fund composition

[Nick]

Hi Mark

Which option do I select to show the net equity/stock exposure of my portfolio over time please?

Is it possible to show gross long and gross short as well as net?

Thank you in advance.

Nick.

[Mark]

Hi Nick,

Are you trying to find the percentage of your portfolio that is invested in equities? If so, you can use "Pie Charts / Investment Type" or to see it versus time use "Stacked Value / Investment Type".

Sorry, there is no graph to show you long versus short positions.

[Nick]

Hi Mark thank you.

The second option you suggest is closest and indeed does show stacked longs. I was curious and changed the y-axis to an appropriate negative number and indeed the shorts are represented there BUT only a total number not stacked as the longs are. SO I wondered what info it was using as it seemed logical that it was using the same info ($size of position) to calculate longs and shorts and portfolio size. I exported the graph data and the short size is there in the text file.

Is there an option - once I have adjusted the y-axis to cover negative numbers to get the short positions stacked in the same way as the longs are?

Thanks very much in advance.

Nick

[Mark]

Hi Nick,

Short positions are treated the same as long positions in the Stacked Value graph. However, if you have both long/short in the same graph, you generally won't be able to see the shorts, as the longs will cover up the shorts, as they must eventually plot to the actual value. In other words, no, you can't really see a breakdown of longs/shorts in the Stacked Value graph.

You could consider the "Pie Charts / Investment" graph. That graph plots the absolute value of each segment for the single date being plotted. If you sorted your investment stack by value using "Investments / Sort By / Value" and you also turned off "Graphs / Options / Display... / Sort Pie Chart Slices by Value" then all your longs would be listed first, and all your shorts listed second, and grouped together. This would give you a picture of the long versus short allocation on that date.

[Nick]

Screen Shot 2018-08-29 at 11.35.12 AM.png (11.74 KiB) Viewed 6482 times

Hi Mark

Sorry for my confusion but here is a snapshot - apologies for its size but it clearly shows stacked longs and I am not sure why it would not show stacked shorts indeed at some point I have only shorts no longs?

Is there a toggle to turn this on so that we can see some more detail please?

Thanks.

Nick.

[Mark]

Hi Nick,

There is no option to change the behavior of this graph to plot shorts any differently. I'm not sure how that would be implemented. Currently, the way it works is it plots one segment on top of the prior segment. So, for example, if you had 2 objects (investments, asset types, etc) that you are plotting with values of -2 and +5, it would plot the -2 from 0 to -2, and then when it plotted the +5, it will overwrite the -2 and go up to end at +3. The +5 segment is 5 thick and completely covers the -2 segment, so you wouldn't be able to see it.

The pie chart handles this differently, in that it is always plotting percentages of the full 100% pie. It plots the absolute value of short positions. We could do the same when plotting the stacked value on a normalized scale, but it wouldn't make sense to do on a value scale.

[Nick]

Thanks Mark

I would have imagined in your case that the +5 would appear above zero and the -2 would appear below zero so that the shorts would appear *exactly* as the longs appear to be represented but below the zero as opposed to above.

Nick.

[Nick]

Hi Mark this is the same exact data exported from FM straight into Excel spreadsheet and stacked chart-ed with no treatment of the numbers in anyway - this is kind of what i was expecting in FM. Hope this makes sense sorry if it wasn't clear before. N.

Screen Shot 2018-08-30 at 6.40.12 AM.png (117.92 KiB) Viewed 6474 times

[Mark]

Hi Nick,

If you are only long, or only short, I can see it working. However, in my example previously, the +5 segment needs to end at +3, since that is the total. If it starts at zero, then it is only +3 wide, and mis-represents the size of that object. If it starts at -2 so that the size is represented accurately, then it covers up all the short positions.

[Nick]

Thanks Mark - doesn't the Excel spreadsheet do it in the same way with no apparent issues? Sorry I am not trying to be difficult...just trying to understand. Thanks again for your patience. Nick.

[Mark]

Hi Nick,

It is fine, I know you're just asking. It is a valid question. I don't know what data you plotted in Excel, so it is hard to say how that is working. I put my simple example into Excel and plotted it to see how it plots this case. See this:

Excel plotting a mixture of long and short values

longshort_stacked.png (10.89 KiB) Viewed 6470 times

That sample shows the 2 cases where it plots the -200 first, or the +500 first. In all cases the total ends up at 300. If the -200 is plotted first, the +500 then covers up the short position, and ends up at +300. If the +500 is plotted first it goes up to 500 and then then -200 covers up the top portion of the +500 segment, also still ending at +300. Either way, one of the segments is at least partially covered up. Fund Manager works this same way currently.

[darrell]

Hi

I've similar issues to Nick with this -- nick's version is useful, as everything is clearly visible. The FM version, where some of the rendered data is hidden by the other, is pretty useless in practice, especially when printed out or screen-grabbed for use in a presentation. I understand there are other ways to see 'on the day' exposure' but for reporting/review, seeing historical exposure in a singe chart (like Nick's, where it is all actually visible at a glance') is IMHO the way to go -- is there any way to submit this as a feature request?

[Mark]

Hi darrell,

If you can help define how you want it to work, but FM works the same as Excel currently when plotting this situation. I don't know how you can accurately represent all segments in a stacked graph when there are both long/short positions. Take a look at my last post (with the Excel chart) to see the problem with this scenario.

[Nick]

Hi Mark - I exported the date from the stack graph from RM and then opened that file in Excel and then selected the the whole spreadsheet data and clicked on stacked chart. I did not treat the data in anyway at...it was the raw data in the same format as FM gave me. I did not change any of the default settings for Excel either nor adjust the chart. Nick.

[Mark]

Hi Nick,

Does the plot from FM looks different than the plot from Excel for the same data? If so, can you send me a *.FMB backup file with a sample, so I can reproduce it here?