I was called for jury duty and served today. My wife told me that I wasn't permitted to bring my PC with me, so I left it home. I learned after arriving that she was wrong (this time; she's usually right); they even had free wireless!; and so was pc-less when I could...

We held the Fall meeting of the Performance Measurement Forum this week in Dallas, Texas; as usual, there was great discussion and much to learn. The highlight may have been a tour of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. One of the things I learned was a technique in...

Jason Zweig's piece in this weekend's Wall Street Journal serves many purposes, one being a clue as to why it's so difficult to beat indexes. It occurred to me some time ago that the index designers must be exceptionally talented at constructing them, but perhaps...

I'm teaching our Fundamentals of Performance Measurement course for a client this week and have been asked some interesting questions by the students. One asked why we multiply returns in order to link them. Questions like this require, I believe, a bit of detail in...

We were recently asked by a client to come up with a list of current trends in performance measurement. In collaboration with my colleague John Simpson we propose the following: 1.    GIPS 2010(R) 2.    We are seeing non-traditional sectors (alternative asset classes,...

Earlier this week I posted on calculating returns for employee stock purchases and promised that this would be addressed at length in this month's newsletter. Well, our friend (and frequent commenter to this blog) sent me a note, which I want to share with you: Dave:...

I got an e-mail question on Friday with the following request: We have a discount stock plan at our firm. You can buy discounted stock at the end of each quarter and can sell it immediately for a 15% profit.  The question arises about what your annual return would be....