Creating A Custom Report with Risk Measurements

[Dave Crawford]

As I become more familiar with Fund Manager, I'm trying to create custom reports measuring various forms of risk (e.g. standard deviation).

I'll admit to being unable to follow an earlier post in which Mark explained it briefly to another user (and an audience smarter than me).

Has anyone the experience and courage to walk a novice through setting up these reports within Fund Manager displaying risk levels for a portfolio of stocks and/or mutual funds?

Dave Crawford
Dallas, TX
dmcrawfordjr@gmail.com

[Mark]

Hi Dave,

I can help. First thing, are you running the Professional or Advisor version of Fund Manager? These advanced statistics aren't available in the Personal version.

[Dave Crawford]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your prompt reply; yes, you're right, I have the personal version of FM so, assuming I can figure out how to export my current data from the personal into the professional version, I believe it would justify the additional cost, albeit as an independent investor (i.e. determining portfolio risk, etc.)?

What's my next step, Mark? Please advise based on your experience.

Dave C

[Mark]

Hi Dave,

Transferring your data to the Professional version is easy. There is no conversion or anything needed, you can just install the Professional version, and open up your existing data, just as you do now with the Personal version. You can switch back to Personal if you later choose to do so.

Step 1 would be to create a benchmark investment. Most of the statistics utilize some benchmark investment. Usually this is the S&P 500, but you can choose any benchmark you want. Usually it is best to put your benchmark/index investments in a sub-portfolio separate from your actual holdings. So, in the Portfolio Editor window, create yourself a new sub-portfolio for your indices, like:

Code: Select all

- Master Portfolio
  - My Accounts
    - Acct 1
    - Acct 2
  - Indices

and then create a new investment in "Indices", called S&P 500 with the symbol of ^GSPC. You can own 0 shares of this investment. Retrieve the current price and historical prices for just this investment. To do this, right mouse click on it and choose "Retrieve Selected Prices" and "Retrieve Selected Historical Prices". Once you're done, verify you have a full historical price set by looking at it in the Data Register under the "Prices" data type. When you retrieve historical prices, I would just get 10 year's worth of historical prices. The symbol ^GSPC is assuming you're using "Yahoo" for the current server, and "Yahoo (Historical)" for your historical server.

Once you have this S&P500 investment created and populated with historical pricing data, open up any report window, and select "Options / Report Preferences... / Benchmark". Under the "Benchmark Investment", choose "<Select an Investment>" and browse to the S&P 500 investment you set up. For the "Comparison Period", select a date range you want to evaluate the risk over. In order to report statistics you will have needed to own your investments for this amount of time.

Once you have your benchmark assigned and the comparison period set, create a new Custom report, and select "Custom Settings..." to pick which fields to add to the report. Under "Available Fields", select "Statistic Fields" to have it only show you statistic related fields. Add any you want to the report. Create the report.

When calculating statistics Fund Manager needs to calculate returns for many periods. When doing this it uses your "Yield Interpolation Options..." to obtain any missing prices. It is important you have all your historical prices for your owned investments, as well as the benchmark. If necessary you may need to loosen up the Yield Interpolation Range options if you're seeing "N/A" for some of your statistics.

[Dave Crawford]

Thanks Mark,

Big help, looking forward to getting the Professional Version and availing myself of risk metrics for various portfolios.

Dave C