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Ranking and Sorting a Family

Mutual fund charting, ranking, rating, and technical analysis software downloaded to your PC

Why Rank using FT4Web Investment Software?

Ranking is the process of looking at history. While past gains do not necessarily predict future gains, good funds are managed for consistently for diversity and volatility. These measures are predictable based on past return. Ranking is the process used to find losers to sell and winners to buy.

What to Rank?

Families of Exchange Traded funds (ETFs), sector, funds, and diversified broad based fund families including international, domestic, SmallCap, LargeCap, growth, value, etc. will rank the best.

How to Rank?

First, load one of the many FT4Web defined families of funds or build your own.  Select a period for the ranking then  press the "Rank" button on the Chart Tools Toolbar. This will automatically rank the current family by Total Return (dividends reinvested)

To rank a family by other value, go to the Spreadsheet Tab. From here you can add columns for NCAlpha, Maximum Draw Down, Ulcer Performance Index, or  a whole assortment of different measurements. 

When to Rank

Ranking is an important investment selection tool. FT4Web provides a Rank tool to rank the issues on the Chart Tab Chart Tools Toolbar. If only the Dashed Pole is showing, FastTrack computes results from the date on which the Dashed Pole rests to the last day of the chart. If both the poles are showing, the ranking is based on results between poles.

Rank broad market trend periods, not fixed periods like 30, 60, 90 days. When the market has bottomed and a new bull cycle is in progress, rank a few days to a few weeks to find the leaders of the new trend and put your money into them (momentum strategy). Or, put your money into the laggards (value  strategy). DO NOT put money into mid ranked issues.

The Details

Here is a set of specific instructions and keystrokes to rank a family and have the ranking displayed in the Issue List: There is a tutorial that illustrates these methods.

  1. Load the family you want to rank into the Chart Tab Issue List.
  2. Move the Dashed Pole to the starting date of the ranking. If you are going to rank to the last day of data, then no other pole is needed. If you want to rank a specific period, bracket it with the Dashed and Solid Poles.
  3. Click on the Chart Tools Rank Button. This will
    • clear the spreadsheet,
    • refill it from the Chart Tab Issue List,
    • compute a return column,
    • sort the column greatest gain to lowest gain,
    • place the sorted results in the Chart Tab Issue List,
    • and switch to the Spreadsheet Tab.
  4. To rank a family by other category, go to the "Spreadsheet" tab on the Program Tabs. This will open up the Spreadsheet window. From here you can sort the funds in whatever order you want. Once sorted, click one of the family members, hold until the drag icon appears, then drag to the "Charts" Program Tab.
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To add more columns to the spreadsheet:
  1. Right-click on the spreadsheet itself. This pops up a menu.
  2. Select "Add Col". This will bring up a list of available values that can become columns on the spreadsheet.
  3. Double-click on the desired columns to add them to the spreadsheet.

You'll note that the newly added columns are empty. To fill them:

  1. Right-Click on the spreadsheet.
  2. Choose "Compute". This will recalculate the contents of the spreadsheet. Obviously, this can take a long time if you choose many columns and many issues.

Once the spreadsheet is filled, you'll note that the columns are in no particular order.

  1. Click on the top row of the column you want to use as a sort key. The list will be sorted by the values in the column.
  2. If you want the list to be sorted in reverse order, click on the top of the column again.

If you want the data sorted in the opposite order, click the spreadsheet column header. This will reverse the sort order. You will have to drag one item from the sorted list to the Char Tab if you want to see the Issue list in the new order.

Note:

Ranking before the inception date of a fund or stock will produce the default return value of -100%

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