Custom Benchmarks

PortfolioAnalyst provides a large number of standard industry benchmarks for you to choose in a Snapshot or Detailed custom report against which your portfolio's performance can be compared. However, there may be situations when a standard benchmark does not provide an adequate basis for comparison. In these situations, you can create and use your own custom benchmarks.

What is a custom benchmark?

A custom benchmark combines existing benchmarks already available in PortfolioAnalyst, the combined weight of which must equal 100%. When you select benchmarks for a specific benchmark comparison report, you can choose up to three existing benchmarks including any of your own custom benchmarks.

Guidelines

Observe the following guidelines when creating custom benchmarks:

• You cannot use an existing custom benchmark as part of a new custom benchmark. Only the standard benchmarks can be used when creating a custom benchmark.
• You must include at least two standard benchmarks when creating a custom benchmark.
• You can add any number of standard benchmarks to a custom benchmarks, as long as the total weight equals 100%.
• Each standard benchmark included in a custom benchmark must have a weight between 0 and 100. No standard benchmark in a custom benchmark can have a weight of either 0 or 100.
• You can add multiple standard benchmarks at a time to a custom report.

Create a custom benchmark:

1. Click the + in the Custom Benchmarkspanel title bar on the Custom Reports and Add-Ons screen.
2. Enter the name of custom benchmark and an abbreviation. When you search for a benchmark to add to a custom report, use the abbreviation as a quick way to search for and find this custom benchmark.
3. Type the first few characters of the benchmark you want to include. A list of matching benchmarks appears. For example, to add the Russell 2000 index, you can type RUS and a list of benchmarks that contain those letters appears.
4. Click Add Benchmark to add the benchmark to you custom benchmark.
5. Continue searching for and adding benchmarks until all of the desired benchmarks have been added.
6. In the list of Added Benchmarks, enter the weights of each benchmark. For example, if you added the Russell 2000 Index and the S&P 500 Stock Index and wanted both to be of equal weight, you would type 50 for each benchmark to make sure the total adds up to 100%.
   Click Remove to remove a benchmark.
7. Click Save. Your new custom benchmark is now available for you to select when creating or editing a custom report.

Users' Guide