At Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology, we are interested in the design of financial analytics tools. One of the fields that has struck our interest is the design of investment analysis software for the individual investor. In order to find out more about this, we designed a short 35 question survey, which is separated into three sections. These questions will attempt to gauge your level of satisfaction with these types of tools and if there is a strong need for improvement. This survey should take you no more than 15 to 20 minutes to complete and we sincerely appreciate the time you put into this. This survey is completely anonymous. The email address that you enter is not linked to your responses. By completing this survey, you consent to the use of the information that you provide except for your email address for our study. The data may be published in any publications that we may derive out of this study. Thank you for your time. If you have any questions specifically with the content of the survey, or the way in which the survey will be kept anonymous or if you would like to receive the results of my research, please contact me at rsl3@sfu.ca. Alternatively, concerns or complaints with the survey can be directed to Dr. Hal Weinberg, Director, Office of Research Ethics at hal_weinberg@sfu.ca or +1-778-782-6593.

The following questions are designed to help us understand your investor type and your investment habits. This allows us to identify and understand if different investor types require different needs. As a reminder, the email address that you enter will not be linked to your responses so as to ensure anonymity. This section has 14 questions (1-14).

There are many software packages available for investors that help with stock analysis. This section contains questions that evaluate these software, if any, that you use in discovering, analyzing and selecting stocks. It will help us determine if the financial software industry as a whole are doing a good job of addressing the needs of their customers. This section has 8 questions (15-23).

Much like software, there are significantly more websites and financial portals on the World Wide Web designed to educate and help investors discover and analyze stocks. This section contains questions that evaluate websites and financial portals, if any, that you use in discovering, analyzing and selecting stocks. These questions will help us determine the strengths and weaknesses of this medium. This section has 8 questions (24 to 32).

The questions in this final section will enable you to suggest features that are currently missing in web and software-based solutions for financial analytics tools. This final section has three questions (32-35).

“John uses a system called MyInvest financial investment decision-support tool. MyInvest retrieves quantitative and qualitative financial data from the web and stores them continuously in a repository. John uses MyInvest’s client software to access this repository and interactively and visually explore relevant financial information. The visualization provides an overview and the state of various markets and stocks at different resolutions. John selects stocks of company X, and asks MyInvest to show what is stored about X. The system’s functionality helps John to systematically but again visually explore presented information. When John needs traditional technical analysis, he switches from exploration mode to analysis mode of the client software. Reading all the news and blogs about the market is not possible; therefore MyInvest tags the news according to the popular nouns in the text. John uses tagged cloud that visually emphasizes nouns frequencies and interactively links to the tagged news. The system also helps John keep track of whether a portfolio is diversified or not and automatically suggests stocks that will produce a diversified portfolio.”