Thanks for your comments, Stephen. We had 492 respondents as of yesterday morning. We've since added that fact into the article.

For more information on how the polls are conducted, here is some information provided last week by one of our contributors.

The gist:

1. If memory serves we have over 40,000 subscribers to the CFA Institute NewsBrief.
2. When we did a subscriber audit we found that the overwhelming majority of subscribers were either CFA charterholders, or candidates for the charter.
*. You are correct that it is not a random sample. For example, you can vote more than once. This is why we do not present the results using standard statistics reporting. We do not represent the data as statistically significant. This is not a function of our desires, but is a function of our third party provider’s limitation on their survey function. Though less than ideal, as an organization we like the ability to take quick straw polls, if you will, about what a number of people in the investment space believe at any given moment.