Rev. Date December 6, 2023
Portfolio Construction
You can create any number of pro forma[1] portfolios to analyze different configurations or evaluate a set of investments in Venn. To start constructing your portfolio, select “New Portfolio” from the left panel. Once you name your new portfolio, you will have the option to create a portfolio from any existing portfolio (such as the “Demo Portfolio”) or to “Create from scratch...”
Another way to start a portfolio is to select the investments you'd like to add in the Data Library and click "ADD TO PORTFOLIO" from the top menu. You will be given an option to either “start new” or to select an existing portfolio and a strategy within that portfolio to add the selected investments to.
Portfolio Structure
Venn's analysis of your investments and their exposures is based upon your selected portfolio configuration. We therefore designed the portfolio allocation panel, available in any portfolio-level analysis, to give you a high degree of flexibility in tailoring Venn to your needs. The allocation panel is designed so you can edit and analyze portfolios “on the fly”.
Based on your organization’s portfolio structure, the allocation panel can have multiple strategies (layers), or it can have no strategies at all (flat structure). To add strategies, click on the ellipses “...” next to the portfolio name in the allocator panel and “Add a Strategy”. Once you’ve created and named your strategy, you can click on the ellipses next to it and “Add a Sub-strategy” to create more layers or “Add an Investment” to add funds or investments from the Data Library. You can have multiple investments under a strategy. Make sure to add allocations to your investments.
To add multiple investments to the portfolio or update allocations in bulk, please refer to the Investment NAVs Uploader FAQ.
You can have multiple strategies and sub-strategies. For example, in the Demo Portfolio, there is a Fixed Income strategy with the following sub-strategies: “Core”, “Corporate”, “High Yield”, and “Inflation-Sensitive Bond”.
Each strategy can be analyzed in isolation or together with the rest of the hierarchy. In the image above, the entire portfolio is being analyzed, while below, only the High Yield strategy is being analyzed. To analyze individual strategies or sub-strategies, click onto the sleeve you’d like to analyze.
The portfolio structure will update as you make changes on the fly. You can collapse/expand elements to ease navigation, and you can drag and drop investments from one strategy to another.
Add Benchmarks
Selecting any portfolio element will let you specify its benchmark in the analysis. Using the Demo Portfolio structure as an example, you can have separate benchmarks at the individual fund level, strategy level, and aggregate portfolio level.
You can pick among the indices, funds, or categories available in Venn or portfolios saved in the Data Library, or you can upload a return stream to act as a custom benchmark.
You can also create a composite benchmark by assigning weights to various return series (e.g., 60% S&P 500 / 40% Bloomberg Global Aggregate). In a composite benchmark, you can also specify an excess return target over the underlying benchmark (e.g., S&P 500 + 3%)
[1] Portfolios created in Venn are pro forma portfolios, meaning the portfolio returns are constructed based on the current allocated weights. The pro forma portfolio is rebalanced to maintain the target allocations. Please refer to this article for more information on rebalancing.
This document highlights certain aspects of this feature. As an overview, it does not discuss all material facts or assumptions. Please seeImportant Disclosure and Disclaimer Information.