Stockopedia Subscriber Performance Survey 2020
Twelve months ago, stock markets in the UK and around the world were facing turmoil as Covid took hold. The initial price reversal was breathtaking. But unlike other serious sell-offs in recent memory - particularly the 2009 financial crisis - markets bottomed-out quite quickly.
Within weeks of the pull-back last February and March, some stocks and sectors were recovering. Others were even flourishing. Across the market there were emerging lockdown winners (and losers), all set against the backdrop of exceptional economic chaos.
It all set the scene for a year in which investors could (and some did) do very well in the stock market -- and that’s exactly what we heard in the results of our 2020 subscriber survey, which we sent out recently.
A successful year for many investors
Every year we sound-out Stockopedia users to hear how they’ve fared in the market and whether they’re feeling bullish or bearish about the future. Despite the fear and volatility that dominated the early months of 2020, ultimately shares did well, and so have many of our subscribers…
Indeed, a very solid 86 percent of the ~1,400 users who replied to the survey said they had outperformed or significantly outperformed the market since they started using the platform. Thirteen percent said that they had matched the market, while just four percent had underperformed or significantly underperformed.
Those results are quite a leap on the already strong performances reported a year earlier, in 2019. Back then, seventy percent of respondents said they’d outperformed or significantly outperformed the market since joining Stockopedia, with 22 percent matching the market and eight percent underperforming it.
Digging into the detail of 2020, an impressive 16 percent of respondents said they’d seen a performance of more than 50 percent in the previous 12 months. Nineteen percent said their performance had come in at between 30 and 50 percent. Forty-three percent said they’d seen a gain of between 10 and 30 percent. And fourteen percent said their performance had been between zero and 10 percent.
Widely held winners in 2020
As for widely held winners, our findings from the 2020 survey show a huge number of names. We asked respondents to tell us which stocks had given them the best returns, and the table below highlights the most widely held winners and how they performed:
Share | Ticker | % of respondents | 2020 Gain % |
SLP | 9.5% | 122.5% | |
GAW | 4.4% | 84.7% | |
SMT | 3.8% | 107.2% | |
NCYT | 3.1% | 6050% | |
VLX | 3.0% | 98.7% | |
BOO | 2.3% | 14.7% | |
BOTB | 2.2% | 342.4% | |
FXPO | 2.1% | 91.3% | |
ITM | 1.9% | 537.4% | |
TSLA | 1.6% | 673.7% | |
CDM | 1.5% | 131.3% | |
CWR | 1.5% | 390.7% | |
ERGO | 1.5% | 168.5% | |
IPX | 1.1% | 81.3% | |
SDI | 1.1% | 53.2% | |
GGP | 1.1% | 1916.4% | |
MPAC | 1.1% | 112.2% | |
MWE | 1.1% | 76.8% | |
G4M | 1.0% | 224.8% | |
RIO | 0.9% | 20.8% |
Here are some of the highlights:
- Mining and metals was a very hot sector in the uncertainty of 2020, especially on evidence of a new commodities supercycle emerging. South Africa-based PGM specialist Sylvania Platinum was the widest held top performer. But there were stellar gains achieved in stocks like Greatland Gold, and even large-caps like Ferrexpo and Rio Tinto delivered solid returns.
- Covid winners emerged all over the place, but some micro-cap biotechs with testing expertise went stratospheric. French biology company Novacyt was one of the biggest, with a 6,000+ % gain through the year.
- Tesla was probably the biggest name in stock markets around the world last year. It became a symbol of the incredible momentum in US markets, and was the only non-UK stock to make the top 20 here. One of its biggest institutional holders - Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (which holds a number of US tech giants) - was the third most widely held winner, with Tesla itself in 10th.
- Growth stocks and high quality compounders continued to deliver in 2020. PI favourites like Games Workshop, Volex, Boohoo, Best of the Best and SDI among others, proved that they could be depended on.
How do Stockopedia users see themselves?
Our subscriber base has grown strongly over the past year and the majority continue to classify themselves as either Active Stock Pickers, Systematic Investors or Income/Quality Investors. The proportion marking themselves as Active Stock Pickers has increased to just over 30 percent from 25 percent last year. That perhaps reflects a sense that investors have felt the need to be more hands-on with their portfolio selections this past year - and, of course, that dividends from income stocks were decimated in 2020.
In terms of experience, Stockopedia users have a fairly broad range of years spent investing, with nearly 40 percent of respondents saying they've got more than 20 years of experience behind them. A promising move from last year is that the proportion of users claiming to have been investing for less than a year has shifted from around 2 percent in 2019 to more like 5 percent in 2020.
And for many users, our StockReports, StockRanks and Editorial continue to be some of the most popular features of Stockopedia - certainly in helping to improve portfolio results.
Finally, another promising response from respondents to the 2020 survey is that the majority feel more confident about their understanding of the stock market since they started using Stockopedia. This is a slightly self-serving question, but we would still expect market conditions to influence how users reply to it. So it’s interesting that the proportion feeling confident in their investing has increased from 75 percent in 2018 to 82 percent in 2019 and now 85 percent in 2020. Confidence is at a high, presumably because the market may continue to recover as the Covid crisis wanes.
As always, thanks to everyone who took part in the survey. The responses are hugely valuable to us and offer a very interesting view of what Stockopedia users are thinking and how they are performing.
As ever - Safe investing
About Ben Hobson
Stockopedia writer, editor, researcher and interviewer!
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Hi Richard,
I think we will introduce some changes to the survey next time around. It's interesting for everyone to see this kind of thing , but I don't want to give the impression we're presenting misleading data. The trade-off with adding more complexity to the survey (such as standardising the calculation of returns (which many approach in different ways)) is that we'll just get far fewer people coming back to us. So we'll need to think about it carefully.
The survey itself serves a few purposes, one of which that it's very important for us to hear from users about how they are feeling and the actions they are taking. And part of the reason for publishing some of those results here is that it's good manners to those who responded to us to give them the bigger picture of what everyone else said.
There is no question that a survey like this is going to be skewed in some ways, just by the nature of it. And if we continue with it we'll need to consider how to tackle that.
Thanks, Ben
pka - Yes, I agree that poor performances will be under reported and exceptional performances fully reported. This does not make it invalid as such, just to be factored in to any interpretation.
I do agree with you. I think if we continue with it we'll need to explore ways of expanding the sample size or changing the nature of the survey. The problem is that it is just a survey and there's no compulsion for anyone to reply to it at all. Those circumstances probably do open the door to all sorts of behavioural skews in who does and doesn't reply.
I certainly agree with you. The current chart is showing change in valuation over time, which of course means that if you are adding or removing cash to the portfolio then this influences your portfolio valuation and leads to apparent spikes in performance.
In order to provide a better comparator of investment performance, we plan to add a time-weighted return chart to the folios area. This metric excludes the influence of deposits and withdrawal (but maintains dividends) which should make it easier to understand your portfolio performance and compare versus reference benchmarks.
Hi TimeAnd Tide - I must admit that being a bit of a pedant NOT having my Stocko Portfolio reflecting Cash movements correctly had me searching for a solution via Mr Google
NO RECOMMENDATION HERE - But I am now using a Free Application called PortfolioPerformance (I use MacOs). It allows you to set up your Cash account and record all movements. It also allows you to set up your Investment (Securities) from the ticker, which will automatically load pricing. You can run more than one portfolio so you can have watchlist "Folios" It gives a lot of Portfolio performance charting and calculations It even allows me to record Trade Dealing and Tax costs separately. I balance my holdings daily
Stocko team - This is my specification for transaction and performance recording and reporting
Thanks Ezlifeme - I'm also a Mac user so I'll have a look at that and see if I can export to it. That being said I only want to keep a folio in one place and I'm loyal to Stockopedia so it has to be here ,so I will most likely just stick to nagging about this feature!
I think that this is true.
But one challenge for myself is I report by Financial Year, so 06 April - 05 April, not calendar year as 2 of the 3 peoples money I manage is not all yet in tax shelters (ISA/SIPP). But yes I do have a Spread Sheet to track it all, as well as the Folio on here, though that does not record everything such as Fundsmith, which is my Microsoft holding.
But then we have the FOMO, my biggest loss (sold at 50% down) would now have been a 50% gain...do we have a what was your screamer and what was your howler competition?
Tommy
That is one of the big challenges with the way the Portfolios are structured.
Stockopedia have looked at but it is not easy to fix.
I have a way in my Excel sheet of calculating what the contribution of all these should be, so ISA is easy as deposit made 06 April, take value at 05 April the following year, is it up or down and hence %.
My share account I pay in each month, effectively my wash up savings account as I do not need any more cash right now. So hence it looks like amazing performance if you do 31 January 2021 deposit £1000, so I end up now having to put all deposits on "Day 1" which then shows a lag in performance as it thinks you held cash for a long time. In addition my 20+% down last July (my personal low point in 2020) now shows about 15% down due to the additional deposits since then.
Again I can track in Excel as I do a monthly valuation (5th of each month), and then have a contribution of any in month to achieve a target by the end of the year. I have basic (Cash ISA return), Long Term and Stretch targets. Took a couple of goes to work it out but seems to get it about right. So this can tell me to get say 5% return in a year, I should have £XYZ given the original balance and deposits made through the year, and hence am I on track, ahead or behind in any given month.
I too have a problem contacting Stockopedia and thought this would be the best place to sort a problem out.
I have the UK and US subscriptions.
When I open up the Stockopedia on the Today page screen the Nasdaq Compasite index is never up to date. In fact it is at least a day out of date!
The FTSE all share works OK as does the FTSE 100 index & S&P. and all my US portfolios, BUT why does the Nasdaq Index not work? Can somebody please fix it please.
All the other US sharea changing th StockRanks show te correct values and are on the same page. This is so frustrating.
Nasdaq is now still showing -2.4% from yesterday. This is clearly not acceptable & needs fixing with immediate effect. Thanks
Hi Herbie,
There is no green button on the screen. The Nasdaq Compasite Index is still out of order. Is there anybody there to fix it? Also how do you get the green button back on the screen? Help please.
You can contact support via the green button in the bottom right of the page as shown below:
If you cannot see this, an ad-blocker may be hiding this. Can you try adding Stockopedia to a 'safe' list?
With regards to the Nasdaq Composite - I can confirm the prices look to be up-to date now as shown here:
https://www.stockopedia.com/in...
*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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And me! Come on guys at Stocko: you can do this!