Our thanks to the 1,161 readers who completed our Reader Survey. This is a great response and the feedback provides valuable guidance for us.
Cuffelinks is a community of investors sharing ideas, and in the spirit of openness, we attach all the charts representing the answers, and comments from two of the questions. We have edited out only some personal references in the interests of privacy and confidentiality, and we have not touched the spelling or grammar.
The bar charts on responses to every question are linked here.
The verbatim comments from the two questions that required a written response can be accessed here: Question 5 'How is Cuffelinks different from other financial newsletters and websites?' and Question 12 'How can we make Cuffelinks more useful to you, plus other general feedback?'.
In brief, some of the findings are:
- Almost 50% of our readers identify themselves as SMSF trustees while 30% are investors without an SMSF and 30% are retired from paid work (multiple selections were allowed so the numbers add to more than 100%). Industry professionals make up about 40% of respondents, many of whom would also manage an SMSF.
- 70% say the length of our articles is about right, while 17% say it depends on the subject. Overall, we think we are writing appropriately in length for our audience.
- 80% say our articles are easy to understand, while another 20% say it varies by week.
- 91% say our content is credible and professional, and we hope we are selecting the best writers for our audience and aspirations.
- There is decent support for macro and economic forecasting, so we will explore that further in 2016. Podcasting, conferences and webinars received solid interest, but not too regularly. There is not a high expectation that we will provide stock picking, but there’s some interest.
- Almost 70% have shared Cuffelinks with a friend. Thank you very much, the word-of-mouth support is crucial for our growth.
- The most popular asset classes for allocation in the last year were domestic equities, global equities and term deposits. Alternatives had a respectable 5% but are not yet mainstream.
Readers value our independence and variety of expert opinions, and want us to avoid overt product promotions. There is recognition of our focus on quality of analysis and information rather than grabbing the headlines or reporting the daily noise. We sometimes worry our articles err on the side of being too technical, as they are written by market professionals, but this does not seem to be an issue for most. Hopefully, each edition has something for everyone.
We appreciate the time many of you took to complete the survey.
From the team at Cuffelinks
Chris, Graham, David, Ashley and Leisa