Seasonality Graph

Fund Manager offers the ability to plot or report on the seasonality of portfolios and investments.  Seasonality measures the relative performance of a portfolio or investment during different calendar periods within a year.  The measurement is typically calculated over multiple years.  Seasonality shows which times of the year the item typically performs above/below average.  This feature is available in the Professional and Advisor versions.  When you choose one of the Seasonality graph types, you will see a graph similar to the one below:

The example graph shown above is an investment Seasonality graph where the average performance of the Dow Jones is calculated for each month over a 30 year period.  Where the bars are higher, the average performance during those months has historically been better, and where the bars are low, the performance has been worse.  There is also a portfolio based Seasonality graph, where you can plot the seasonality of any sub-portfolio.  Seasonality is also available in the Seasonality Report. 

You can customize the graph with the Seasonality Graph Options dialog.  This dialog is accessible by right clicking on the graph, and choosing "Seasonality Options..." from the popup menu, or under "Graphs/Options/Seasonality Options...".

Under "Years" you can choose any number of years for the calculation.  Usually the more years used, the more meaningful the seasonality calculation.

For the "Period", your choices are:

• Week
• Month
• Quarter

The sample graph above is plotting by "Month".

and for the "Display", your choices are:

• Bar (Base 0)
• Bar (Base 100)
• Segment (Base 100)

The sample graph above is displaying with "Bar (Base 0)".  The "Display" options control the graph's appearance/scale, but do not change how the calculation is performed.

For more details on how seasonality is calculated, see the seasonality documentation.