Stockopedia Subscriber Performance Survey
Stock markets asked tough questions of investors in 2021. After a solid start and a continuation of strong returns from smaller growth stocks, the trend changed in the second half. As uncertainty set in, it was value-oriented large-caps that held up better than most. That shift in direction meant a some of the early gains in small-caps had slipped away by the year-end.
In the background, the economic instability that’s been with us through the Covid pandemic, evolved. Rather than grappling with the pressures of lockdowns, there was a growing sense of unease over rising inflation and supply chain pressures. These are problems that investors haven’t really had to deal with for decades, but now they are.
Yet despite the unsettled conditions, our recent subscriber survey suggests that many Stockopedia users are performing well.
A successful year for many investors
Every year we ask our users about how they’ve fared in the market and how confident they are feeling. Whilst it isn’t entirely scientific (it’s a relatively small snapshot of users) the results are certainly interesting.
Overall, 65 percent of the 1,100 respondents to the survey said they outperformed or significantly outperformed the market since subscribing to Stockopedia. Only 13 percent said they’d underperformed or significantly underperformed. Twenty two percent said they’d matched the market.
Those performances are slightly down on 2020, when the sustained market recovery meant that just four percent said they had underperformed or significantly underperformed.
The average overall return based on responses to this year’s survey was 21 percent, down from 29 percent the previous year.
Widely held winners in 2021
Delving a bit deeper into investment performances, the survey asked respondents to name their most successful holdings during the year. Incredibly, there were hundreds of individual names put forward as particularly strong performers. For the most part, the most widely held winners did indeed deliver some stunning returns.
Ticker | Share | % of respondents | 2020 Gain % |
LON:SOM | 3.5 | 80.2 | |
LON:RCH | 3.1 | 96.7 | |
LON:AAF | 2.6 | 76.7 | |
LON:SDI | 2.4 | 59.4 | |
LON:SLP | 2.1 | 1.7 | |
LON:VTU | 2.1 | 108.5 | |
LON:MMH | 1.4 | 179.7 | |
LON:REDD | 1.4 | 64.1 | |
NSQ:TSLA | 1.4 | 52.1 | |
LON:SOLI | 1.1 | 89.7 | |
LON:IPX | 1.0 | 110.9 | |
LON:MKS | 1.0 | 69.8 | |
NSQ:NVDA | 1.0 | 123.7 | |
LON:AHT | 0.9 | 72.8 | |
LON:WOSG | 0.9 | 145.3 |
One of the interesting takeaways from this list is that Sylvania Platinum (LON:SLP), the South Africa-based PGM mining company, was one of the big winners in 2020. It continued to perform well in the early months of 2021, but fell sharply through the rest of the year - showing just how unpredictable smaller companies can be.
Auto retail was a theme, with Vertu Motors (LON:VTU) and Marshall Motor Holdings (LON:MMH) both delivering triple digit returns. The announced takeover of Marshall Motor last autumn pushed it to the top of the performances in this particular group.
Elsewhere, there were high performing value plays like Reach (LON:RCH), the digital media business, and Marks & Spencer, the UK retailer, rubbing shoulders with more expensive growth plays like Watches of Switzerland (LON:WOSG), SDI (LON:SDI) and solid large caps like Ashtead (LON:AHT).
Unsurprisingly, US tech stocks also featured, with the hugely popular Tesla (NSQ:TSLA) and Nvidia (LON:NVDA) being two of the top performers held by survey respondents.
More about the respondents
What remains consistent year-to-year is that the majority of Stockopedia users largely categorise themselves as either Active Stock Pickers, Systematic Investors or Income/Quality Investors.
Likewise, as we’d expect, investing experience remains consistent with what it was a year ago, with around 40 percent of users having more than 20 years of experience in the stock market.
In terms of using Stockopedia, survey respondents said that StockReports and StockRanks were the most helpful to them, followed by Editorial such as the Small Cap Value Report. Around 30 percent of users also named StockRank Styles, Custom Screens and Portfolio Tools as useful in improving their investing results.
Finally, another welcome finding from the survey is that 82 percent of those responding said that they were more confident investors as a result of using Stockopedia. As noted in previous years, this question is self serving. It’s one where we expect the results to change depending on how kind the market has been. But after a chastening year for some, 82 percent is very encouraging - and not far off the 85 percent level we saw last year when markets were flying.
As always, thanks to everyone who took part in the survey. This kind of snapshot of investor experience through the year is not only very useful for us but it offers an interesting perspective on what Stockopedia users are thinking and how they are performing.
As ever - safe investing
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.
17 comments
Stocko may be a useful tool but however good it may be it becomes part of the overall input into the market it cannot produce another market so have you got the time to be better informed than the market?
Probably not, so best not to kid ourselves?
New to ST - so encouraging but didn’t do too badly over the last 20 years and old picks standing up to current buffering
I always bought funds or ETFs until the pandemic hit when it occurred to me buying a tracker made no sense. I picked 4 stocks for my April 2020 ISA based on very little quantitative evidence and all have done very well. It then occurred to me that in 2021 it would not be so easy, so I embarked on an education program to learn how to pick stocks. Stocko has been a great help with this. Over the past 10 months almost all individual stocks I have bought have lost money - some have fallen a lot. All were picked based on my reading of the stock reports here and reinforced by news flow either from here or elsewhere. In addition, many stocks I gave serious consideration to but rejected have done much better than my picks. It has been quite an education with some stomach churning moments. Where I am now is that I intend to ringfence a small % of my overall portfolio for personal stock picking. I am treating it more as a hobby and will leave investment for the majority of my assets to the professionals. I now have a much clearer idea of what fund managers get paid for and I now realise I simply do not have the time to keep up with daily fluctuations of more than a dozen stocks. With Stocko you have a fighting chance but no more than that. I have a feeling fund managers with better access to company boards and teams of analysts constantly checking RNS data and crunching earnings forecasts in better valuation models than I have me can make better decisions. All good fun though.
I am a big fan of Stockopedia and your articles Ben. But I think this survey needs to be taken with a much bigger pinch of salt than you do in this article (where you point out the small sample size, although 1,100 is quite respectable for a sample). In particular, I would question the meaningfulness of the fact that 65% of respondents said they had performed better than the market in 2021. This number is subject to a whole lot of biases, which I think are probably more important than the size of the sample.
Firstly, the 1980 study by psychologist Ola Svenson reported that around 80% of US/ Swedish drivers ranked themselves better than average drivers. I believe there are similar studies around people's perception of themselves being "better-looking than average". I would not be surprised if investors are subject to the same biases.
Secondly, there will be "survivor bias". Investors who have performed poorly are more likely to stop investing and/ or to cancel their Stockopedia subscription.
Thirdly, people are much more likely to respond to the survey if they have performed well. If you send the survey asking how have you performed in the market in the last year, it is human nature that those who have performed well are more likely to respond. Humans like to talk about their successes not their failures.
Indeed, the result of your 2020 survey was that only 4% of respondents said that they had underperformed the market. I suspect this says more about the reliability reading too much into the results of the survey than it does about the true performance of Stockopedia subscribers.
I don't agree - this is a sample, mostly of 'serious' investors prepared to put in money to obtain data to outperform. due to the level of fees £25+ month it's likely these are going to be winners
The portfolio performance allows any of us to see at a glance of we have beaten the chosen market benchmark. I look looking at this when I am ahead, less often when falling behind (but it does action).
My 2021 performance was inline with the Aim index, but the last 3 months have been an annus horribilis, losing 18%. Does anybody have any advice? I hold a port folio of 60% investment trusts & 40% equities (quality small companies with good balance sheets) and in my 10 years of investing have never experienced such a dramatic & sustained fall. I’ve hung in there, having confidence in my selections (nothing really -ve), fearing if I jumped ship the trend would reverse! Has anybody else suffered similarly?
Hi Graham,
Having a quick look at my PF, since reaching my ATH last May I am down about 8% and I think this has been a gradual decline since May - 7 of the 8 months look to have been down with only 1 up. I ended up being +5% across 2021.
I cant recall any big losers after May, but I think its fair to say that a lot of small-caps have drifted off their highs. Potentially worse results have been prevented by big winners such as Air Partner (LON:AIR) and £SQZ. I did have 5 or 6 big losers I made errors with that hurt my 2020 returns, but I think most of these were earlier in the year.
These two have also helped my YTD which looks to be about 2% down YTD.
Like you, most of my PF is in good solid small caps with good balance sheets. I have started to move much more towards IT's over the last 3-4 months and intend to split my PF about 50:50.
I don't intend to tinker too much as I believe the companies I hold should come good in the longer-term, although it is painful seeing profits slowly drift away. I can also see a bigger sell off coming and with relatively low liquidity in my PF I could see some big downs before the up's. However, every time I have liquidated things hoping to protect positions I've ended up having to buy back in at higher prices, so am inclined not to do a lot short-term.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I should add many of my equities have an IT element which probably has meant a double whammy for me i.e. Small caps + IT. I believed the NASDAQ had been over valued, but what I hadn’t expected was for the UK to fall in sympathy!
Thanks for the post Ben. I am definately sitting firmly in the under performing bracket... many mistakes and much to learn which brings me to a general question of Stockpedia users experience in undertaking online courses in investing and trading for inexperienced retail investors. Can anyone recommend? Currently I am not making the most of Stockopedia through lack of knowledge. Any pointers would be most welcome.
As a young investor with disposable income I was a get rich quick investor, too quick to take profit and move into something new, which then lost money ( mainly penny shares).
Aged 50ish, I decided to I needed to be more defensive for my retirement and moved to buying predominantly ftse350 shares with good track record, low PE, minimum sustained 3% dividend, with a small proportion of risky shares.
I now have a low turnover of shares, good dividend income a nd reasonable capital growth.
In short, buy quality shares cheap, and hold. Time and patience is your friend
I signed up to stockopedia in Nov19, and outperformed ftse 100 by 31% over that time
As a new subscriber, and not an experienced active investor, having previously just used investment trusts, it would be interesting to learn how users have used Stockopedia to outperform the market so well.
The data available is excellent so is it purely use of this or that the Stockranks provide guidance that make the difference?
I note that the Small Cap report was rated highly so is this as a buy signal or more ideas of companies to further investigate?
If I had to guess I'd actually say being a subscriber is more an indicator of being a more serious, analytical investor and less of a gambler and that's the outperformance. I suspect how we use stockopedia differs for all of us. For me it's probably a shortcut which saves time so I can turn over more rocks.
I think my main edge is probably my long term view, passive nature and ability to ride out drawdowns. This is made easier by experience, nature and the fact investing is cherry on top for me, not the cake (family business being cake)
The website's much faster now after the migration to AWS. Good job folks.
Agreed - At present it's like on steroids !!!!! Good job guys :)
Yes I just logged on and immediately thought Wow that's faster!
Despite the difficulties of 2021 it is great to see so many subscribers navigate the markets and continue to perform so well!