This section covers advanced investment topics. If you are a financial advisor, you can input your client's portfolio for evaluation and analyze the results against a host of benchmarks and events. What-if scenarios let you see whether, say, buying a certain fund or dumping another would improve your client's risk-return and improve his or her diversification profile.

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Through our thorough, step-by-step process, you can determine appropriate portfolio designs for each of your individual investor-clients, by following five easy steps:

Step 1: Determine your client's profile: the process begins with the development of a customized questionnaire and scoring system which evaluates individual risk tolerance.

Step 2: Select the appropriate asset class model. A series of asset class model portfolios are designed to provide the maximum expected return for investors in each risk classification.

Step 3: Build your client's portfolio. For that, you have numerous tools at your disposal, including the powerful FundScope ratings and Honour Rolls (proven to have out-performed the competition). Advanced ranking and screening tools allow you to identify funds that meet your client's requirements or those that are consistent with his or her style and view of the market. Do you feel loyal to certain fund families? No problem! Our Family Ratings tell you how those families stack against the competition and what are their strengths, weaknesses and best vs. worst funds. You can further refine this process by reviewing our detailed commentary on individual funds and in-depth analysis of performance, risk-adjusted returns and mutual fund similarities.

Step 4: Analyze your client's portfolio. Using our Advisor Diagnostic Tools, you can analyze portfolios made of up to 30 funds. This tool highlights the weak links in each portfolio by flagging funds with undesirable features like below average returns, high risk or high cost. It compares the asset allocation as well as the risk and return of each portfolio to the FundScope recommended parameters for each investor profile. It also calculates the standard deviation and the Sharpe ratio of each portfolio and identifies redundant funds (using similarity analysis).

Step 5: Compare portfolios. Not sure which portfolio combination is better? No problem! You can keep trying by adding funds and dumping others until you find the optimal combination that maximizes return for the appropriate level of risk. To facilitate your task, you can compare the performance, risk, cost and risk-adjusted return of all portfolios in one report and sort that report for each of those parameters. This comparison also gives you a snapshot of how each of your clients is doing and who requires priority attention.