Gregory Elmiger, Steve S. Kim RiskGrade Your Investments

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Praise for RiskGrade Your Investments "In the same way that the introduction of RiskMetrics raised the level of the discussion (and sometimes debate) regarding market risk measurement and management at large financial institutions, the introduction of RiskGrades and this book represent a major step in the understanding and application of risk measurement and management techniques by individual investors." -Charles Smithson, Managing Partner, Rutter Associates, and author of Managing Financial Risk What Others Are Saying About RiskGrades.com Forbes' best of the web 2002: "Savvy analysis, all free." "A new and impressive Web-based service that promises to offer a clue to the question of how risky is your portfolio. RiskMetrics has been measuring portfolio risk for big financial institutions since 1994 and now sheds some light on investor risk. RiskGrades helps investors combine risk and return to make proper investment decisions." -BusinessWeek "Owning a high percentage of company stock in a retirement plan--any more than 20 percent--is one of the riskiest propositions in investing, and yet employees almost never measure this risk objectively or reduce their positions. . . . It is easy to approximate investment risk. A useful tool for measuring risk is available through RiskMetrics Group's www.riskgrades.com, a service that will measure the volatility and return of single securities or whole portfolios against all asset classes and international regions." -Financial Times "Without divining what exactly a fund owns, the system simply distills risk down to the likelihood of finding a severe change in its value on a given day. . . . Running a few notable funds through the rating bath can be a useful check on what an investor is putting on the line for a given dollar of investment gains." -Barron's "Mathematicians and economists use complex computer programs to examine the effects of different shocks on different portfolios. Such tests have been used for several years by professionals who manage multimillion-dollar investment funds. But RiskMetrics, a spinoff of J.P. Morgan Chase, is now providing similar tools for individual investors. RiskMetrics runs a Web site, www.riskgrades.com, which investors can use free of charge. The Web site allows investors to stress-test individual stocks and mutual funds as well as portfolios." -The Wall Street Journal