HFWR
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Blind dog in a meathouse...
Average, at best. My investing prowess consists of picking a good crop of no load mutual funds 25 years or so ago, putting as much into them as possible since then and letting them grow without interference.
Outstanding! A legend in my own mind!
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Average, at best. My investing prowess consists of picking a good crop of no load mutual funds 25 years or so ago, putting as much into them as possible since then and letting them grow without interference.
Above average in taking money and investing it. I think too many people are really bad at actually making that happen (but this site likely has the majority of the users that are "above average" in that sense).
Now the returns on the investment are likely pretty average, slightly less than average. I'm not taking any major risks and keep a diversified portfolio that is only 55% equities.
Yes. Absolutely.... It looks like we have a lot of above average investors here.
I'm not sure that returns is a good measure. Lots of people here, for good reasons, are investing for low volatility, low risk, etc. I think the measure should somehow consider investing skill to be more like "ability to create and manage a portfolio that meets the investor's objectives." Or maybe a criterion based on what the investor knows about investing options, market behavior, trading vs investing, outside influences like the Fed, inflation, world financial events, etc. Squishy ideas I know but I just don't think returns necessarily correlate well with investing skill.... My guess is the ER site investors would beat the random sample of US adults on returns.
Good point about actually just getting down to investing money. I've been working with DS to get him to the point where he is comfortable investing money. He was quite shy about dipping his toe into the investing pool. It is easy to forget how we learned to take those first steps.
It looks like we have a lot of above average investors here.
It would be very interesting to compare a group of a few hundred US adults versus this site's investors who have so far answered this poll. I guess that won't happen. My guess is the ER site investors would beat the random sample of US adults on returns.
Answer with your gut feeling. This may be a combination of your returns, your knowledge and your ego.
EDIT: This is about your total investing picture, not about how good a stock picker you are or if you do wild ass options, etc. You might invest like a Boglehead and might answer "average" but you could also think this is an "above average" investing style or some other category in the 5 to choose from.
In 2019 I was a genius. Just rode the stock market and realized some nice gains. But did retire early because I was an investor for many years. Just can't seem to impart that knowledge to my kids...