PROGRAM INTRODUCTION

A Research Tool

The Patterns & Prospects program is designed to help you with investment research on portfolios, market indicators, funds, and even individual stocks. It synthesizes a wide variety of programs that have been developed over the past 40+ years.

Among the features are:

  • a convenient, one-stop database of more than 100 market-related series, each with a long history and updated monthly. On an “ad hoc” basis, you specify the horizon you’re interested in for analysis, whether it’s the latest quarter or the last 50 years.

  • a focus on monthly total returns – for broad asset classes and benchmarks, size and style indexes, sectors, and industry group classifications.

  • a number of Regime Indicators, such as Bull/Bear Market, Monetary Policy, Calendar Year Effects. Also included are the most useful market valuation metrics, including Shiller’s CAPE, the Fed Model, the Default Spread, Tobin’s Q, etc.

  • more than 20 specific programs – the key analytical tools – to investigate and summarize important relationships among portfolios, benchmarks, and indicators, both historically and prospectively.

  • convenient output on an Excel spreadsheet page, pre-formatted in summary reports and charts, which can be sent for printing, saved as a pdf file, or transferred into another program for personalization or further analysis.

  • the easy ability to create, convert, and import custom, user-defined portfolio series, regime indicators, or market metrics for analysis by the different programs.

  • regular access to new and updated programs and tools, based on suggestions from you and other users.

Soon after the end of each month (usually within three business days), all the series will be updated and available to you here, together with any enhancements to the main program (all in a .zip format of about 2 MB).

This is a PC-based program that uses an Excel file “P&P Main Program.xlsm” and it is the spreadsheet that you’ll open to start your work. The data files are in a “.csv” format.

This program assumes all the files are in a special directory that you’ve created on your computer:

c:\apps\patterns & prospects

Because the Excel file uses macros and VBA programs, you’ll need to Enable it, if asked. A better approach is to make the directory c:\apps\patterns & prospects a Trusted Location under Excel | Options | Trust Center.

All the data comes from publicly available sources, which is described in the Data Definitions. The data mainly includes reported returns, but where appropriate the series have been “backfilled” (by us or the vendors themselves) with comparable returns. Rough estimates of the most recent values are used for series where data is reported with a lag. Other important notes about the program and data are contained within the program itself (see Data Notes).

Important Notes on Patterns & Prospects Program

   1.   This is an early test version and may break down and give the wrong results. USE CAREFULLY.

   2.   Your ideas and suggestions are most welcome! Send a comment through the Contact page.

   3.   The program and data are assumed to be in the directory: c:\apps\Patterns & Prospects.

          *  The progam is named: P&P Main Program.xlsm  (written with VBA in Excel 2016)

          *  The progam uses macros and VBA, so you may need to Enable it, if asked.

               Or, make c:\apps\Patterns & Prospects a Trusted Location under Excel | Options | Trust Center

          *  Because of the intensive background calculations, Automatic Re-Calculation is turned off at inception,

              and turned on when the file is closed. You can turn it on manally under Options or use F9 for Re-Calc.

          *  The data files are all in .csv format (comma separated values). See Data Notes in the program for more details.

    4.   Because monthly returns are typically entered with two decimal places, cumulative and annualized returns

           may differ from a vendor's official report by one or two basis points because of rounding differences.

    5.   Many programs here are based on specific rows & columns, with associated formatting.

          *  DO NOT insert or delete rows or columns, change formatting, etc., or the program won't work.

          *  Accordingly, the sheets are protected to prevent accidental changes.

          *  You can, however, unprotect them, without a password, at your own risk.

          *  If things get messed up, just download the program again.

    6.   To run the Style Analysis, you need to have the Solver Add-In installed in Excel.

    7.   The pages are pre-formatted for printing, but you may want to combine some pages for your custom output.

          *  Just create a blank Excel file and copy the output there, with the same column widths and formatting.

          *  It may be easier to copy and paste as a picture -- especially graphs or charts.

    8.   We'll provide monthly updates to all the main data files; you update any files you've created.

          *  It's always a good idea to Update MasterFile when using the program after data updates.