Which Type Of Investor Are You? Take This Test (2024)

Your Investor Type Reveals How You Can Advance Your Investment Strategy To The Next Level

After years of educating my coaching clients on how to properly design their own investment plans, I've noticed there are three distinct types of investors.

1. Pre-Investor
2. Passive Investor
3. Active Investor

So what type of investor are you and why should you care?

• Identifying your investor type will help you know the consequences of your investment style. You'll learn the limitations and advantages that naturally result from the way you invest.
• Additionally, you'll be able to decide if the opportunity available at the next level of investing is worth the effort by understanding what the next level of investing looks like.

There's no right answer to the question, “What is the best investment type?” However, there's a right answer uniquely suited to your situation.

Only one investment type is appropriate for your plan to achieve wealth, and your job is to determine what that type is.

Related: Why you need a wealth plan, not an investment plan.

The nice thing about investor types is we all start in the same place (pre-investor), and we can all graduate to the next successive level of investment skill through education and experience.

Each investment type builds on the skills of the type below it. So no matter what type of investor you are now, the next level is just a little practice and education away.

Investor Type 1: Pre-Investor

Unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and a trust fund to match, then you likely began life as most of us do: a pre-investor.

A pre-investor is simply someone who isn't investing.

Pre-investors are characterized by minimal financial consciousness or awareness. There's little thought of investing, and there's correspondingly little savings or investment to show for that minimal thought.

Some pre-investors have a company retirement plan, but that wouldn't exist had the personnel department not set it up for them.

“The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.”– Willem de Kooning

The pre-investor’s financial world is primarily about consumption, which takes precedence over savings and investment.

As wage earners, they typically live paycheck to paycheck believing their financial difficulties will be solved by the next pay increase. When pre-investors earn more, they spend more, because lifestyle is more important than financial security.

For whatever reason, pre-investors haven't woken up to the necessity of owning financial responsibility for their lives and their future.

This isn't to judge all pre-investors harshly because it's perfectly acceptable for a seven year old to live in this reality. It's another thing for a 40 year old to never graduate beyond it.

Are you a pre-investor? How is your savings and investment plan progressing? Is your financial consciousness ruled by consumption needs, or are you prioritizing savings and investment?

What are you going to do to take the next step and begin passively investing so that you can move beyond financial dependence and get on the road to financial independence?

This course can help…

Investor Type 2: Passive Investment Strategy

As we mature and gain responsibility, most people graduate from pre-investor status and enter the investment world through the window of passive investing. It's the most common starting point on the road to financial security.

“Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”– Mark Twain

Most financial institutions, educational services, and web sites support passive investing as the proven, accepted solution. Most of what you can learn from the information available in your local bookstore or on the internet is the conventional wisdom of passive investment strategies.

Passive investing is where the retail world of investing lives. While there are no hard statistics to support my claim, I believe well over 90% of all investors fall into the passive investor category.

The passive investor type usually employs all the basics of sound personal financial planning: own your own home, fund tax deferred retirement plans, asset allocation, and save at least 10% of earnings.

If you follow these foundational principles and begin early enough in life, then passive investing is likely all you'll ever need to attain financial security.

Passive investment strategy is good for people with busy lives, families, jobs, outside interests, or entrepreneurs building businesses.

Let’s face it: most people’s lives are already full, leaving little time for developing investment skills. It's difficult to make investing a top priority despite its financial importance.

A common result of having limited time is passive investors often delegate the responsibility and authority for their investment decisions to “experts” such as financial planners, brokers, money managers, or even newsletter writers.

Related:

Rather than become their own expert on investing, passive investors typically rely on other people’s expertise for their investment strategy.

The defining characteristic of passive investment strategies are their simplicity. They require less knowledge and skill making them accessible to the general populace.

“Buy and hold” with mutual funds or stocks, fixed asset allocation, averaging down, and buying real estate at retail prices are all examples of passive investment strategies.

There's nothing wrong with any of these strategies, but they can have negative consequences.

Sure, it's possible to become acceptably wealthy, but the downside is it usually requires a working lifetime combined with discipline and regular savings contributions to achieve financial independence using the passive investment style. The one exception is extreme frugality because of the high savings rates and low spending rates that accelerate the timeline.

The other downside to the passive investment strategy is you'll take a lot more risk and can expect lower returns than investors who have reached the next level of investing.

That's because passive investors have no “value added” or skill component to their expected return stream so they're dependent on the opportunity in the market for investment return. Rising markets provide great returns, and declining markets provide miserable returns.

The passive investor submissively rides the market roller coaster up and down into the future and willfully bets his financial security on the hope that the roller coaster will end higher than when he started. You can learn more about the buy and hold investment approach here.

“Most people spend more time planning their vacations than their financial future.”– Unknown

While passive investing isn't without its flaws, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for many people, making it the right course of action for them.

Related: How to make more from your investing by risking less

Passive investing is far superior to not investing at all as it starts the process of compounding returns on invested capital and has the lowest barrier to entry in terms of time and knowledge required.

If the simplicity of passive investing is necessary to get you started, then it's well worth the trade-offs because not getting started (pre-investor) is far worse.

The disadvantage of passive investing is the lack of control over your financial security. Because it's passive, it lacks many risk control strategies and overlooks the value-added opportunities available only to those with greater skills.

The result is the passive investor type endures higher volatility and possibly lower returns when compared to the successful execution of an active investment strategy.

Investor Type 3: Active Investor

Active investors build on the foundation of the passive investor. They take the process to the next level by running their wealth like a business.

The primary difference between active and passive investors is the active investor not only receives market based passive returns, but he also gains a value-added return stream based on skill; two sources of return in one investment.

This allows the active investor to make money regardless of market conditions or direction and to reduce losses during periods of adversity. This holds the potential to increase returns and lower risk.

“By the time we've made it, we've had it.”– Malcolm Forbes

A primary distinction between passive and active investment strategies is passive investors work hard to acquire and save money, but spend far less energy making their money work for them.

Active investors work just as hard at making their money work for them as they ever did earning it in the first place. In other words, active investing is more work, and that's why it is not for everyone.

The reason active investors are willing to spend that extra effort is because they understand the wealth building game is about return on capital.

Small differences in growth rates over long periods of time make huge differences in wealth – far bigger differences than could ever be realized by working toward the next pay raise.

The most important factor in building your wealth is not how much you earn, but how much your money earns and how long it compounds.

Active investors have embraced full responsibility for their financial future by not only building investment capital as passive investors, but also taking responsibility for the return on their invested capital through active strategies that add value.

Related: How to take back control of your portfolio

How does the active investor do this? By creating a plan that follows specific rules designed to exploit inefficiencies existing in the marketplace. The term for this is known as “edge” and it's identical to the competitive advantage an entrepreneur seeks in business. The competitive advantage must add more value than transaction costs take away or you won't profit.

Without getting too complicated, the only way to create an investment return in excess of market rates (passive returns) with consistency is if inefficiencies exist that can be profited from in a business-like fashion.

Investment edge creates profits that are equal to the inefficiency afforded by the market after subtracting the cost to exploit the inefficiency.

Below are some examples of active investing where real people are putting this equation into actual practice.

Active Investment Strategy Explained

Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham are excellent examples of active investors in the stock market.

They knew the stock market was inefficient and built vast fortunes applying their analytical skills (edge) to find value in securities that the market had under-priced (inefficiency).

Contrast the return from their active portfolio management with the passive return from buying and holding index funds over the same time period, and the value added from active investment strategy becomes clear.

Real estate is an active investors dream because of vast inefficiencies in price, usage, and management.

For example, I know someone who buys large homes on large lots with separate “granny quarters” and then legally separates the properties into two titles and sells them for a fat profit.

The same thing can sometimes be done with houses that are sold with additional land attached.

“Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.”– Kurt Herbert Alder

Or maybe you're a real estate investor who has an eye for mis-priced homes where you can add value with a few minor improvements. Add a few windows, remodel the kitchen, and presto – you have instant equity greatly in excess of what it cost to do the work.

Sometimes, all you have to do is clean the property and make it presentable to add value and exploit how the property’s price did not reflect its true value (inefficiency).

In mutual fund switching, I know people who have built wealth by exploiting the pricing inefficiencies resulting from GAAP accounting rules.

GAAP requires mutual funds to price every security at its last trade. The problem is many individual bonds in a bond fund's portfolio don't trade every day.

Or what about the international fund with securities that are trading across time zones? Many low risk fortunes have been built by trading the disparity between reported prices in mutual fund NAV's and known values based on actual market conditions.

Whether it's value investing in stocks like Graham and Buffett (a subset of mean reversion investing), or real estate conversion/rehab, or even mutual fund switching, these are just three examples of the many ways active investors profit by exploiting inefficiencies in a business-like fashion.

The true number of active investment strategies is virtually limitless.

Related: How to be a pro at growing your wealth

In summary, the purpose of active investing is to lower risk and enhance returns by introducing the element of skill.

By developing a competitive edge that profits from market inefficiencies, the active investor creates a return stream completely separate and in addition to what the market offers. This value added return stream lowers risk and increases return.

Isn’t that what investing is all about?

The price the entrepreneurial investor pays for the extra profit and reduced risk is the time and energy required to exploit the inefficiency.

It takes effort to treat your wealth as your business and that's why most people remain passive investors.

In fact, in a classic “Catch-22”, active investing may be valuable to attaining financial freedom because of the potential for higher returns, but it's also the antithesis of financial freedom once you attain wealth because it can be as much work as a regular job.

Which Investment Strategy is Right For You?

There is no such thing as the “best investment strategy”. Each type of investing has its trade-offs and there's no single answer that will be right for everyone.

For example, some people have successful businesses and need to focus their energy on growing their business. They shouldn't be distracted by the time commitment necessary for active investing.

Other people with lower incomes or who begin investing later in life have little hope for a secure retirement without the benefit of an active investment strategy.

Active investing can become almost a necessity if your time horizon to retirement is only ten to fifteen years away and you're just getting started.

“Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls-Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.”– Warren Buffett

Each person is unique and has an appropriate investment style at an appropriate time for them. Many people naturally progress through each of the three types of investing as their skills, experience, and portfolio grow.

Sometimes successful entrepreneurs choose to become active investors as a second career later in life to enhance and secure their nest egg.

The point being there's no single “right” answer to investment strategy, but there is a right answer for you.

Financial Mentor is dedicated to helping you take that next step to the investment level that's right for you regardless of where you're at now.

In fact, the Seven Steps to Seven Figures curriculum was specifically designed to offer you the next step in your financial education regardless of your level today.

We offer courses for pre-investors that help them commit to achieving financial freedom and stay with the program long enough to succeed (Steps 1-3). We offer courses that teach the right and wrong way to practice passive investing, and we offer courses that teach you the skills necessary to become a successful active investor (Steps 5 and 6).

All the steps combined provide a start-to-finish blueprint for achieving financial success.

In Summary: Three Types of Investment Strategy

There are three types of investors: pre-investor, passive investor, and active investor. Each level builds on the skills of the previous level below it.

Each level represents a progressive increase in responsibility toward your financial security requiring a similarly higher commitment of effort.

The advantage is each level offers a similarly higher level of potential reward and reduced risk for the effort expended.

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”– Woody Allen

Below are five questions to help you decide what type of investment strategy is best for your personal situation.

1. Do I have the time and desire to learn the skills necessary to become an active investor?
2. Do I have the stomach to tolerate the roller-coaster ride and potentially lower returns that come with the convenience of passive investing?
3. What's my primary goal from investing: to enjoy the financial freedom I already attained, or compound my savings to reach financial freedom ASAP?
4. Do I have enough years prior to retirement and sufficient savings already put away to rely on passive investment returns for a secure retirement, or do I require a higher level of return to meet my retirement goals?
5. What difference would it make in my financial future if I could create higher returns with less risk, thus compounding my wealth much more rapidly? What would that be worth to me and how should I prioritize it as a goal?
6. (This course will show you how to match the right investment strategy and asset class to your personal skills, resources, and goals.)

The choice is yours. What type of investor are you going to be?

What are you going to do about it today?