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Risk grades simply a normalized volatility measure that gives more weight to more recent price changes. It is rather simple. You can download the technical paper from their web site and input the formula to a spread sheet along with price data from Yahoo/M* and calculate your own risk metrics.
Speaking of spreadsheets. This guy has some incredibly good spreadsheets and tutorials. His old site is archived here and was virus free as far as I could tell. Gummy is a retired Math prof.
You can look at the tutorials without downloading sheets..
I like Archaic found out that Riskgrades is going out of business on June 30th. I have used it to try to keep my portfolio at about a risk grade of 40 to 45. I'm 77 in good health but I know my time is coming. I just got through looking at the various spreadsheets posted and I have never been too good at statistics. I seems to me like a lot of work. Yes I do look at beta and standard deviations plus past performances when choosing a mutual fund but I enjoyed plugging in my whole portfolio and theoretical portfolios to seen what the grade would be. I know Fundamentals used Riskgrades in his portfolios. Speaking of Fundamentals, as such a heavy and great poster he either feel seriously ill or died to stop so abruptly. I printed off many of his comments as I always found him very analytical and he seemed to stay above the emotional fray of investing which is so hard to do for many of us. I'm sorrow to lose Riskgrades, and also Fundamentals, any other suggestions? Tom Mitchell
Comments
You can look at the tutorials without downloading sheets..
http://www.financialwebring.org/gummy-stuff/gummy_stuff.htm
portfolio
http://www.financialwebring.org/gummy-stuff/portfolio.htm
http://www.financialwebring.org/gummy-stuff/fund-you.htm
http://www.financialwebring.org/gummy-stuff/YTD.htm
I also miss fundamentals, he was one of kind.