Glossary

Investment reporting terms, as the platform calculates them

Short definitions from the reporting library, each pointed at the page that sells the capability. Sortino is documented with the platform quirk: downside against the benchmark, numerator against the risk-free rate.

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Metrics and calculations

Compounded return: Monthly returns chained together rather than added. Twelve months of 1% is 12.68% for the year, not 12%, because each month grows on the last one's result. Used for all windows under 12 months.
Annualised return (p.a.): A compounded return converted to a per-year rate, so a three-year and a five-year figure can be compared directly. This is what “p.a.” on a column header means. Applied to windows of 12 months or more.
Annualised return, day-count basis: An alternative that annualises on days actually elapsed rather than whole months, pro-rating the first month from the inception date. It matters for funds that launched mid-month. Optional per-tenant setting.
Volatility (standard deviation): How much monthly returns bounce around their own average. A bigger number means a bumpier ride, and it is always quoted as a yearly figure. Standard deviation of monthly returns, annualised by √12.
Maximum drawdown: The worst peak-to-trough fall in a period — the most you would have been down if you had bought at the worst possible moment. Always shown as a negative number. Used in drawdown summary tables and return-risk reports.
Drawdown line: The same idea as maximum drawdown, plotted continuously. The peak is never allowed to fall below the starting value, so the chart measures losses from the higher of the two.
VAMI: Value of an Accumulated Managed Investment — what a starting amount would have grown to, month by month. The classic “value of $10k” line. Default starting amount is $100,000.
Sharpe ratio: Return above cash per unit of volatility. It asks whether the return justified the ride. Higher is better; above 1.0 is generally considered good.
Sortino ratio: Like Sharpe, but counting only downside variability rather than all of it. Here the downside is measured against the benchmark while the numerator uses the risk-free rate — a consultant recalculating against a risk-free downside will not match this figure.
Beta: How much a portfolio amplifies or dampens the market. 1.0 moves with it, above 1.0 exaggerates it, below 1.0 cushions it. covariance(portfolio, benchmark) ÷ variance(benchmark).
Up / down market capture: When the market rose, how much of the rise did the portfolio get? When it fell, how much of the fall did it take? Months are split by what the benchmark did, not the portfolio, and the figures are calculated in the performance consistency and risk table.
Success rate (hit rate): How often the portfolio beat its benchmark, month by month. Months where portfolio return is greater than benchmark, divided by total months.
Tracking error: How tightly a portfolio hugs its benchmark. Low means it behaves much like the index; high means it goes its own way. Standard deviation of (portfolio − benchmark), annualised.
Correlation: Whether two series move together. 1.0 is lockstep, 0 unrelated, negative means they tend to move oppositely. Pearson correlation on monthly returns.
Contribution: How much of a portfolio's return one holding was responsible for — a function of both how well it did and how much was held. weight × return.
Contribution, dollar-based: The same idea as contribution, from real dollar movements instead of weights and percentages. More accurate when money flowed in or out during the month.
Look-through weight: Real exposure to a company once you look inside the funds holding it. If four funds each hold the same bank, those four pieces are added together. Used in top holdings, top Australian shares, and sector charts.
Excess return: The difference between portfolio and benchmark. Always a plain subtraction, never a ratio — true of every “excess”, “difference” and “vs” column.
Income and growth split: Total return separated into the part paid out as distributions and the part from price movement. Income is the distribution component; growth is the remainder. Commonly used for retiree and SMSF clients.
Australian financial year: 1 July to 30 June, labelled by the year it ends in — FY2025 runs July 2024 to June 2025. A part-finished year shows as FYTD. Used in financial summary, financial returns and financial years tables.
Percentiles and quartiles: Where a portfolio sits in the spread of its comparison group. Q1 is the best quartile. Ranked on return alone — so a top-quartile fund is not necessarily a well-managed one.
Risk-free rate: The cash return a risk-adjusted metric measures against. Defaults to the RBA cash rate.
Brinson attribution: Splitting return against a benchmark into allocation and selection effects, asset class by asset class. Shown in the performance attribution chart.
Composite: A group of portfolios managed to one strategy, reported as a single performance record. The basis of GIPS-compliant reporting.
GIPS: The Global Investment Performance Standards, a voluntary global standard for calculating and presenting investment performance. Composite reporting is the basis of a GIPS-compliant record.

Product surfaces

Shadow portfolio: A model tracked alongside live accounts so you can see the paper portfolio next to the invested one. Used when a strategy should be reported even if not every client is in it yet.
Sleeve-level reporting: Reporting each sleeve of a managed account on its own, then rolling the sleeves up to the account. One model definition produces the pack without a per-platform template.
SMA: A separately managed account — the client holds the assets, the manager runs the strategy. Reporting has to update performance, holdings and disclosures across every client portfolio without duplicating the pack by hand.
MDA: A managed discretionary account, where the adviser or manager has discretion inside an agreed mandate. Reporting is built to stay regulator-ready and consistent as the underlying models move.
IMA: An individually managed account tailored to one client's mix. Outputs are personalised and white-labelled so the pack still reads as the firm's work.
Factor analysis: A view of which style, sector or geographic factors the portfolio is actually exposed to. Part of the X-ray holdings picture, alongside sector and country look-through.
Custom benchmark: A benchmark built to the client's mandate rather than a single off-the-shelf index. Used so performance, excess return and attribution are measured against the mix you actually agreed.
Peer index: A comparison group of similar funds, used for peer charts, percentile bands and risk/return positioning. Rankings on the site are on return alone unless a report says otherwise.
Investment monitoring: Ongoing checks for correlations, competing assets or structural shifts before they show up in a quarterly pack. Built for committees that need the signal as soon as the calculation finishes.
White-label: Reports that carry your layouts, colour palette, typography and standing disclosures — not the Quant Reports name. Configured once in the brand kit and inherited by factsheets, quarterly reports, committee packs and SMA statements.
SOA inserts: Statement-of-advice inserts, portfolio summaries and advice documents produced from the same data as the rest of the reporting set. Built so advice packs stay on-brand and current without a separate desktop process.
X-ray holdings: A look through the funds in a portfolio to the companies, sectors, factors and geographies underneath. The point is concentration: three domestic equity funds can all be full of the same banks.
Brand kit: The layouts, colours, fonts and standing disclosure text applied across every report type. Applied in the first implementation session from a template mock-up, then reused so the pack does not drift.
Committee pack: A performance and attribution report assembled for an investment committee. The figures are the same ones that publish in the factsheet, so the room is not reconciling two versions of the truth.
Tactical attribution: Seeing where alpha came from — allocation, selection, and benchmark interaction — at plan, manager and composite level. The same attribution layer that feeds live charts and static committee packs.

See the calculations in a report

The glossary names the figure. The reporting library is where it shows up in a pack.

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