in-law-to-be	$85,331.46	-14.67%
Little Firebones	$84,163.55	-15.84%
Mrs Firebones	$82,892.81	-17.11%
Nephew	$70,340.52	-29.66%

Of the stocks selected, the only winners are my pick of Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD: up 5.6%) and my wife’s pick of CVS Caremark (CVS: up 0.25%).

In terms of indices, I’m beating the following indices:

• NASDAQ Composite
• NASDAQ 100 Stock
• Russell 2000
• CAC 40 (France)
• DAX (XETRA) (Germany)
• Nikkei 225 (Japan)
• ASX All Ordinaries (Australia)
• Korea Composite

The “wisdom of the crowd” theory is not holding up well; the combined portfolio is down 17.92%, which ends up being closest in YTD performance to the NASDAQ 100 Stock index (which is down 17.71% YTD).

Here were my 2008 stock picks for this year’s family stock contest. We take the closing price on 12/31/2007, so the current streak of eight straight losing days for the NASDAQ put us all in a big hole.

Stock	Starting Price	YTD
Berkshire Hatha Class B Ord Shs	4736.00	-6.78%
Mindray Medical International Ltd	42.97	-8.03%
PowerShares Water Resource Portfolio	21.40	-6.45%
Buffalo Wild Wings Inc	23.22	-7.97%
Mueller Water Products Series A Ord Shs	9.52	-10.82%
Central European Distribution Corp	58.08	-5.35%
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp	33.94	-9.81%
Grant Prideco Inc	55.51	-1.44%

YTD: down 7.08%, and the family pickers are down 6.18%.

I picked these with a little less analysis than I normally do before making a trade, and perhaps relied a little too much on the Motley Fool community recommendations as a screening tool to find eight I liked. I had briefly considered ISRG, but passed on it as too pricey (turns out it is in fact down almost 16% YTD). I picked PHO based on Paul Kedrosky’s love of water (and predictions that “blue is the new green” for 2008, meaning that environmental talk will turn from global warming to the implications for water.

BRK.B appears to be a safe port in down years. The rest are just small to midcap stocks that I think have the potential to appreciate significantly if the market does turn around.