SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 8, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Wilshire Analytics, a global leader in providing innovative investment portfolio analytics and a business unit of Wilshire Associates Incorporated, today announced the launch of a next generation version of the Wilshire Atlas(sm) equity analytics system. The Wilshire Atlas Version 11.0 ("Atlas v11"), which provides an integrated collection of tools to manage global equity portfolios for active strategies, includes a number of significant new enhancements to the user interface improving the flexibility and general ease of use of the system both for experienced and first-time users.
"Innovation focused on expanding, improving and updating is a continual process as Wilshire Equity Analytics responds to the needs of its clients around the world," noted David Hall, senior managing director of Wilshire Associates Incorporated and head of Wilshire Equity Analytics, a division of Wilshire Analytics. "In times such as these, with regulators, boards of directors and money owners reacting to market volatility by focusing on risk-adjusted returns, as well as the sources and contributions to risk, Wilshire Analytics' clients are increasingly turning to our multi-factor risk and attribution analyses to gain new insight, control risk and provide more comprehensive reporting to their clients," Hall continued.
"During the course of the last year, the Wilshire Atlas development team has focused its efforts on the development of a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the Wilshire Atlas system," Hall said. "The goal of this project was to advance both the technology that supports the interface, and to improve the functionality of the GUI to facilitate both the organization and management of portfolios within the system. Additionally, the GUI development was designed to make access to the core reports and tools in the system more intuitive, and more straightforward, for both experienced and new users alike."
All portfolios and indexes loaded in the Wilshire Atlas system now may be viewed and organized within a customizable folder structure. This new Portfolio Navigator was designed to facilitate access to saved portfolios for both the running of new reports and the editing of portfolio holdings. The holdings of each portfolio in the system are now accessed via the Portfolio Navigator. Upon opening a portfolio, asset positions are displayed in a new portfolio holdings window for every date on which the portfolio has been loaded.
Based on the GUI technology employed in Microsoft(r) Office 2007, the Wilshire Atlas GUI now gives users access to the analysis tools and utilities of the Wilshire Atlas via a multi-tab toolbar or "ribbon." Available at all times in the user interface, the Wilshire Atlas ribbon groups each tool in the Wilshire Atlas by function type, thereby displaying in one convenient place all appropriate options for the task at hand. The ribbon also offers users direct access to the tools within the Wilshire Atlas without first having to open a portfolio or create a portfolio list.
Wilshire also has increased the multi-factor risk and attribution functionality of the system to allow users to perform flexible decomposition of risk and return contributions into any user-defined grouping scheme within the system. The risk and factor attribution modules also have been expanded through the addition of a number of new reporting features, including new security detail and linked-period analysis reports. In addition, a new HTML reporting format has been added to the system. Reports built using this format exhibit increased levels of interactivity and, using this format, it is possible to construct group-based attribution reports in the Wilshire Atlas with full drill down capability.
Beyond these developments to the basic system, the reporting capabilities of the Wilshire Atlas have been enhanced with the development of a Microsoft Excel(r) plug-in associated with the Wilshire Atlas API (both require an additional subscription), which gives users access to the core analysis functions of the system via custom cell functions from within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. In this way, it is possible to build fully customized reports without needing to code new Microsoft Excel macros.
Alongside the development of a new user interface, Atlas v11 also exhibits enhanced risk and factor attribution reports. Both the Risk Analyzer and model based Factor Attribution tools have been extended to incorporate a number of new reporting options. In particular, the Risk Analyzer application has been developed to include the following enhancements:
-- New flexible decomposition of risk reports -- New "multiple portfolio" summary -- User-defined Value at Risk (VaR) Calculation -- Enhanced reporting of security level risk
The multi-factor attribution module in the system has also been expanded and now exhibits a number of new reporting features:
-- Flexible decomposition of return
-- New linked multi-period reports and multiple portfolio summary
reports
-- Enhanced security detail return attribution reports
About Wilshire Associates
Wilshire Associates is a leading global investment technology, investment consulting and investment management firm with four business units: Wilshire Analytics, Wilshire Funds Management, Wilshire Consulting, and Wilshire Private Markets.
Based in Santa Monica, CA, Wilshire provides services to clients in more than 20 countries representing in excess of 600 organizations with assets totaling more than $12.5 trillion. With ten offices on four continents, Wilshire Associates and its affiliates are dedicated to providing clients with the highest quality counsel, products and services. Please visit www.wilshire.com for more information.