No. of Recommendations: 10
In the 2000's, I conducted 3 (?) surveys of our MI community, and published the results on the message board (then, the Motley Fool MI board). I'm considering doing that again, if there is interest. The idea is to get an overall impression of what people are doing with MI, on an *** ANONYMOUS *** basis. To give you a better idea of what the survey would be, I will paste below the summary of the Sep. 2000 survey below.
(There were other, later surveys, but the results for those were published through a 'home-office' web server that I no longer have running, with only a link to that report posted on the message board. So I don't have access to that data any longer.)
If you think this would be worth doing again, and would be willing to participate, recommend this post. If you have ideas to improve the questions or scope of the survey, reply to this post. It would probably take a few weeks to put this together, so don't hold your breath waiting for it.
Thanks!
Robert Marshall
Dog Island Inv. Co.
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Sep 2000 MI Survey report:
538 people responded to the Survey.
Of these, 512 (all but 24) reported having made MI investments.
These respondents reported a total of $191 million of investments made using MI strategies.
The largest reported MI investment was $6 million, and the smallest (non-zero) was $1 thousand.
54 respondents reported MI investments of $1 million or more.
The average MI investment (of those respondents who had invested MI money) was $371,530.
The median MI investment was $115,000.
Those who follow the screens rigorously tend to do slightly better on their returns, than those who follow the screens with exceptions.
Most MI investors discovered MI by browsing the TMF website; a minority discovered MI because they were told about it by others, or read of it in books.
The average MI investor has about 64% of controllable assets in MI strategies. The percent committed to MI grows from about 40% when starting out, to about 80%, after a few years.
The number of MI investors has been growing in the last few years, although the second and third quarters of 2000 have slower growth than corresponding quarters in 1999. Volatile times discourage new MI investors.
The most popular MI screen is PEG, with 204 MI investors and almost $19 million reportedly invested. Rounding out the top ten are OverRS, OverPEG, RSIBD, Spark, SOS-Elan, Key100, Form90, KeyEPS and RS26wk, in that order. There are 31 published MI screens with a million dollars or more of reported investments, and 27 published MI screens with no reported investments.
Those who participate the most in the MI board are likely to have much more money invested in MI strategies than those who merely lurk.
The prior survey included these questions (paraphrased):
When and how did you become aware of MI?
When did you begin to invest using MI?
How do you use MI (strictly, loosely, etc.)?
How much do you invest using MI, and what % of your controlled funds are in MI?
What has been your internal rate of return since starting MI?
What screens do you use, % for each, hold period for each?
What has been your level of participation on the MI board?
All questions were objective in nature (numeric, multiple choice, date, etc), but were followed by a comments section for free-form input.
