Stockopedia Subscriber Performance Survey 2017
On Friday I asked Stockopedia subscribers a set of questions about their stock market performance in 2017. We’ve had a great response so far with 1,168 respondents and more coming in every hour. If you missed the invite, please do check your email inbox and submit your answers. We’ll be keeping the survey open for the next few days, but the results have stabilised and we have a great sample, so I’ve decided to publish the results.
The insights from the survey are exciting and fascinating in equal measure - here goes.
Since subscribing to Stockopedia has your performance outperformed, matched or underperformed the market?
Many subscribers have been with us since 2012 so we started the survey with a more general question about longer term performance. Almost three quarters of subscribers have been outperforming the market since subscribing, and only 6% underperforming.
Those who have been underperforming may be able to learn from the outperformers - so I hope they'll share their secrets. I’ll be following up to ask how the best performers have been achieving their results.
What has your 2017 performance been as a percentage year to date?
As you can see, it’s been a great result for the majority of subscribers. My estimate is an average 21.5% return year to date. 43 respondents managed far more than 50% returns year to date. I know of one subscriber who has returned 252% year to date and many of this elite group have done exceptionally well with over 100% returns…. so the real average may be significantly above 21.5% returns. There’s clearly a ‘fat tail’ of super-users who are dramatically outperforming the market - through better process or great fortune. I will find out more.
Most of our subscribers are UK based so let’s compare the UK benchmarks with this performance. The FTSE 100 is up 3.8%, the broader FTSE All Share is up 5.2% and the FTSE Small Cap index is up 8.5%. So the community has significantly outperformed the market. This very much backs up my belief that it’s better for investors to take matters in their own hands and invest directly in share ownership rather than buying funds.
The only UK index that is a patch on the subscriber results is the FTSE Aim All Share index up about 19.7% year to date. But while many subscribers do invest heavily on the AIM index, my last analysis showed that the biggest holdings in subscriber portfolios tend to be blue chip stocks. Of the 10 most traded stocks across the community 6 are FTSE 100 names. So the broader market indexes may be a better measure of comparison.
Regardless , the AIM All Share has been driven by many of the larger, high ranking, winning style shares the Stockopedia community and systems have highlighted over they year - including Fevertree, Abcam, Boohoo, RWS, IQE, Dart and more. Well done everyone who invested in these names.
Which Stockopedia features have most helped to improve your results?
The standout feature on the site has been the StockRanks with 73% of subscribers saying they were a strong influence on their market beating success.
The average year to date return of 90+ ranked shares is 18.8%. So the community have managed to beat our own custom StockRank index. Ultimately the StockRanks have been designed to pick out the factors that historically have led to market beating returns. While the future may rhyme, there is no guarantee that they will continue being effective. They’ve had a good run and there could of course be a reversal in fortune at any time.
But what a year for the Small Cap Value Report. Paul Scott and Graham Neary have been absolutely smashing it with their daily reports… highlighting a sequence of winners for subscribers. They are a prolific team and have clearly been having a big impact - I have heard we’ll be publishing a few videos in the next week where these small cap legends share some insights on camera.
This year we launched the StockRanks Styles and the RiskRatings and they’ve already integrated themselves into subscriber workflows. The Styles are now rated as more effective than the entire GuruScreens & Custom Screening system for picking winners which is quite remarkable. I’m really proud of the work that went into these features in 2017. Thanks for giving them a big thumbs up… I can promise even better things for 2018.
What has been your biggest winner year to date?
There were a range of shares picked out by the community. I will focus on the most popular three big wins mentioned by the most subscribers:
- IQE - (130 mentions) - one of my New Year NAPS, and also heavily mentioned by Paul Scott… this has had an unbelievable run year to date, almost quadrupling.
- Games Workshop - (61 mentions) - another NAPS stock - it has tripled year to date.
- XL Media - (41 mentions) - well highlighted by the community, StockRanks, Roland Head and Paul Scott - more than doubled year to date.
Honourable mentions go to Burford Capital, Bioventix and Ferrexpo which were also widely held big winners.
It’s not as if everyone is crowding in the same names. There’s a wide range of different winners mentioned - dozens and dozens of UK and international stocks. Subscribers are using the tools and resources available to them and finding their own winners from multiple sources. Some are readers, some are screeners, some analyse reports… it’s a pleasure to witness the collective industriousness that’s going on.
What could we add to the Stockopedia service that would most help your performance?
I put a little list of feature requests into the survey. Surprisingly, the most requested feature was Buy, Hold and Sell Recommendations. Given we’re a DIY site, I thought that that this might be ignored… but it’s clear a lot of investors do have trouble with knowing ‘when to sell’. As many will know I tend to favour systematic sell rules and there's value we can add here in future.
This selling worry was backed up by the next question that asked What is the biggest problem or concern you have with your investing?. 161 respondents mentioned “when to sell” as their biggest worry with 148 worried about the state of the market and a possible correction.
Stop Losses and Risk Management were key concern areas too… big focuses of our current development. I’m just hoping we ship these features before the next market break… we may not have time, so be careful out there.
Do you feel more or less confident in your understanding of the stock market since using Stockopedia?
This result is what I’m most proud of about the work we’ve done to date. 80% of subscribers are feeling more confident in their understanding of the stock market since using the site. It’s a story I hear again and again… the service helps to remove the uncertainty and aids decisiveness on shares.
I hope though that it doesn’t breed overconfidence. Overconfidence is a dangerous trait in the stock market and can leave investors over-exposed right at the wrong moment. So I will leave you with the wise words of Jesse Livermore.
The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most of the people most of the time.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this survey in the comments below - thanks to everyone who has participated. Many of you have said we can follow up and find out more personally. I doubt we’ll be able to contact everyone, but I’ll try and make sure we get back in touch on this in the New Year.
As ever - Safe Investing !
About Edward Croft
Co-founder and CEO here at Stockopedia.com. I was a wealth manager, then full-time private investor before setting up Stockopedia. I believe passionately in the power of data-driven investing to improve investment results. Oddly obsessed with the StockRanks.
Disclaimer - This is not financial advice. Our content is intended to be used and must be used for information and education purposes only. Please read our disclaimer and terms and conditions to understand our obligations.
@thirdman - we will be introducing editable StockReports in the new version of the site. It won't be available right from the start, but we've designed it with this feature in mind. So you'll be able to pick and choose your ratios/metrics to view.
I was one of the subscribers that did less than average. I started using the service in June, therefore results are for 6 months. I am in the U.S.
Please do NOT start providing Buy Hold Sell recommendations, because I use the service to determine this.
Actually on the buy/hold/sell recommendation front I can see this being a useful service _if_ the trigger points are based on hard data. For example the StockRanks and other measures are fantastic for selecting decent shares which are statistically likely to do well. However they're no good for timing purchases and sales (and not particularly useful for finding shares which are heading towards being highly ranked but haven't made it just yet).
So if a system similar to the one that generates the ranks could be devised for identifying buy/sell points that work overall for groups of shares that would be useful. I think that the kick-back against this suggestion comes from the discredited notion of individuals giving buy/sell/hold recommendations on little more than gut feel.
Damian
My 50ps worth. You can provide what you want about buy sell etc..I never use it and never will, its a con.(Again my opinion based on a number of super gurus and data to back it up)
Read David Dreman contrarian investing theres a whole section on brokers ratings with data to back it up.. why do very few brokers rate a SELL , because its employment suicide.. brokers are in bed with the conpanies that pay them..Data doesnt lie and that book is one of the best I have read so far covers so much. Written by ex an trader
https://www.amazon.com/Contrarian-Investment-Strategies-Next-Generation/dp/B00P3GTR6O
Pg102 chapter 5 "The expert way to lose your savings"
Pg 96
"Rule 5"
"There are no highly predictable industries in which you can count on analysts forecasts. Relying on these estimates will lead to trouble"
Pg 94
1973-1996
Percentage (plus or minus) by which analysts hit actual earnings
+ or - 5% by which analysts hit actual earnings
29.4 of analysts
+ or - 10% by which analysts hit actual earnings
46.8 of analysts
+ or - 15% by which analysts hit actual earnings
58.3% of analysts
This then goes a level deeper based on industry..with metals and mining have the higest error of 71%
With tobbaco the best of 4%
An excellent book , as are the rest of the guru books listed on stocko
I will never be an expert but Im losing less money now :)
So, the IMA Smaller Companies index is not the right benchmark. The right benchmark isn't so far from the FTSE All Share.
It does embolden my belief that the community here are actually a pretty smart set of investors.
So why not create your own index/indices, it might be a good marketing wheeze !
Congratulations on what you've achieved and a happy Christmas to you all.
If there is any one thing that Stockopedia has given to me above all others, then it is confidence in my investing approach, and the ability to take complete control of my SIPP and ISA. No longer am I destined to underperform based upon poor share tips, or my own personal (poor) analysis of the company finances and prospects. Being a mathematician/statistician, I love the data analyses that Ed and the team have developed around the Stock Ranks and to a certain extent this provides a base platform for me to apply my own twist over and above this. So whilst I look at the Stock Ranks, I will not simply buy the top twenty or so, and will apply a whole list of other criteria before focussing in on a stock. I have also developed my own rudimentary approach to try and time my buys and sells, and I think the results adhere pretty closely to the 80/20 rule with 80% being reasonably well timed and assessed. Given that ratio, and in also limiting the losses of the 20% losers, I have managed to improve my performance considerably and am a very happy subscriber. Indeed, given the increase in risk and possible over valuation of the UK stock market in late 2017, I have recently extended my subscription to Europe, and this too is starting to show some early successes too, most notably with £LHA £DBAN £1COV.
(Note sure why but the £ prefix is not working for me: basically, Lufthansa, Deutsche Beteiligungs and Covestro.)
Longer term, I would really benefit further from the inclusion with the screening tools of a variety of technical indicators, and this would ease the pain and efforts involved in timing buys/sells considerably, especially if this could be linked to an alert so that I can mail myself accordingly.
Anyway, for 2018, I am pretty sure I will extend my involvement outside of the UK to reduce my local market risk, and given a fair wind, I am reasonably optimistic of decent returns even if I do not possess a looking glass to assess the economic future and directions of world markets.
TT
Seconded! ITs are particularly good for diversifying through a foreign theme, e.g. India, where researching small amounts of individual stocks is not a good use of time. And comparable discount/premium to NAV through the universe would be a great extra line. WHEN the downturn comes and anxiety is high, putting cash into discounted ITs virtually guarantees outperformance over the following two years, I believe.
Hi TT
Nice write up. Good for you.
I think extending into Europe stocks will be a useful step for 2018 (and beyond).
With regard to your comment about alerts (copied from your post).
'Longer term, I would really benefit further from the inclusion with the screening tools of a variety of technical indicators, and this would ease the pain and efforts involved in timing buys/sells considerably, especially if this could be linked to an alert so that I can mail myself accordingly.'
Are you aware of the Alerts facility under the Folios option. It's at the end of the Folios drop down. You can create an alert for any metric within the Stockopedia database. The function is still quite basic but with a thoughtful approach to using it it can be very effective. As an alert triggers Stockopedia emails you. I use it to good effect to assist with spotting falling shares.It can be used to spot rising shares as well, or any other movement of a metric of interest.
Regards
Howard
Thanks Howard.
I must declare that I used these alerts some time back, but they always failed to mail correctly, although i think this was down to my unusual mail address at the time with two '.' characters before the @. So I changed it, and now it does work, albeit that I had largely forgotten about this tool. Thanks for the reminder!
Overall however, what I would like to see included is the content you find in 'Tools > Chart Signals'. I find when combining some of these, such as Golden Cross, MACD Zero Line Crossover and so on with a decent stock rank, and as long as other content aligns with my specific requirements, then this can be a very good indicator for strong upward movement in several cases. Doesn't work every time, but I used this approach and found Morgan Sindall (LON:MGNS) and Ferrexpo (LON:FXPO), and I think I also used this approach to pick up on IQE (LON:IQE) when it was < 30p in 2016.
Best Regards, TT
dear sir plese add portfolo of long term small cap, midcap and large cap high growth value stocks --aggresive investors , most important to suggests companies come from loss to profit which are undervalued ---can give huge returns . stocks buy and hold with stocks tgt with consideration with dcf --graham --waiting eagerly this is the most important feature lacking in this website and research is high quality . regards shrirang
I'd just like to get everything in general terms on one platform - or at least as much as possible.
Stockopedia is my chosen platform - end of - but there are some, I presume easy things, you could do to help me.
1) Understand totally you don't do unit trusts and I don't want you to, but it would be helpful if there was a way to manually enter these onto my portfolio - I'll do the work.
2) You provide stock prices at a 15 min delay - all I need - but could you do something similar, even if somewhat more delayed if a cost issue, on a minor range of commodities (Oil, Gas , Copper, Zinc, Lead, Gold.....) - like many here I suspect, although oil and resources are not high priority, most of us have them (probably 'cos we can't resist).
Phil
*Past performance is no indicator of future performance. Performance returns are based on hypothetical scenarios and do not represent an actual investment.
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Hello 3rd Man. There's so much in Stockopedia that it's easy to miss stuff. See the options/tab 'screens', then sub option 'create a screen; then build one with the fields supplied, for example enterprise between 100mil and 300 mill with a rank of > 95. Or from one of the 'guru screens' under the same option, copy the screen ('fork') and then play with it. Alan