We all get inundated with information and opinions from around the world.

This site was designed to only highlight the opinions and stock picks of experts who have a proven track record of making both bearish and bullish calls. Generally these are fund managers who saw the financial crisis in 2008 and have a grasp of macroeconomic issues.

In this article, I want to backtest to see which Barrons Roundtable participants actually sensed trouble prior to the stock market crash in 2008. You can go back and read their comments from January 2008 and June 2008 .  Ive read and re-read all of the Barrons Roundtable comments since 2000. I back tested the performance of the stock picks and determined that Felix Zulauf, Marc Faber and Fred Hickey are the best analysts. Meryl Witmer can make good stock picks but she usually is unaware of macro-economic problems.

One of the things that struck me was how most of the Barrons members did not sense danger and some even recommended financial stocks a few months before they collapsed.

In this section, Im going to highlight the money managers who got it right in 2008. In the second part, Im going to highlight the money managers who had absolutely no idea of the macro problems on the horizon. These are the Barrons Roundtable perma bulls that have a bullish bias.

Felix Zulauf recommended volatility would rise in 2008. That was an understatement as the VIX spiked to 70 in October 2008.

In general, capital preservation will be key this year. Last year, I recommended the CBOE Volatility Index. the VIX. Im not recommending it formally this year, but it still is a good idea. The VIX is trading in the low 20s. Sometime this year, probably in the first half, people who own it will be able to sell it in the mid-30s.

Zulauf did not make a single stock market pick in 2008. All of his ideas were short picks and he had a few commodity picks including gold, cotton and sugar.

Another great macro investor, Marc Faber had this to say in 2008:

The U.S. is in a bear market, and earnings will disappoint here and worldwide. Cost pressures will diminish profit margins. The stock market doesnt have a bubble valuation, though the Standard & Poors 500 is selling at a higher price-earnings multiple than is evident. Take out the energy sector and the S&P has a P/E of 20, not 15. If earnings decline partly because the energy sector wont have higher earnings this year than last, and also because the financial sector has diminishing earnings and the economy is in a recession then the S&P isnt cheap.

Marc Faber largely recommended shorting emerging markets such as China (FXI) and the EUM. This was a great call as the FXI fell from 50 to about 25 in 2008.  His emerging market short positions doubled.

His other short position Dryships (DRYS) went from $73 to $5.

Lastly, Fred Hickey was another analyst who foresaw the problems in 2008.

My strategy is simple: Buy gold, sell horsemen that is, the big-cap technology stocks Research In Motion [RIMM], Apple [AAPL], Google [GOOG] and Amazon.com [AMZN]. I own a gold exchange-traded fund, streetTracks Gold Shares. One share represents a tenth of an ounce of gold.

As you can see, shorting RIMM in 2008 at over $100/share was a nice short pick even though the stock ramped up to $150 before collapsing.