There are samples from two populations: a sample of wealthy individual investors, and a sample of institutional investors. The sample of US individual investors from 1989 to 1998 was purchased from W. S. Ponton, Inc., a list of "High-Grade Multi-Investors." Starting in 1999, the sample was a random sample of high-income Americans purchased from Survey Sampling, Inc. The US institutional investors have been sampled in each survey from the investment managers section of the Money Market Directory of Pension Funds and Their Investment Managers. In recent years, the sample of individual and institutional investors is purchased from InfoUSA (Data Axle).
Surveys before 2000 were conducted at six-month intervals. Starting in July 2001 the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management initiated monthly surveys of both investor populations. The original ICF website reported monthly six-month average of monthly surveys. Thus, for example, the number for January 2018 is an average of results from surveys between August 2017 and January 2018. Sample size has averaged a little over one hundred per six-month interval since the beginnings of the surveys. This means that standard errors are typically plus or minus five percentage points. Standard errors are shown here in the data tables on the index pages. Further discussion of the data are in Shiller [2000][1]. The current website reports monthly statistics without six-month aggregation.
Data collection for the monthly surveys was supported by Andrew Redleaf of Lynne and Andrew Redleaf Foundation (previously Whitebox Advisors). Prior data collection was supported in part by grants from the U. S. National Science Foundation and by the ICF.
The indexes available for download on this page are based on a subset of the survey questions. However, indexes constructed from the full set of questions are available for purchase.
See the "Premium Indexes Available by Request" button below to see an excel file with the full set of available indexes.
Please email Yale ICF (yaleicf@yale.edu) for more information.
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