Many individual investors use index-based benchmarks to measure the success of their investment choices and to decide fundamental investment objectives. The future trend, according to experts at Financial Advisor Magazine, will be the use of personal benchmarking. Traditional benchmarking uses returns of certain benchmarks to decide an investor’s portfolio allocation, diversification, and risk objectives. Personal benchmarking uses the individual investor’s personal goals, objectives, and desired returns to achieve these results. Because of the fallout of litigation of advisory and investment firms in 2008 and 2009—in part because of poor returns of recommended portfolios—more firms will continue to support personal benchmarking in the years to come.