Custom strategies design platform for asset managers & banks
Forward Portfolio combines analyst return expectations, market-implied volatility, forecast correlations, and portfolio optimization to help asset managers explore how different securities and allocation choices may affect a portfolio’s expected risk and return.
Bring a forward-looking perspective to portfolio conversations
Historical performance can show how a strategy behaved in the past. It may not reflect changing expectations, current market uncertainty, or how relationships between securities could shift.
Forward Portfolio adds another perspective. Your team can create and compare portfolios using forward-oriented assumptions, then use the results to support research and conversations with advisors.
Turn investment assumptions into portfolio analysis
Forward Portfolio brings several inputs together in one portfolio analysis process:
Compare portfolio ideas
Review different portfolio configurations and compare them with an existing portfolio. Use the analysis to explore potential changes in holdings and weights.
Consider changing market relationships
Forward Portfolio incorporates forecast correlations where available, helping your team assess diversification with estimates that look beyond historical relationships alone.
Support a consistent investment discussion
Use a structured portfolio analysis to explain the assumptions behind a proposed allocation and the trade-offs it represents. Pair the analysis with your firm’s research, investment process, and approved materials.
A workflow for research and advisor engagement
Before the conversation
Explore stocks, ETFs, and indexes; apply filters; and develop portfolio scenarios based on your selected assumptions.
During the conversation
Review allocations and risk-return trade-offs, compare portfolio alternatives, and discuss how different assumptions affect the results.
After the conversation
Use the analysis as a starting point for further research and follow-up within your firm’s investment process.
Built for professional portfolio analysis
Forward Portfolio gives asset managers access to a broad universe of stocks and ETFs, multiple forecast models, portfolio analysis, and tools for comparing allocation scenarios. Enterprise options are available for firms managing many portfolios and advisor relationships.
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.
