Quantext

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Who We Are

Quantext is small software and consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado. The firm was founded by Geoff Considine in March of 2002. Quantext focuses on the theory and practice of portfolio management. Quantext Portfolio Planner (QPP), our flagship product, is used by an international clientele of wealth managers and sophisticated investors. QPP generates forward looking projections of risk and return for portfolios of stocks, ETF's and mutual funds and it uses Monte Carlo Simulation to determine savings rates and sustainable income in retirement. Geoff Considine has written over two hundred articles on these topics, as well as some books. Quantext has worked closely with Folio Investing since 2007.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Articles

How to Construct a Low-Cost Conservative Portfolio
One of the greatest challenges for investors today is constructing low-risk portfolios that provide the best returns using low-cost funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Doing so requires advisors to define risk as the potential for retirees to fail to achieve their financial goals, instead of as volatility, as it is traditionally measured. I will show how to construct a low-cost portfolio that minimizes this definition of risk while generating a reasonable real return.
Putting GMO’s Ideas to Work: Protected Leveraged Investing
Fears of market overvaluation lead many advisors to seek to protect against downside movements while retaining as much upside potential as possible. Recent research from Boston-based money manager Grantham Mayo van Otterloo (GMO) illustrates a low-cost way to accomplish this: decreasing equity exposure and concentrating that allocation in high-beta securities.
Howard Marks’ Warnings and How to Protect your Portfolio
Howard Marks, founder and chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, wrote in a recent memo that the biggest danger to investors is their willingness to buy risky assets that are likely to provide low returns. Market conditions may not fully reflect current risk; option prices, for example, are very low. Some firms – notably PIMCO – recommend investors buy put options to protect their portfolios. I propose an alternative strategy that will be resilient to the potential shocks of increased volatility and higher interest rates, without incurring the cost of options.
The Forecast for Risk in 2013
With the new year upon us, pundits are issuing their forecasts of market returns for 2013 and beyond. But returns don’t occur in a vacuum – meeting clients’ goals requires an asset allocation that appropriately balances return and risk. So what follows are my predictions for risk across major asset classes, based on a theoretically sound approach that has proven to be reliable in the past.
The Superiority of Dividends: A Comparison of Value Strategies
Dividend-focused strategies have won the allegiance of many prominent investors, including Rob Arnott, Bill Gross and Jeremy Siegel. Others claim value-based strategies offer superior risk-adjusted returns. Both sides can claim a partial victory in this debate, but I will show that, when understood properly, dividend strategies offer a crucial edge – one that many investors will find attractive.
Is Gluskin's David Rosenberg Right about Utilities?
They’re not the sexiest property on the Monopoly board, but in today’s market, there’s plenty of evidence mounting that utilities are a great source of income. Gluskin Sheff’s David Rosenberg made the case for utilities in his September 6 commentary (available by subscription from Gluskin Sheff). Taking a contrarian view, Rosenberg acknowledged that utilities are universally disliked by Wall Street analysts and have performed poorly relative to other sectors this year. But utilities offer a 4.2% yield – nearly twice that of the market – and I will explain why they deserve a substantial allocation beyond their representation in market-wide indices.
The Ultimate Income Strategy: Higher Yield and Lower Volatility
Investors, especially those in the de-accumulation phase of their retirement, count on high income and low volatility. Achieving the best possible tradeoff between yield and risk is a major challenge for advisors. Over the last two years, I’ve shown how to construct a low-risk portfolio – the ultimate income portfolio (UIP) – that yields over 9.0%. Let’s look back at how those portfolios performed and the components of this year’s UIP.
High Yield and Low Risk: Finding the Best Closed-End Funds
Yield-starved investors have ventured into exotic – and often risky – assets, including hedge funds, non-traded REITs and private placements. But an asset class that has been around since 1893 offers a compelling combination of low risk and high income. A carefully selected portfolio of closed-end funds (CEFs) will yield 8% with less volatility than the S&P 500.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

QPP

Quantext's Portfolio Planner generates forward looking projections of risk and return for portfolios of stocks, ETF's and mutual funds. QPP uses Monte Carlo Simulation to determine savings rates and sustainable income in retirement.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Information about QPP

Quantext portfolio planners provide:

Many asset allocation tools simply look at historical behavior of portfolios.  The standard of practice in institutional finance, however, is forward-looking portfolio analysis.  QPP is a forward-looking portfolio analysis tool.

We believe that QPP is the very best portfolio planning and asset allocation tool available--and we have performed numerous analyses and tests to demonstrate that this is the case.  We have a series of these studies available for your review in our library.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset.  Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

What Make Quantext's Tools Special?

Many systems use shortcuts that assign investments to broad classes (style analysis), but ignore specific details of a position.  Two funds of similar 'style' might be projected to have exactly the same future risk and return even if they have historically been quite different in that respect.  Our approach of accounting for each asset individually also means that our approach will tend to be better for portfolios that are concentrated. 

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Versions

We offer two versions of our portfolio planner. QPP handles up to 20 assets in a portfolio. QPP40 handles up to 40 assets per portfolio.

We bundle QPP(20) in with all QPP40 licenses; some people like to study smaller portions of their portfolios in QPP(20) because it runs a little bit faster than QPP40, although, thees days, connection speeds are so high that the speed is not really an issue for most users.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Books

Geoff Considine has written multiple books that we sell from our website. Though the Full Site has more information about each book, this gives a brief overview of each.

Survival Guide to a Post-Pension World

This book provides an overview of key investing topics that investors and advisors need to understand in developing investment management strategies to provide for long-term income or other goals. The book draws together core concepts that Geoff Considine has explored in his articles on portfolio planning, along with new insights and strategies. We explore the tools of portfolio management, the core asset classes that investors need to be aware of, and how to quantify risk and to determine whether a portfolio is a good match to a specific investor's needs. A major theme that we explore is how to deal with risk and uncertainty in long-term planning. Monte Carlo simulation is used to motivate many of the examples and we show a series of ways to get comfortable with Monte Carlo as a planning tool.

Using Options in Wealth Management

While there are many good books on the theoretical aspects of derivatives, there is a need for broad strategic discussions of the use of options as part of wealth management and portfolio planning. In this monograph, I present a coherent conceptual framework to help investors and advisors understand the ways that options can be useful in portfolio management. Options can be used in this manner, but they can also be used as part of well-considered wealth management plan.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Free Trial

Quantext offers a free trial of QPP. To request a free trial please hit the button below or email tryqpp@yahoo.com. Include your first and last names. Please put QPP in the subject line.

Information about downloading the trial will be emailed to you (so it is not instantaneous. Thanks for your patience in advance.)

We hope that you enjoy the program!

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

License or Renew

Licensed versions of Quantext's portfolio planners come on discs which are mailed to you. If you would like another free trial to use while you wait for your licensed version to arrive, please email tryqpp@yahoo.com. Please note that you have recently licensed.

These are the prices for a year long license: We offer several ways to pay.

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.

Reviews of QPP

Reviews of Quantext Portfolio Planner

"The Quantext Portfolio Planner is the best portfolio planning tool I have ever used. It is hard to imagine an investor whose portfolio would not be improved by a road test in the QPP."
Phil DeMuth, Ph.D., Investment Advisor and author

This is truly a great tool. It knocks the socks off anything else I've seen."
Phil Trask, former CFO of Pepsi-Canada

"Unlike most Monte Carlo software that I have reviewed over the years, Quantext Portfolio Planner is not only effective but user friendly (even for clients!). I would suggest planners employ this software not only for their practice but for their clients in interactive sessions.

Finally, a real time great tool to use in conjunction with the deterministic (potentially 'flaw of averages') approach per each accumulation objective."
Jim Schwartz, Co-Founder, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA)

"Twenty-one years from the inception of the Southwest Airline Pilots Association 401k, Dave Fisser, former committee Chairman, and I worked hard to build an age-based retirement program for our participants. Working with our advisor, Dave and I have used the QPP by Quantext to build target portfolios for participants from ages 30 through 75. We have used every part of this program, from the future return expectations, based on mean reversion, to the Diversified Metrics and Low Correlations to increase the longevity of the portfolio. It doesn’t do any good if you out last your money. Our advisor had access to a large scale Monte Carlo Simulator to run all the glide paths portfolios at once, but we used QPP to check the output, using our own funds to make final suggestions. Believe me when I say we used every aspect of the QPP software. We leaned on Geoff’s many articles, but also experimented with numerous ideas and watched how the software reacted. Our confidence in QPP allowed us to control the outcome for thousands of our participants. We recommend QPP to everyone as it is head and shoulders above any other program we have seen out there."
John Nordin, SWAPA Committee Chairman

“Dr. Geoff Considine and his firm Quantext have created the next generation in portfolio analysis software. It is no longer enough for advisors to manage their clients’ money. If you are not managing client risk and cash flow, they will find somebody who does. QPP provides an instant snapshot of portfolio risk and return unlike anything in the marketplace. It is the ultimate client retention tool.”
Brett Alexander, Cash Flow Investment Svcs. LLC

NOTE: Quantext is not a registered investment advisor. No information on this website should be taken as advice to buy or sell any asset. Any and all information obtained from Quantext is on an "AS IS" basis.

©2012 • Quantext, Inc.