I'll be the devil's advocate

MUNDY'S MOMENT

I typically treat survey findings with a very large pinch of salt. Many are carried out by pollsters with little interest in the subject and who are not sufficiently motivated to secure a distribution of respondents that mirrors the underlying population.

One must assume, for example, a poll carried out by The Jeremy Kyle Show would not reflect the thoughts of a cross-section of the whole of British society. Investment surveys are often little better as the pollsters often seem to sit in a call centre randomly ringing anyone who works in an asset management business and taking no interest in the precise role of any willing respondent. With those caveats I less than enthusiastically read a recent survey that purports to study the thoughts of ‘investment professionals’. My cynicism was not helped as I read the answer to one of the first ...