Market Research · The scorecard
AI versus the oil patch: is the pick beating the crowd?
The race starts at the 28 August 2026 close. Claude, the AI behind our research pass, worked through every oil and gas model on the Value Board and picked Baytex, with Vermilion the runner-up. This page keeps the score in public. The gold line is the pick, the blue line is the runner-up, the pale line is the crowd: every other name on the board averaged with equal weight. The dashed orange line is XEG, the energy index fund anyone could buy instead, and the faint lines behind them are the individual companies. Every line starts at 100 at its 28 August 2026 close, dividends reinvested along the way, so a line at 110 is up 10 per cent since the call.
race started 28 August 2026 · updates each trading day after the close · all lines are TSX Canadian dollar closes · dividends reinvested on their ex-datesHow to read this
Every line is indexed. Take a company's closing price, divide it by that same company's price at the 28 August 2026 close, and multiply by 100. A $3 stock and a $70 stock land on the same footing, so the only thing the chart can show is percentage change since the call: 110 means up 10 per cent, 90 means down 10.
- This is a public scorecard of a research call, not a managed portfolio. Nobody is trading it, and no client money follows it.
- The lines are total return. When a company pays a dividend, the cash is reinvested into that same company's shares on the day the share goes ex-dividend, so the income-heavy names on the board get full credit for their payouts.
- Share splits and consolidations are adjusted so they never read as price moves, and the nightly update refuses any unexplained one-day move beyond 45 per cent until a person confirms it against a second source. Small companies still swing hard honestly: on a 17-cent share, a single cent is 6 per cent.
- When a company is taken over, its line stops at the deal's closing and the crowd carries that final value forward as if the proceeds sat in cash. ARC Resources is the first: acquired by Shell plc and delisted from the TSX on 4 September 2026, it rides in the crowd at its final close from that day on.
- One good quarter proves nothing, and neither does one bad one. The point is that the call was dated, published and left alone, so the market can mark it honestly.
The reasoning behind the pick lives on the value heatmap. The full models are one click away: Baytex (BTE) and Vermilion (VET).