Yesterday, I introduced a case of going from a USD to a GBP return (via an FX rate conversion), then taking the underlying USD assets and converting them to GBP, deriving the return that way, and converting (via the FX converter) to USD [quite a mouthful]. Recall...

A TSG client posed the following situation to me, which I hope you find of interest:They calculated the return on a portfolio in US Dollars (USD). They next converted the return to Pound Sterling (GBP). Everything worked correctly; i.e., the returns make sense and are...

Yesterday's WSJ had an article by Brian Costa titled "The Rookie and His Pitching Bible," about "the [New York] Met's most promising rookie," Matt Harvey, who relies on a "pitching bible" he created and maintains with much care and attention. "[Harvey] records every...

A common challenge with asset managers is how to deal with what might be termed "orphan income": income that arrives after the asset that produced it has departed the portfolio. This often happens when we sell a stock position after it has gone ex (i.e., any...

In the past two weeks I've conducted two software certifications for TSG clients, and in both cases they had controls to test portfolio returns against specified benchmark tolerances. And, as you might expect, the fact that a portfolio blows past a...

While exercising this morning, I caught an advertisement on the television for a supplement to help men guard against prostate cancer. I had the sound off, so don't know what was said, but at one point noticed the following:Results not typical.Difficult to...

Last week I began to conduct a software certification for a TSG software vendor client. My primary contact mentioned that they changed their policy for timing of cash flows, so that inflows default to start-of-day events, while outflows default to end-of-day (though...

True Confession Time: years ago, when the concept of "supplemental information" was being introduced, I opposed the idea of actually "labeling" this information. While understanding the notion of supplemental is important, I didn't see much value in having to label...

TSG will host Risk Week this coming fall. It will be a week of daily webinars, covering a variety of risk topics.Risk measurement's importance to the investment industry has never been greater; thus our belief that a week of daily sessions, conducted by leading...

A TSG verification client recently sent me the following note:Hi Dave, I’m hoping you can answer a questions for us very quickly.  Our CCO and I are having a disagreement over whether representative account performance from a composite can be shown alongside the...