Jan. 4--It's a good thing we weren't using real money. That's the best that can be said after calculating the results of The News Tribune business team's 2008 stock-picking contest. It was all a game. Nobody lost any actual cash.

And it was quite a year, with the wreckage still smoldering by the side of the road. Washington Mutual, AIG, Wachovia, Bear Stearns -- the year will be remembered by investors who lost their shirts, their nerve and hope itself. Gladly we say goodbye to 2008 and the billions lost.

Of the contest -- wherein you were asked last January to invest $10,000 by choosing up to three stocks -- the results were dismal. From perhaps 50 entries, less than a handful picked stocks that made money.

And of those, other stocks in the same entry lost. Take reader "ronmccIII," whose $3,000 invested in Celgene was up 19.63 percent in 2008. That's good, except the $6,000 accompanying investment in Edge Petroleum was down 97.32 percent.

A reader known as "yourwisetalk" chose Safeco, which was up when acquired, but General Electric was down 56.30 percent. And "timber" liked SPDR Gold Trust, which was up 4.17 percent, but the accompanying investments in Ultra Petroleum and PowerShare DB Agricultural Fund were down 51.73 percent and 21.37 percent respectively.

All figures, by the way, come from Bloomberg.

And other virtual investors? Down, down, down.

The business team itself was not spared and stood with the majority. Staff writer John Gillie's choices of Washington Mutual, General Motors and Paccar fell severely. Likewise Kelly Kearsley, who chose Starbucks, Property Investors Ventures and footwear retailer DSW. I fared no better with Amazon, down 44.65 percent; CNA Financial Corp.; and fixture-maker Crane, which came down 59.81 percent on the year.

Readers chose a variety of losers, with many taking Starbucks and a few choosing Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan. Other choices included Yahoo, Bank of Ireland, James River Coal (which was up 37.12 percent), Boeing, Ford, Red Robin, Coca-Cola, Krispy Kreme, Lowe's and many others.

So -- how to pick a winner and award the stated prize of

lunch with the team? Nobody came out ahead, so it's difficult to say. Should the winner be he or she who earned the cold comfort of losing the least?

No. The judges have ruled that because we all lost, we all lose. Nobody seemed to envision what was coming, so there will be no free lunch.

But hope springs nonetheless. There's always this year, the New Year.

Let's do it all again in 2009.

The national prognosticators have made their calls.

Bob Frick at Kiplinger.com likes General Electric (GE), Diageo (DEO), Mattel (MAT), Microchip Technology (MCHP) and Briggs & Stratton (BGG).

Anne Kates Smith from Kiplinger notes choices for Charter Communications (CHTR), NutriSystem (NTRI), Ceeco Instruments (VECO), Bankrate Inc. (RATE), Fastenal (FAST), Fluor (FLR) Cummins (CMI) and Gerdau AmeriSteel (GNA).

At MSN.com, you can find tips on Deere (DE), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR), VisionChina (VISN), Google (GOOG) and Thompson Creek Metals (TC), among others.

Forbes Magazine likes Altria (MO), Dell (DELL), Diamond Offshore (DO), Fluor, Pfizer (PFE) and the familiar Potash (POT).

And the team members here at the business desk have made their calls.

--Kearsley likes Netflix (NFLX) ("you still need entertainment"); Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) ("Stock market giving you a headache? Take a Tylenol. Paper cut from cutting coupons? Have a Band-Aid"); and Google (GOOG) ("online marketing will take a bigger slice of the advertising pie").

--Gillie prefers Boeing (BA) ("the aerospace company will see even stronger results as air travel demand resumes"); General Electric ("a bargain despite some anxiety about its financial arm and slowing sales in some sectors"); and Alaska Airlines (ALK) ("wait until it falls along with the rest of the airline industry in early winter when fares and traffic drop to seasonal lows").

--Kathleen Cooper, who is imminently due to deliver her first child, has chosen to put $3,000 of her virtual treasure into Amazon (AMZN) ("I can place an emergency order for parenting books and any baby gear I didn't know I needed"); $3,000 into Johnson & Johnson ("They make, well, everything.