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PortMAN (Portfolio Manager), was designed specifically with the up and
coming hedge fund in mind. Many hedge funds will pass through a phase where
they go from gathering
research data manually and having an outside accounting service to
deploying a full scale accounting and portfolio program and bringing
accounting services in house. PortMAN helps to bridge that gap. All fund managers monitor various data points related to securities that they own or might own. When a fund is small, it is a relatively trivial task to check each data point for each security on a periodic basis. As the number of securities in the portfolio increase though, tracking all of the data begins to consume more and more time. Consequently, less frequent monitoring usually occurs. Our PortMAN program automates the monitoring of a hedge fund's portfolio. PortMAN automatically uses data provided to the fund manager by the prime broker and updates the portfolio with data points which are selected by the fund manager from the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL™ service. Every installation of PortMAN will be customized to meet the needs of the fund's management. However, the program has a set of core features. PortMAN imports a position data file from the prime broker. Based on the contents of this file, new securities are automatically added to the PortMAN database and assigned a status of 'owned'. Additionally, any securities that have been manually added or closed out are assigned a status known as 'watched'. After the prime broker's position file is imported, the user initiates a connection to Bloomberg and the database is updated. What data gets collected is up to the fund manager. Common data points include prior day's closing price, current price, market capitalization, shares outstanding, and historical daily volume. Other items that might be gathered could include dividend information, a securities beta or industry sector code. PortMAN downloads the data to a Microsoft Access database. This in turn can drive any number of custom reports and/or Excel spreadsheets. Common reports include liquidity analysis, exposure by industry sector and portfolio weighted by market capitalization. Target buy and sell prices can also be set, and an alert can be triggered which calls attention to the fact that a target price has been reached. Naturally, reports can include only those securities that are owned by the fund or they can also include securities on the fund's "watch list". (Assigning the third status, "inactive", to a security provides a way to maintain research in the database without having that security appear on reports.) PortMAN's openness allows a fund's analysts to create their own reports, or we can create them for you. PortMAN includes support for both domestic and foreign securities. This includes the ability to retrieve data from a specific exchange and/or from multiple exchanges. If Bloomberg tracks the security, then PortMAN can automate the data retrieval and reporting for your hedge fund. If you have questions about this program, please send us an e-mail. |