AAII Community’s Pioneering Enhancements and Additions

The AAII Community platform, where members share ideas, has grown by leaps and bounds over the past year—both in participation and features. We bring to your attention three essential and dynamic aspects of the platform to increase your interaction with AAII: the Events Calendar, the Master Library and the expanded Special Interest Group (SIG) Communities.

Events Calendar

The Events Calendar is worth keeping an eye on for its extensive array of educational programs at your disposal. AAII Local Chapters expertly curate a diverse selection of events, ranging from in-person gatherings to hybrid livestreaming and exclusive online webinars, ensuring that you have access to a variety of learning experiences. Delve into captivating investment topics, such as retirement planning, value and growth strategies, contrarian analysis, emerging markets and portfolio risk management, among many others.

Events boast a wide lineup of speakers, from industry luminaries like Christine Benz, Paul Merriman and Sam Stovall to lesser-known experts with unique perspectives and insights, all of whom provide invaluable tips on navigating the ever-evolving investment landscape. Explore the past events on the calendar to peruse previous programs, gauge the activity levels of Local Chapters and identify which chapters align with your personal interests and aspirations. By leveraging the rich offerings of our Events Calendar, AAII members can participate in unique programming on myriad topics with other members.

Master Library

AAII Community’s Master Library is a treasure trove of meticulously compiled resources, offering an invaluable repository of knowledge tailored for individual investors. The comprehensive collection includes on-demand Local Chapter webinar recordings, presenter slide decks for convenient downloading or printing, member-shared blogs and a plethora of additional resources. Found on the Participate drop-down menu, the Master Library fosters a vibrant environment where AAII members can share and exchange valuable investing resources they’ve discovered.

From Word documents, presentation slides and Excel spreadsheets to blogs, PDFs and videos, the Master Library is a stockpile of information you can access on your own schedule and as your investing needs evolve. For example, Paul Gorman of the AAII Rochester Chapter recently uploaded the chapter’s Breakfast Club minutes, which include tax trivia, a review of the group’s portfolios and ChatGPT’s response on the best dividend stocks, among other topics.

SIG Communities

The SIG Communities are individual topical groups that cater to a diverse range of investment interests and offer the power of collective wisdom and shared experiences. We are constantly expanding the topics that these groups cover. The latest additions are Tax Strategies, Value Investing, Options Investing Strategies and Technical Analysis, for a total of 11 SIG Communities, with even more planned for the coming year.

These thematic communities offer members a unique opportunity to engage with like-minded individuals and exchange ideas. In this supportive environment, members can tap into a wealth of unique perspectives, insights and expertise, fostering a spirit of collaboration and intellectual growth. A recent discussion thread on the Value Investing Community had members chewing over the question, “Is there value anywhere?” Embrace the enriching experience of the SIG Communities and learn from fellow members who share your passion and curiosity.

Future Plans

These key AAII Community features, and more, provide members with a unique platform that is both engaging and enriching. Plans for the upcoming year include continuing to expand our range of SIG Communities, refining the look and feel of email notifications, simplifying navigation and beautifying the home page.

How to Participate

Visit the AAII Community platform to gain access to a wealth of resources, connections and opportunities that can elevate your investment journey.

To get started in the AAII Community:

• Go to https://community.aaii.com.
• Log in with your AAII credentials.
• Select the “Join” button next to any of the Communities you want to explore.
• If you like a chapter’s events, opt in for announcements at www.aaii.com/ChapterEmail. 

Coming Soon: An Enhanced Way to Track Investor Sentiment

Since its launch in 1987, the AAII Sentiment Survey has given individual investors a voice to express their expectations for where stocks are headed. Because of this, the survey has gained a large following—including market strategists and financial media outlets like CNBC and Barron’s.

The survey question has never changed through the survey’s long history: “I feel that the direction of the stock market over the next six months will be: Up—Bullish, No Change—Neutral or Down—Bearish.”

What will be changing is the AAII Sentiment Survey page. We will soon launch an enhanced version with additional insights on the survey’s results. These will include a new, interactive map showing how votes were cast across the U.S. In addition, new charts will help you better track the weekly bull-bear spread as well as the overall trend in sentiment.

Mutual Fund and ETF Guides Gain Speed

The annual AAII mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) guides have long been a popular member benefit. Though both are featured prominently each February in the AAII Journal, fund data is updated monthly on AAII.com. More importantly, the information on AAII.com is far more comprehensive. It includes:

• More than 23,000 mutual funds (including no-load and load funds in various share classes including individual, retirement, adviser and institutional)
• 3,200 ETFs
• Annualized and calendar-year returns
• Allocation breakdowns
• Expense ratios, tax-cost ratios and more

As we sent this issue to the printer, we were finalizing a revamped online interface for both guides. It is easier to navigate, simpler to locate key information and loads faster in your web browser.

For additional information about the mutual funds and ETFs you’re interested in, be sure to visit a fund’s Evaluator page. It was revised earlier this year and now has additional insights. You can access it by either clicking on a fund’s ticker symbol on any page on AAII.com or by simply typing in a mutual fund’s or ETF’s ticker into the search bar on AAII.com. 

Academic Awards: Fostering Investment Education and Research

Six papers won awards for investment research from AAII in 2023. The awards are presented as part of AAII’s ongoing effort to encourage education and research in the area of investments and are given for papers that provide insight into investing.

The awards are made in conjunction with the meetings of major finance associations around the country. The best academic papers presented at these meetings are selected by a committee of investment research experts.

AAII awards the writers of winning papers. Papers are selected based on the quality and thoroughness of research and on the contribution to shaping effective investment decisions.

Since the program began in 1983, more than 150 awards have been presented. Recent award-winning papers and recipients include:

• “Geographic Proximity in Short Selling,” by Xiaolin Huo and Xin Liu of Renmin University of China and Vesa Pursiainen of University of St. Gallen, awarded by the Financial Management Association.
• “Self-Declared Benchmarks and Fund Manager Intent: Cheating or Competing?,” by Huaizhi Chen of University of Notre Dame, Richard Evans of University of Virginia and Yang Sun of Brandeis University, awarded by the Eastern Finance Association.
• “The Social Signal,” by J. Anthony Cookson of University of Colorado Boulder, Runjing Lu of University of Alberta, William Mullins of University of California, San Diego and Marina Niessner of University of Pennsylvania, awarded by the Midwest Finance Association.
• “Decomposing Momentum: Eliminating its Crash Component,” by Pascal Büsing, Hannes Mohrschladt and Susanne Siedhoff of University of Muenster, awarded by the Southern Finance Association.
• “Cash-Hedged Stock Returns,” by Chase Ross of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Landon Ross of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Sharon Ross of the Office of Financial Research, awarded by the Southwestern Finance Association.
• “Text-implied uncertainty in 10-K filings: Do investors get the message?,” by Oliver Budras, Maik Dierkes and Sebastian Schroen of Leibniz University Hannover, awarded by the Southwestern Finance Association.

These papers are technical; however, the AAII Journal does publish the findings of papers that are of particular interest to individual investors.

AAII Financial Summary

Annually, AAII publishes its year-end balance sheet for members and life members interested in the finances of the association. Prior years’ balance sheets can be found online in the Member News sections of past AAII Journals.

Note: Deferred membership revenue is recognized periodically as income over the membership period. Deferred life membership is recognized periodically as income over a 25-year period. This accrual method of accounting reflects the Association’s long-term obligation to its members.

Supplemental Benefits

AAII offers several supplemental benefits to members. These include discounts on financial publications and an insured money market deposit program from Discover Bank.

We view these programs as supplemental benefits and do not want to lose sight of our main purpose. However, many of these programs are helpful to a significant number of our members; in some cases, they provide AAII with additional income. For example, with the Discover money market program, AAII receives 0.05% per year on the outstanding deposits. These funds help us to support our investment research grants and to educate individual investors.

Future supplemental benefits will also be offered as opportunities, and not as recommendations. Only you can decide what is best for you. 

AAII Privacy Policy

Our goal at AAII is to offer you the best investor education in a simple and secure manner via internet and print methods. As a publisher, we gather user and member information in order to provide an investor-friendly service. 

We request your email address as part of the registration process for AAII.com. We use this information to contact our members and guest users regarding updates to the website and to personalize the service.

AAII tracks website activity and usage through log analysis to produce a better web product for our members. Some measurements include click activity and time in site.

AAII.com uses cookies to remember login settings and facilitate navigation through the site. AAII may also use third-party advertising networks that employ cookie technology, but as a publisher we don’t control or have access to those cookies. We do not extract personal information through cookies.

AAII maintains a subscriber list. As a publisher/membership organization, we reserve the right to contact our users for our legitimate business needs, such as email and paper mailings regarding AAII products and services, or fulfilling a transaction initiated by the user. However, we do on occasion make portions of this list available to carefully screened companies that offer personal finance products and services that we believe may be of interest to those affiliated with AAII. To the extent we process your personal data for other purposes, we ask for your consent in advance or require that our partners obtain such consent. If you do not want to receive these offers, please let us know by contacting AAII Member Services at members@aaii.com.

You have control over your personal information and how it is collected, used and shared. To manage your account and the content contained in it, as well as edit some of your personal data and manage your privacy preferences, go to your My Account page. If you do not want to receive marketing materials from us, you can opt out at any time by simply clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any email, or updating your preferences in the email management section of your user account.

This privacy policy is subject to change. For the most current version, visit AAII.com.