How Did You Do On The Dividend Investor Test?

 

Last week, I opened a can of worm by publishng a dividend investor survey. The goal of this survey was to have you think about whether or not you have what it takes to be a successful dividend investor. I thought the idea was interesting or at least funny and it could create some buzz around The Dividend Guy Blog. Man! It worked very well. In fact, the day we launched it, we had 1,009 visitors on this article alone! I received several reactions concerning the survey. Some were great and some were less than great…

 

First things first, I’m not going to apologize

 

As with any other survey you do, you have to take it for what it is: a survey. It wasn’t produced by a professional in marketing or a statistician and it was not tested by monkeys before I launched it. The only thing that I have to apologize about is that the score calculator had some hiccups on the first day and was giving everybody a very low mark. We had tested it before publishing it and everything was perfect. I guess that it is just bad luck! However, we have emailed every single person who did the survey to let him/her know about our mistake. You can now take the test and it will give you a “real” score.

 

But if you feel insulted by the test, I’m not going to apologize for that. The goal was not to hurt your feelings but it wasn’t to tell you all that you are amazing investors. And it was certainly not to tell you that I’m better than you either. In fact, I don’t qualify myself as an amazing investor. Because if I was, I would be managing my own fund and making millions annually.

 

Investor psychology

 

I don’t know if you have ever heard of this but stats show that the individual investors usually underperform the market by 5% on average. And I’m not talking about 1 or 2 years, I’m talking about an investor who has managed his portfolio for the past 5 to 10 years.

 

Another interesting stat would be that 93% of Americans think they are better drivers than the average American. It’s kind of funny because it’s mathematically impossible. 43% out of the 93% must be average or below to make sense, right? Well, it’s the very same thing here, we always think we are better than we really are. And that’s okay. It is just that sometimes, it’s good to come back down to earth and realize that we have a lot of things to learn to become great investors. And I definitely have a lot of work to do on myself as well!

 

Now what’s next?

 

This was the first test I put up on The Dividend Guy Blog. My goal was to make it fun and create a buzz. It definitely worked out pretty well. However, since this is my first test, there is a lot of room for improvement and I know that. But in the end, you have to take it for what it is; a simple test ;-D

 

I’ll be covering several sectors and companies for the New Year and would like to know if there is a specific industry or strategy you want me to cover in January. Let me know through the comment box!

 

Cheers,

 

 

Google+