Master Classes

CompoundingHappens.com will in 2009 and subsequent years be giving a series of two-day master classes on "Essential Concepts and Skills for Arithmetic Performance Measurement and Attribution", presented by Damien Laker.

This master class is (we believe) the best commercially available training session for investment professionals who wish to learn the essential skills of performance attribution. The master class can also be used as the first step toward more customized training, or as part of a consulting engagement.

Schedule

We are planning master classes in the following locations:

Singapore 23-24 March 2009 (Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel). Download the PDF brochure here. Enroll by 22nd January to receive 10% "Early Bird" discount.
Sydney 17-18 February 2009 (Sofitel Sydney Wentworth Hotel). Download the PDF Brochure here.
London (tentatively set for late March 2009)
Hong Kong (tentatively set for September 2009)
New York (tentatively set for September 2009)
San Francisco.

If you are interested in attending a master class, please send us an email, with details of the city where you would prefer to attend.

If your company has a group of six or more people who wish to receive performance attribution training, we may be able to arrange customized instruction at your location.

Content

The core material for the master class is based on Damien Laker’s "Arithmetic Performance Attribution", chapter 2 in Advanced Portfolio Attribution Analysis: New approaches to Return and Risk (ed. Carl Bacon). Delegates will receive a copy of this chapter. The arithmetic approach to performance attribution is by far the most popular and useful approach in Australia, Asia, and North America. Most of the material in this seminar is equally applicable for people who choose a geometric approach to performance attribution.

The content of the master class starts with some elementary principles of performance measurement. Many attempts to do performance attribution fail because they are based on an inadequately strong performance measurement foundation. The master class then goes on to cover many essential topics in performance attribution. These topics are presented from the perspective of a skilled practitioner, with an approach that could be characterized as innovative, insightful, and practical.
The topics covered in the master class include:

Performance measurement basics: how to calculate returns, compounding, annualization;
Hints and tips on how to use spreadsheets for ad hoc performance analysis;
Sector attribution;
Security-level attribution and transaction cost analysis;
Multiple period attribution (including a detailed tutorial on the Cariño method, and an explanation of notional portfolios);
Currency hedging and multicurrency performance analysis;
Multicurrency attribution (especially the insights of Karnosky and Singer);
Performance attribution with zero-weighted sectors;
Performance attribution with leverage and derivatives;
Practical advice on how to put these techniques into practice. Understanding the comparison between spreadsheets and software packages for performance measurement and attribution.

Key Benefits to Delegates and their Employers

The master class is suitable for beginners, but it should also yield new insights for experienced practitioners.

This master class focuses on building a coherent understanding of how to measure and analyse the value-added in an investment portfolio. The emphasis is on core skills and concepts that will be of enduring value, rather than providing a "shopping list" of all the different techniques that have been developed over the years. A delegate who attends this course should leave equipped with a rich toolkit of ideas for understanding how to deal with routine but also novel performance analysis tasks. These tasks would include:

data acquisition and preparation;
calculating returns and weights;
calculating contribution;
preparing informative performance reports on different kinds of fund;
an appreciation of multicurrency principles;
understanding and applying different approaches to attribution;
understanding and explaining some of the hardest problems that arise in performance attribution.

Who Could attend? Heads of portfolio analytics, chief risk officers, portfolio managers, performance analysts, and risk managers. The master class would also be beneficial for highly-motivated fund trustees, developers of performance attribution software, and people who need to make decisions about investment portfolios.

All Delegates who complete the master class receive a signed certificate from CompoundingHappens.com, as evidence of their upgraded levels of skill and knowledge.

Quarterly Updates Available

If you want to receive quarterly updates about master class schedules, you may be interested to read about our quarterly newsletter.

Relationship with the CIPM Curriculum

Because of the increased popularity of the CIPM Program, people sometimes ask how the curriculum for this master class relates to the CIPM curriculum. The CIPM curriculum places a strong emphasis on the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), with a relatively light coverage of topics in performance attribution. On the other hand, this master class focuses almost entirely on performance attribution (after recapping some fundamentals about how to calculate returns and weights for all kinds of asset). So this master class is able to go into a great deal of depth on attribution knowledge and techniques that will prove very valuable in a business environment.

Keywords: Performance Attribution Training, Performance Measurement Training, Skills in Investment Performance Analysis, Performance Attribution Education, Performance Measurement Education.

Trademarks: CIPM, GIPS, and CFA are trademarks of the CFA Institute.