Hey Theta Managers! We’ve rolled out an enhancement to the benchmark comparisons on the Theta site. It’s a feature update that has been on the to-do list for a long time and is now live.

Subscriber Site and guest pass users have been able to select from a list of benchmarks to create performance and risk metrics based on the benchmark selected. In the past, the strategy page always defaulted to the S&P 500 TR benchmark.

Now managers can assign a default benchmark to each model or strategy. Here are the choices:

S&P 500 TR
Nasdaq Composite
Nasdaq 100
Dow Jones Industrials
Vanguard Total Bond Index
PHLX Gold/Silver Sector
60% SP500TR / 40% Vanguard Total Bond
50% SP500TR / 50% Vanguard Total Bond

To assign a benchmark, follow these steps:

• Select Manager Site from the main site menu
• Click the Edit button beside the model to change
• Select the desired default benchmark from the dropdown list
• Click Save to save your change(s)

The default benchmark you just selected will be the default seen by your guest pass users and all Subscribers.

Thank you for being a part of the Theta community!

It has been a few months since we sent an update to our subscribers, and since that time we have been busy! It was great to see many of you at the NAAIM conference in May. For those who stopped by our booth, you got a sneak peek of the Manager Site rewrite. I’m almost done with it and will give you a heads up when we roll it out.

As I’ve mentioned before, please note that our address has changed. We are still in Austin, Texas, just a few miles up the road from our old location. I’m sure you know that whether the move is 3 miles or 300 miles, the packing, loading, unloading and setup are the same.

Here’s our new address. If you have statements sent to us, please update the custodian’s records.

Theta Research, LLC
9433 Bee Cave Road
Suite 3-201
Austin TX 78733

Mike Posey Retiring

I’ve been slow in getting this news out, although I’ve spoken with many of you already about Mike’s retirement. Mike and I have worked together for nearly 25 years and the last 12 have been about Theta Research. I can remember him coming to me with the idea of taking over Theta years ago and since then we’ve had quite the ride. We wish Mike well as he has the chance now to spend more time with grandkids!

Price Increase

We have always worked to keep our verification service very affordable. Our tracking price has been the same since we began operations in 2012, but it’s time for a price adjustment.

Beginning July 1^st, the annual tracking fee will be $250 per year. New models will be subject to a $50 set up charge, and past performance input billed at $125/hour.

As always, we appreciate your continued business!

Henry

Theta's servers will be offline on Friday, February 17 so we can move to our new offices in Austin. Please use our new address:

9433 Bee Cave Rd
Bldg III Suite 201
Austin TX 78733

Our phone number remains the same.

Last month we sent a short survey to the managers listing programs on the Theta Research site and the results are in. Our big goal was to learn which performance metrics were important to them, and how we can improve the reporting on our site. The feedback has been invaluable! 

Overall, our managers are happy with our service and use terms like “reliable,” “high quality” and “good value for the money” to describe us. The performance and risk statistics shown now seem to be the most important to them, although adding additional statistics, such as Sharpe and Sortino ratios, would be desirable. 

They particularly expressed that the site needs a facelift and the ability to better view the manager pages on a mobile device. Selectable start and end dates for statistics also made the update list, as did default benchmarks and a fact sheet option.

We have plans to begin these updates this month and start the rollout in October. If you have any other suggestions, email Henry at henry@thetaresearch.com.

You can view the full set of survey results here.