MichaelBrush

Terrence Horan/MarketWatch

The stock markets are rarely fair to anyone, but here’s one of the worst injustices in the investment world: Some of the gurus who produce the best returns get hardly any attention.

So at the end of each year, I like to canvass the best of the best stock newsletter writers for their take on the market and their favorite stock picks.

Barrons buzz: Top stocks for 2015

Barrons Jack Hough previews the magazines expected top stocks for the coming year. Photo: Getty.

Here’s a roundup of what three of the best letter writers have to say. They’re worth listening to, because they have beaten the market by a wide margin over time. To find the best, I use rankings compiled by Mark Hulbert. a MarketWatch columnist, in his Hulbert Financial Digest. which tracks the returns of investment letters.

1. The Buyback Letter

Style: As the name suggests, this letter favors companies repurchasing their own stock in large amounts, as a sign that management sees value in the stock, and better times ahead.

Performance: 10.8% annualized returns since March 2000, compared to 3.8% annualized for the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, according to Hulbert Financial Digest.

Market outlook: Expects a 10%-15% increase in stocks overall, given that oil prices have fallen so much, and interest rates will remain low.

Favorite stocks: Buyback Letter editor David Fried has done a great job over the years of singling out the best share buyback stocks, by examining which companies actually follow through on buyback promises (not all of them do).

One of his favorites for 2015 is Yahoo YHOO, +1.06% partly because it has decreased is share count by 6.6% over the past 12 months. Yahoo has had a tougher time than Google GOOG, +0.79%   and Facebook FB, +1.75%   at extracting profits from digital advertising. But its business is worth something. And you get it “for free” when you buy Yahoo stock, Fried says. That’s because Yahoo’s market cap is about equal to the value of its stake in Alibaba Group BABA, -0.09%  , the popular Chinese online retailer, Fried notes. Moreover, Yahoo has a net cash position of around $10 billion, giving it plenty of room to continue to buy back stock.

Next, Fried favors Apple AAPL, +1.81%  . Again, the starting point is a big 6.8% shrinkage in the share count in the past 12 months. With a cash position of around $25 billion, Apple also has firepower to buy back more stock. Meanwhile, Apple enjoys great customer loyalty, and its iCloud storage and ecosystem of exclusive apps and interrelated products also lock in customers. Now the company is moving into payment systems, with Apple Pay. “Apple is still the dominant player in its space, and it’s just starting to make inroads in e-commerce,” Fried says.