Cake Financial Investor Metrics for December and Full Year 2008
Top Individual Investors Beat Most Mutual Funds and All Three Major Market Indices
San Francisco, Calif.—January 8, 2009—Cake Financial, the website that gives personalized insights to help investors maximize returns, today released its monthly and year-end metrics for 2008, showing how individual investors were affected by this year’s market turmoil.
Cake’s full year 2008 metrics show its Elite investors (top 1%) significantly outperformed every leading market index with losses of just 6.8% as compared to declines of 40.5% for the NASDAQ, 33.8% for Dow Jones and, 38.5% for S&P 500. Collectively, these top individual investors would have ranked as the 13th best performing US mutual fund out of 9,978, according to Morningstar’s Top U.S. Stock Mutual Funds for 2008. That group of funds saw an average return of -35% in 2008.
December’s metrics show average retail investor performance shifted from a loss of 7.8% in November to a 4% gain in December, handily beating the markets for the month. The number of trades increased by 35 percent in December, likely due to year-end tax planning, resulting in 30% of total investor assets now residing in cash, the highest percentage allocation of 2008.
“2008 has been tough on most investors yet many individuals have weathered the storm with minimal losses,” said Steven A. Carpenter, CEO of Cake Financial. “The fact that a large group of individual investors beat nearly every mutual fund manager this year underscores our belief that Cake can be helpful in both bull and bear markets.”
The best performing investors on Cake – those members ranked Elite –also increased their cash position by 15% throughout the year, indicating a cautious outlook for 2009.
In the month of December, five stocks, ETF’s, and mutual funds moved up from F to A in Cake’s ratings indicating investors feel confident about these stocks and are buying. Securities that moved from F to A in December are Chicago Bridge and Iron (CBI), ProShares UltraShort (DUG), iShares S&P MidCap 400 Index (IJH), Schwab International Index Foreign Large Blend (SWINX), and Metropolitan West Total Return Bond (MWTRX).
Carpenter added, “We’ll be paying close attention to individual investor behavior in January to see how they are approaching the markets in 2009.“
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Posted by: Steve Carpenter
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January 11th, 2009 at 4:38 am
I believe social investing is the wave of the future.
After brokers have miserably failed, it’s time for people to take control of their own investments.
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