Financial Planning Clients’ Investing Confidence & Knowledge

Financial psychology is at the heart of our product development and ongoing research here at DataPoints. Part of our research program includes examining investor-related characteristics. Our analyses include areas like confidence and composure. Our latest Client FinPsych Report explored the preferences, knowledge, and confidence of over 2,600 financial planning clients between February 2018 and May 2021. The results of this research help to identify areas where advisors can help clients’ improve investing-related decision-making. In other …
Last month a war (of sorts) was declared, pitting various risk tolerance companies against each other concerning their methodologies relating to portfolio risk assessment and analysis. The dispute appeared to be outside the realm of measuring a client’s appetite for risk. However, there is a very real and clear line of demarcation in the world of risk-tolerance assessment “advisortech” with respect to the method employed in assessing the investor’s so-called “risk tolerance,” particularly the …
If you have ever taken a quiz entitled “How to tell if your boyfriend is cheating on you” or “Answer these five questions to learn to see if you’re a good friend,” then you’ve probably taken something akin to what we call a “Cosmo test.” Your answers to just a few questions will result in a detailed analysis of your personality, along with a lengthy set of advice on improving your life (or a …
Sometime around 2000, I gambled some of my money away while fooling myself into thinking I was doing something very sophisticated. I wasn’t in Las Vegas: I was sitting at my computer buying shares of Krispy Kreme Donuts on eTrade. I had seen the front page of Forbes or Fortune or some other publication touting the company’s success and its future prospects, and decided on my own, without seeking the counsel of my wiser …
Our data consistently tells us that in the arena of personal-finance outcomes, behaviors matter. They matter a lot. So we thought it was time to try and quantify—from a dollars and net-worth perspective—exactly how much is “a lot.” We’ll consider savings rate as a critical behavior. We have talked here before about the difference in savings rates between “high-potential” and “low-potential” individuals, as measured by scores on the DataPoints Building Wealth assessment. As a quick …

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