Build Stock Portfolios for What's Next
ForwardPortfolio transforms how advisors and investors create personalized strategies. Our platform combines analyst expectations, market-implied risk, forecast correlations, and modern portfolio optimization to help research, build and compare stock portfolios based on forward-looking assumptions - not only historical performance.
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3-Step Process
for Portfolio Creation
Select Stocks, ETFs or Indexes. Generate portfolios using our enhanced modern portfolio process. Fine tune your portfolio selection.
Select Stocks and Target
- Use filters to narrow down a list of stocks that match your criteria.
- Filters may include risk tolerance, industry trends, or economic factors.
- Select Forecast Model and Min/Max Allocation prefrence
Generate and Analyze Portfolio
- Create a portfolio by running the filters and observe approximately 20 portfolio points along the efficient frontier (risk-return spectrum).
- Examine key metrics:
- Risk (horizontal axis): Starting from the lowest risk point on the left.
- Return (vertical axis): Higher returns typically accompany higher risks.
- Select any point to view stock allocations and suggested weights.
Compare and Refine
- Input your own portfolio to compare its performance against the efficient frontier portfolios.
- Select specific points on the efficient frontier to analyze changes in portfolio composition.
- Use insights to refine filters and allocation decisions:
- Consider individual company fundamentals, such as industry competitiveness, debt levels, and management quality.
- Use the tool as a guide but complement it with personal research.
Why Forward-Looking?
Most investment tools analyze what has already happened. They examine historical returns, past volatility, and previous relationships between securities. This information is valuable, but the past does not always provide a complete picture of what may happen next.ForwardPortfolio adds a forward-looking perspective to portfolio construction by combining analyst expectations, market-implied risk, forecast correlations, and modern portfolio theory. The goal is not to predict the future with certainty, but to help investors evaluate portfolios using information about both past performance and expected future conditions.
Historical returns describe how an investment performed during a specific period. They can help investors understand an asset’s behavior, but they do not necessarily reflect its current outlook.
A company’s earnings expectations, competitive position, interest rates, economic conditions, and industry trends may all change. As a result, a stock that performed well in the past may have a less attractive outlook today, while an investment with modest historical performance may have improving future prospects.
Historical data remains an important part of investment analysis. However, relying on historical returns alone can cause investors to build portfolios based primarily on yesterday’s market conditions.
Analyst target prices provide an estimate of where a stock could trade over a stated time horizon, often based on expectations for earnings, revenue growth, valuation, industry conditions, and company-specific developments.
ForwardPortfolio uses target-price information to help estimate potential future returns. This gives investors an additional perspective beyond simply measuring how a stock performed historically.
Analyst forecasts are not guarantees. They can be inaccurate, change over time, or reflect different assumptions among analysts. For that reason, target prices should be treated as estimates within a broader analytical framework, not as promises of future performance.
Risk is often measured using historical volatility, which describes how much an investment’s price moved in the past. ForwardPortfolio also considers implied volatility, which is derived from options-market pricing.
Implied volatility reflects the level of future price movement that market participants may be anticipating. Higher implied volatility generally indicates greater expected uncertainty, while lower implied volatility may indicate more stable expectations.
Using implied volatility can help investors evaluate potential risk under current market conditions. It also helps distinguish between investments with similar expected returns but meaningfully different levels of anticipated price fluctuation.
Implied volatility is not a perfect forecast. It can change quickly in response to earnings announcements, economic news, market stress, or changing investor sentiment.
Diversification depends not only on owning multiple investments, but also on understanding how those investments behave in relation to one another.
Two stocks may have shown relatively low correlation in one market environment and move more closely together in another. During periods of economic stress, for example, assets that normally behave differently may decline at the same time. Changes in interest rates, economic cycles, industry trends, and investor sentiment can all affect correlations.
ForwardPortfolio uses forecast correlations where available to help evaluate how securities may interact within a portfolio. This can provide a more current perspective than relying solely on relationships observed during previous market periods.
Forecast correlations are estimates, not certainties. Actual relationships between investments may differ from expectations.
The efficient frontier is a central concept in modern portfolio theory. It represents a range of portfolios that seek to provide the highest expected return for a given level of risk or the lowest expected risk for a given expected return.
ForwardPortfolio uses inputs such as:
- Expected returns
- Implied volatility
- Forecast correlations
- Portfolio constraints
- Investor-selected filters
- Maximum allocation limits
The platform combines these assumptions to generate a range of possible portfolios along the efficient frontier. Investors can then compare portfolio choices across different levels of expected risk and return.
This approach does not identify one universally “best” portfolio. The appropriate portfolio depends on an investor’s objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon, tax situation, liquidity needs, and other personal considerations.
Instead, the efficient frontier provides a structured way to examine trade-offs and understand how changes in assumptions can affect portfolio construction.
No investment model can reliably predict every future market outcome. ForwardPortfolio’s forecasts may be affected by unexpected events, including:
- Economic recessions or expansions
- Changes in interest rates
- Inflation
- Geopolitical events
- Regulatory changes
- Company-specific news
- Sudden changes in investor sentiment
- Market liquidity conditions
- Unexpected earnings or business developments
The model cannot eliminate investment risk, guarantee returns, or determine the right investment decision for every individual. Forecasts may be wrong, market relationships may change, and actual results may differ significantly from expectations.
ForwardPortfolio is designed as a research and portfolio-construction tool. It helps investors organize assumptions, compare alternatives, and evaluate risk-return trade-offs. It should be used together with independent research and professional advice where appropriate.
Forward-looking analysis is not about ignoring history. It is about adding another dimension to the investment process.
By combining historical information with future-oriented estimates, investors can make more informed comparisons between securities and portfolios. ForwardPortfolio helps turn those assumptions into a structured portfolio analysis so investors can better understand not only what happened, but also what the market may be expecting next.
Maximize growth.
Minimize risk.
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Plans & Pricing
Plus
Designed for investors who manage their own portfolios and research
- What’s Included:
Dow, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 Index. Includes access to over 3,000 stocks and ETFs- Save up to 5 portfolios
- Multiple stock price prediction models
- Access to model portfolios, ETF portfolios and ETF forecast models
Advisor Pro
Designed for professional investors and money managers with multiple portfolios
- What’s Included:
- Dow, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 Index. Includes access to over 3,000 stocks and ETFs
- Save up to 100 portfolios
- Access to all stock price prediction models
- Access to model portfolios, ETF portfolios and ETF forecast models
- Backtest (Coming Soon)
Enterprise
Designed for money management companies with many client portfolios and advisors
- What’s Included:
- All features in Advisor Pro
- Custom number of portfolio and stock alert set up
- Access to all stock price prediction models and risk models
- Access to all model portfolios, ETF portfolios and ETF forecast models
- Backtest (Coming Soon)
Plus
Designed for investors who manage their own portfolios and research
- What’s Included:
- Dow, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 Index. Includes access to all available stocks and ETFs
- Save up to 5 portfolios
- Multiple stock price prediction models
- Access to model portfolios, ETF portfolios and ETF forecast models
Advisor Pro
Designed for professional investors and money managers with multiple portfolios
- What’s Included:
- Dow, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 Index. Includes access to all available stocks and ETFs
- Save up to 100 portfolios
- Access to all stock price prediction models
- Access to all model portfolios, ETF portfolios and ETF forecast models
- Backtest (Coming Soon)
Enterprise
Designed for money management companies with many client portfolios and advisors
- What’s Included:
- All features in Advisor Pro
- Custom number of portfolio and stock alert set up
- Access to all stock price prediction models and risk models
- Access to all model portfolios, ETF portfolios and ETF forecast models
- Backtest (Coming Soon)
Frequently Asked Questions
Forward Portfolio is developed by Investing Analytics LLC, founded by Dr. Michael Sklarz, Dr. Norm Miller and Stefan Pampulov. Dr. Sklarz is credited as one of the early founders of the automated valuation model (AVM) used in residential appraisal and is an expert in data and analytics. Through his company, Collateral Analytics, LLC, Dr. Sklarz licensed his AVM, as well as other derivative analytic products, to the financial industry, which included the largest banks in the United States. Collateral Analytcs was sold to Black Knight, Inc. in 2020, which was subsequently acquired by ICE, the Intercontinental Exchange, a financial services company in 2023. Dr. Norm Miller was an esteemed faculty member at the University of San Diego in its real estate program. Dr. Miller was a high-recognized professor and the Ernst Hahn Chair of Real Estate Finance at USD. Prior to joining USD, Dr. Miller was the academic director and the founder and center director of the real estate program at the University of Cincinnati. Stefan Pampulov was a co-founder at Collateral Analytics and managed product development and innovation.
No. Investing Analytics does not manage investments, except for its own accounts. We provide investor tools for money managers and sophisticated investors that manager their own accounts. We provide sample model portfolios based on styles, but do not consider the unique tax circumstances, or specific investor timing desired. Our analysis looks out one year. Short term or day traders will not find our tools very useful. We believe longer term investors and money managers will find our tools useful.
Investing Analytics LLC developed Forward Portfolio initially for its own use to manage its own investment portfolio. Drs. Sklarz and Miller leveraged their decades of analyzing big and disparate data sets to stock investing, including utilizing machine learning models and AI. A research team has now been assembled that is constantly improving the forward-looking valuation models. While other stock screening tools are available that provide similar filters, our tools use forward looking target returns rather than historical returns, forward looking volatility and forward-looking correlations. It is also one of the few if not the only application that combines current stock return data within a portfolio framework that provides the minimum expected risk combination of stocks for any given return target. One can view these tools as modern portfolio theory modernized, including using machine learning tools for analytics.
We include most stocks on the major US exchanges, i.e. Dow Jones, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500. In total, approximately 4,000 stocks make it into the Forward Portfolio initial filters. From this list we further focus on those with sufficient investor interest to be able to generate implied forward-looking volatilities and target returns one year out.
No. In order to include a stock within our portfolio framework, we need at least two years of history. Therefore new and some microcap stocks will not be part of our universe.
Our intuitive user interface will quickly let a user screen for investments with the highest potential return, based on the user’s acceptable risk level, to generate an optimized portfolio. Filters allow the user to focus on the user’s risk level and the user’s return targets to match the user’s investment objectives, risk tolerance and goals. More explanation is provided in the user guide questions and videos.
Forward Portfolio is best utilized by intermediate to experienced investors, such as money managers and experienced investors. Novice investors could also utilize Forward Portfolio, but will need to understand the basic concepts of investing, such as volatility, price to earnings ratio, etc. and their effects on stock price. Forward Portfolio is also best utilized with a variety of other tools and data sources to ensure that the most appropriate investment decisions are made for each user. Tax considerations are not part of our analysis, but should be considered before an investor sells a stock already owned. For example, a stock with a nice gain in price should not be sold a few days before it becomes qualified as a capital gain versus income, taxed at a higher rate. These considerations should be considerations by money managers that might use the Forward Portfolio.
We allow a 60-day trial for new users that provides access to the first level tier. Money managers will pay about $89 a month down to $49 a month for more limited applications, with annual paid discount of 20%. See current pricing on the website.
Learning Center
Forward Portfolio Introduction
Understanding Your Relevant Portfolio
Our Mission
We empower investors with intuitive, cutting-edge tools to streamline portfolio management and deliver actionable insights, enabling our clients to achieve their financial goals with confidence and efficiency.
