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Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, speaking in April in Washington DC. Photo by Kevin ... More Dietsch/Getty Images.
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A 446% gain in Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) propelled Christy Anderson to a victory in the 2024-2025 running of Dorfman’s Three-Stock Derby, an annual stock-picking contest.
Anderson, a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, is chief operating officer for a small company that makes radio frequency amplifiers with military applications.
As such, she became familiar with Palantir, an analytical software company whose Gotham platform is used by the U.S. military and Western-allied nations. Her company doesn’t do business with Palantir, and she doesn’t own the stock.
In fact, Anderson doesn’t own any stocks. “The stock market to me is just gambling,” she says. “I’m very intrigued by it though. I look at stocks every day.”
Anderson also picked Novo Nordisk AS (NVO), a Danish pharmaceutical company, and Hive Digital Technologies Ltd. (HIVE), which mines digital currencies. Both suffered losses, but her gain on Palantir was so huge that she ended with a 121% combined return, easily capturing first place.
Palantir is “probably overpriced now,” Anderson says. “They don’t really have the revenue to justify their market price.”
When she entered the contest, she wrote that ”the number of military hotspots continues to grow,” and that the military “will need an increasing number of unmanned assets.”
Anderson expects that the stock market will be volatile in the coming year, and will be little changed a year from now, after a lot of ups and downs.
Sanders Second
Donny Sanders, an accountant in Worcester, Massachusetts, took second place with an 82% gain. All three of his selections rose, led by Strategy (MSTR) with a 149% advance.
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