How you allocate your money among stocks, bonds, and short-term reserves may be the most important factor in determining the long-term return and volatility of your portfolio.

The WMA Investor Questionnaire makes asset allocation suggestions based on information you enter about your investment objectives and experience, time horizon, risk tolerance, and financial situation. As your financial circumstances or goals change, it is the investor’s responsibility to complete the questionnaire again and request a reallocation the investments in your portfolio.  Note: as part of WMA’s ongoing fiduciary duty to our investors, we will not invest client money in strategies riskier than that of the client’s risk profile.

Please take a few minutes to complete the following questionnaire.

Investor Name:

Investor Email:

Time Horizon (questions 1 to 3)

1.) What is your current age?

Less than 45

45 to 55

56 to 65

66 to 75

Older than 75

2.)  I plan to begin taking money from my investments in . . .

2 years or less

3 – 5 years

6 – 10 years

11 – 15 years

More than 15 years

3.)  As I withdraw money from these investments, I plan to spend all the proceeds over . . .

2 years or less

3 – 5 years

6 – 10 years

11 – 15 years

More than 15 years (or make an intergenerational gift to my heirs)

Long-Term Goals & Expectations (questions 4 to 8)

4.) My current and future income sources (for example, salary, Social Security, pension) are:

Very unstable

Unstable

Somewhat stable

Stable

Very stable

5.) When it comes to investing in stock or bond funds (or individual stocks or bonds), I would describe myself as . . .

Very inexperienced

Somewhat inexperienced

Somewhat experienced

Experienced

Very experienced

6.) What is your investment goal?

To grow money aggressively

To grow money significantly

To grow money moderately

To grow money, but with caution

To avoid losing money

7.) Assuming normal equity market conditions (bull market uptrends followed by bear market downtrends), what do you expect from your investments over time?

To generally keep pace or slightly beat the overall stock market

To trail slightly the overall stock market, but make a good profit

To trail the overall stock market, but make a moderate profit

To have some stability, but make modest profits

To have a high degree of stability, but make small profits

8.)  Suppose that the stock market performs usually poorly over the next decade. What would you expect from your investments?

To lose money

To make very little or nothing

To eke out a small gain

To make a modest gain

To be little affected by what happens to the stock market

Risk Tolerence (questions 9 to 14)

9.) Which of these statements would best describe your attitude about the next three months’ performance for your investments?

Who cares? One quarter means nothing

I can accept losses in a one-quarter time frame

If I suffered a loss of greater than 10%, I’d get concerned

I can only tolerate small short-term losses

I’d have a hard time accepting any losses

10.)  Imagine that the overall stock market unexpectedly lost 25% of its value over the past year. An individual stock in your portfolio also lost 25% of its value over the same time period. What would you do?

Sell all your shares in the stock

Sell 50% of your holding in the stock

Reduce modestly by 25% your holding in the stock

Do nothing

Buy more shares in the stock

11.) Generally, I prefer investments with little or no fluctuation in value, and I'm willing to accept the lower return associated with these investments.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Somewhat agree

Agree

Strongly agree

12.) From September 2008 through November 2008, stocks lost over 31%. If you owned a stock investment that lost about 31% in 3 months, you would: (if you were indeed invested in stocks during this period, select the answer that corresponds to your actual behavior.)

Sell all of the remaining investment

Sell a small portion of the remaining investment

Sell a large portion of the remaining investment

Hold onto the investment and sell nothing

Buy more of the investment

13.) During market declines, I tend to sell portions of my riskier assets and invest the money in safer assets.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Somewhat agree

Agree

Strongly agree

14.) The chart below shows the greatest 1-year loss and the highest 1-year gain on 3 different hypothetical investments of $10,000.  Given the potential gain or loss in any 1 year, I would invest my money in:

A (loss of $164, gain of $593)

B (loss of $1,020, gain of $1,921)

C (loss of $3,639, gain of $4,229)

15.) How long do you believe before you can truly call an investment a “loss of money”?

One week

One month

One quarter

One year

Greater than one year

16.) What would you do if the tables were turned and you were the financial advisor and we were a client claiming to have a "moderate" risk profile, and our portfolio were down -15% or $35,000 in three months? 

Reduce holdings immediately until markets return to an up-trend in order to protect the remaining capital

Hold on to current positions until next bounce in the markets, then reduce holdings

Hold on to current stocks at least until positions are again profitable, then sell out and reassess the situation

Assuming there is sufficient cash, begin to add to current positions to dollar cost average down purchase prices

Take advantage of the drop to move into higher beta stocks

Time is Up!