POLL: How do you rank yourself as an investor?

[FREE866]

The way I determine if I'm a good investor or not is how do I compare vs my benchmark.



I'm an aggressive investor so my benchmark per Schwab's definition is:
50% S and P
20% R2000
25% MSCI
5% 3 Month Tbill


Since retiring almost 7 years ago I'm annualizing 9.73% vs the benchmark of 8.93%
so I gave myself an above average score

 

[jollystomper]

I rated myself average. I was a better saver, than investor, and our savings is the bedrock of our retirement. I thought I could be "above" average in the mid-90s, but that was when you could throw 10 darts at the WSJ stock listing page and at least 8 of them would be winners. I decided to settle down into basic boglehead mode in the late 90s and just pour my savings in that direction.

The only way I would consider myself "above average" is that at times of market stress, I did not sell out of equities but instead continued to DCA and rebalance into them. I do not think that is what most investors do.

 

[VanWinkle]

I am sure all of those above average investors are also above average drivers.........

I rated average because I don't try to time the market, use almost exclusively index funds,
and my trades are almost non-existent and boring. I do buy when the market tanks- but that
doesn't make me above average.

VW

 

[FREE866]

I am sure all of those above average investors are also above average drivers.........

I rated average because I don't try to time the market, use almost exclusively index funds,
and my trades are almost non-existent and boring. I do buy when the market tanks- but that
doesn't make me above average.

VW

Then to me you're def not the average investor!

 

[MarieIG]

Amazingly bad - but I try to limit the damage (keeping the long-shots small and the broad-based index funds a larger percentage).

 

[pb4uski]

I secretly think I am above average. ...

Not a secret anymore!

 

[pb4uski]

I would say that I'm above average, but the bar isn't very high and a lot of my contemporaries are clueless.

Thanks to e-r.org I have delved into some things over the years here that I would not have like preferred stocks, cash covered puts, I-bonds, brokered CDs, agency bonds and corporate bonds.

While I'm very familiar with preferred stock and bonds from my work, I never invested in them until just recently. Ditto for options.

 

[Alex The Great]

What's an investor??

Investor apparently is a person who has some funds invested into market, either stock or bond and expecting to get terribly rich because of it, get some extra money to buy more of toilet paper or just keep up with inflation.

 

[tutan]

“average but hope to improve”
I still believe I can beat the 60/40 performance/volatility using a combination of mainly VTI /VOO /QQQ (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index ETF / Vanguard S&P 500 ETF/ Invesco QQQ) plus a few handpicked individual stocks on the stock side and equivalent of BND (Vanguard total bond market ETF) and some alternatives on the ballast side.
I’ve been selling some bond funds to trade stock options thinking it can be safer and higher yielding for income generation. I picked up some tips from successful options traders here on this forum so was eager to try. But for some reason I just can’t get excited about searching and buying individual bonds like some members here.
Not quite 60 so I still have time, I hope, to experiment. In a couple of years, I may just throw in the towel and settle down to 60/40 VT/BND.

 

[Lawrencewendall]

I guess I'm above average. Fidelity says I can expect to earn 85k next year from dividends (14.5% off of 550k)

 

[rodi]

Compared to my non-ER peers - brilliant. Compared to folks here... middlin'. I don't do individual stocks - learned a long time ago that my 'picker' was off for stocks and switched to index funds for equities.

I use a lazy portfolio, rebalancing periodically. I've learned to stay the course and also to watch fees. (AUM, expense ratios, etc). Index funds are my friend. That makes me brilliant compared to the general population.

 

[dmpi]

I consider myself average at best. I've made every mistake in the book. But one thing I've learned is you don't have to be a super investor to build wealth. You just have to be willing to invest rather than spend and to put ALL your money into the market especially at the beginning.

 

[Markola]

I voted average. I'm a Boglehead. By definition that means I'm always average. Oddly enough, in investing circles that means I'm above average.

Precisely!

 

[TheWizard]

Lake Wobegon here, above average fer shur...

 

[audreyh1]

I don’t rank myself.

But I do have a lot of experience, including learning from mistakes ha ha.

“Seasoned” would perhaps be an apt description.

 

[Taco]

I guess I'm above average. Fidelity says I can expect to earn 85k next year from dividends (14.5% off of 550k)

What are you invested in that’s yielding 14.5% ?!?

 

[Taco]

If investor means stock picker, well, I dunno.

But if investor means managing our “money life”, I’d think almost everyone on this forum is above average.

 

[athena53]

I think most people are broke and clueless so I rated myself above average. But I think that’s a pretty low bar.

Same here. I actually understand compound interest and bought my first stock when I was 19. I've made my share of bad decisions, though.

 

[donheff]

I went with average. I would consider myself way above average in the US at large but a bit below average here.

 

[VanWinkle]

Then to me you're def not the average investor!

I'll take that as a positive!!

VW

 

[pjigar]

This is a classic psychology question: About three-quarters (73 percent) of US drivers consider themselves better-than-average drivers.

So in fact, who answers "average" in this poll are likely to be above-average investors because "they know that they don't know".

There are two kinds of people in this world:
1. People who don't know that they don't know (majority)
2. People who know that they don't know (minority)

 

[pjigar]

If investor means stock picker, well, I dunno.

But if investor means managing our “money life”, I’d think almost everyone on this forum is above average.

+1000

 

[Morgan22]

I voted average. I'm a Boglehead. By definition that means I'm always average. Oddly enough, in investing circles that means I'm above average.

Ha! Same here. (Boglehead as in investing style, but not a Vanguard diehard like some of them.)

 

[jazz4cash]

I voted above average. As always, members have different ideas of what being an investor means. In terms of portfolio performance I agree with several others that mentioned just how low the bar is to be ‘average’. I just saw a stat that cited the average investor’s equity returns are about 1/2 of the S&P 500 due to trading in and out of the market.

 

[Time2]

I put average. I'm 68, we have enough, I don't have the drive get any better.
I may have mentioned our journey here before, not sure.
I married in 81 at 26 to an immigrant, found immediately she was very frugal. I wasn't in debt, but I didn't have any savings either. That first year, even though we only earned $18k, we saved $5,400, plus we had received $600 in wedding money, so we had $6,000. More than I ever had in my life, that was the start, that I knew we could accumulate money. In the late 80s, I started listening to Bob Brinker, he was my first financial educator. At sometime after that I got his newsletter and invested in his Portfolio 1, while we kept saving at a very good rate. Sometime in the 90s, because of all the paperwork I was receiving from 6 different mutual fund companies (in portfolio 1), I moved everything to Vangaurd's VTSAX. In later years, I expanded that out to VFIAX and VWIAX. In 1999 she started a small side business, and soon she ask, "why don't you quit your job and work with the business?"
I responded, "I'm not quitting my job unless you quit yours!" She said, "OK". Soon after being self employed we started using SEP/IRAs and any other tax deferred accounts we could, probably to our detriment, because with all our tax deductible contributions there were many years that I paid 2, 3, or 4% of gross in taxes. Ya, we were saving so much that we had plenty of money to invest. I now find we will pay more tax than we saved by tax deferring.
So far we peaked at 1.56 times our married time income, down a little now, but SS will start soon and I'm sure our peak will increase. Our peak would have been higher but we [-]spent[/-]/invested $300k on a child's medical education.

So we were better savers than I was as an investor, but we have way more than enough. I have to credit what we have to my wife, I married right.