Build a consistent investment process across your RIA firm
Give investment leadership and advisors a shared way to evaluate portfolios, compare strategies, and explain investment decisions.
Make portfolio comparisons easier to communicate
Compare a current portfolio with portfolios generated using different return-risk assumptions. Review holdings and suggested weights, then use the analysis to guide further research and discussion.
The platform supports a more transparent conversation around:
What assumptions inform a portfolio
How risk and expected return may differ across alternatives
How diversification changes with portfolio composition
How allocation limits affect the resulting portfolio
Bring a forward-looking perspective to firm-wide portfolio decisions
Large advisory firms need an investment process that can support research teams, advisors, and a diverse client base. Forward Portfolio helps teams compare portfolios using a consistent analytical framework, with inputs that reflect current expectations as well as historical information.
Use the platform to:
- Evaluate stocks and ETFs using estimated returns, implied volatility, and forecast correlations
- Generate portfolios across a range of expected risk and return profiles
- Compare existing portfolios with alternative allocations
- Review how changes in assumptions or portfolio constraints affect suggested weights
- Support investment discussions with clear portfolio metrics and visual analysis
Forward Portfolio is designed to inform professional research and portfolio construction. Your firm’s investment policies, due diligence, and client-specific considerations remain central to decisions.
Connect investment research with portfolio construction
Forward Portfolio brings several inputs together in one portfolio analysis process:
Implied volatility
Consider options-market implied volatility as a measure of anticipated price movement. It adds a current market perspective to risk analysis.
Forecast correlations
Assess how securities may relate to one another using forward-looking correlation estimates. This can help teams examine diversification assumptions as market conditions change.
Compare portfolio choices
Apply these inputs alongside portfolio filters and allocation limits to explore portfolios along the efficient frontier. Compare risk-return trade-offs and review how portfolio composition changes across different points.
Forecasts are estimates and can change. Actual market outcomes and security relationships may differ from model assumptions.
Support investment teams and advisor conversations
For investment leadership
Give research and portfolio teams a structured way to evaluate candidate securities, compare portfolio scenarios, and examine allocation trade-offs. Use a consistent analytical framework to support investment discussions across the firm.
For advisors
Help advisors explain how portfolios are constructed and how alternatives compare. Clear views of expected risk, return, and allocation can make investment conversations easier to follow for clients and prospects.
For firm-wide processes
Explore how a forward-looking analysis tool can complement existing research, investment policies, and portfolio workflows. Enterprise arrangements can be tailored to the firm’s needs.
Bring a forward-looking process to your practice.
Build with intention. Compare with context. Give your next client conversation a more informed starting point.
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.
