On-line stock pollsters gauge investor outlook

ROB CARRICK
PERSONAL FINANCE REPORTER
Saturday, November 18, 2020

http://www.epredict.com
Before you buy your next stock, it might be a good idea to look at some polling data to see what other investors think about your choice.

The place to go for this is a Web site called ePredict.com. There's a whole long explanation of what these guys do on the site, but basically they're on-line stock pollsters.

At the end of every trading day, ePredict e-mails an invitation to members asking them to fill out an on-line questionnaire covering a few different stocks.

There's a blurb of information about each company, a graph of its share price and spaces to vote with a mouse click about where you see the stock going over a specific timeframe, often the next three months. Each stock is rated a strong buy, a buy, a hold, a sell or a strong sell.

Once you've filled out the daily questionnaire, you're whisked to a Web page with the day's polling results. You'll see an overall rating for the stock, as well as a breakdown of what percentage of respondents called the stock a buy, sell and so on.

How well does it work?

The ePredict people say they've created an index to show how their system has performed. Their index outperformed the S&P; 500 handily, rising 5.7 per cent, while the benchmark index fell 1.2 per cent. A separate technology index has outperformed the Nasdaq 13.1 per cent to minus 11.1 per cent.

It's hard to put too much credence in either index, because the site is vague on how indexes are measured. It would also be useful to know how many people participated in each of the surveys.

As it stands now, all you're told is the percentage of respondents who voted for each rating category. If thousands of people did the questionnaire, then great. If a few dozen did, then the information is useless.

In addition to its daily results, ePredict gives members access to an archive of past surveys. Canadian stocks aren't included, but you can look up interlisted issues. Recently, Corel Corp. turned up in a survey and netted itself a strong sell.