Business Ideas

Vatican to lose tax-exempt status

RTielman — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:00:15 +0000

Italy's Catholic Church faces an annual multi-million euro bill over government plans to strip it of its tax-exempt status.

Prime Minister Mario Monti has announced the Vatican must pay taxes on non-religious property, from which it previously enjoyed an exemption.

The annual cost could be up to 720m euros ($945m; Â£598m) according to municipal government bodies.

Italy's Catholic Church has 110,000 properties, worth about 9bn euros.

It includes shopping centres and a range of residential property.

In December, the government reintroduced a tax paid by anyone who owns land or property in Italy – which the Church does not pay.

But a growing wave of Italians are opposed to what they see as special privileges in the face of a tightening economy.

Following their government's latest austerity measure package, more than 130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the Church's tax exempt status to be revoked.

Since 2005, church-run groups and organisations have not been classed as official commercial bodies and have been exempt from paying property tax.

According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, tax authorities will calculate how much of a property is used purely for religious purposes and tax it proportionately.

This means a church would remain exempt but a chapel which operates an hostel would pay tax accordingly.

Earlier this week, new figures showed Italy has entered recession, after two consecutive quarters of negative growth between July and December 2011.

Slim afirma que no teme a la competencia en telefonía móvil

RTielman — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:00:15 +0000

Por AMY GUTHRIE

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (Dow Jones)–El magnate mexicano de las telecomunicaciones, Carlos Slim, dijo que alaba la competencia, previo a la potencial entrada al mercado mexicano de telefonía móvil de Grupo Televisa SAB.

Slim dijo a la prensa que no teme a la competencia, sino que quiere que sus rivales inviertan.

En abril, Televisa accedió a invertir US$1.600 millones por un 50% de participación en Iusacell, uno de los operadores más pequeños de las cuatro empresas de telefonía móvil que prestan servicios en México.

La filial mexicana de América Móvil, Telcel, cuenta con cerca de un 70% del mercado mexicano de telefonía móvil, mientras que Iusacell posee un 4%.

Skirting criticism

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:00:15 +0000

Tyrieshia Douglas would love to box in the Olympics wearing a short skirt. Not because she has to, but because she wants to.

"We’re women, and we should be able to wear a woman’s uniform," said the 23-year-old flyweight from Baltimore who survived a rough childhood in foster care to win silver medals at the last two national championships.

Douglas realises she’s in the minority among female boxers and much of the international sports community, which reacted with outrage and sexism charges when amateur boxing’s governing body encouraged women to wear skirts in recent competitions.

Yet if Douglas wins the US team trials and eventually qualifies for the London Games, the 51-kilo fighter would be eager to wear a skirt in the first Olympic women’s boxing tournament. She agrees with International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) officials who have suggested skirts would make women more easily identifiable in the ring.

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Finally, a Haven for the ‘Beeroisseur’

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:00:15 +0000

By MELANIE GRAYCE WEST

Ramsay de Give for The Wall Street Journal

Ray Darmstady pours at City Swiggers at 320 E. 86th St.

Wine has long enjoyed the spotlight in New York, with specialty shops and restaurants designed for choosy oenophiles. Now, a traditionally more humble beverage has begun to get similar attention.

Over the past year, a host of shops have emerged catering to “beeroisseurs”—devotees who can debate hops content with the fervor of a political contest and spend hours tracking down an obscure Trappist ale.

To be sure, there have been stores and bars throughout the five boroughs for years that offer rare and sometimes very expensive brews.

But this new breed of beer shop more closely follows the model of a boutique retailer, where beer buffs can often sample before buying and drink a pint at the bar with paired bites. Customers can take home a mixed six-pack and fill a growler—a refillable jug container—straight from the tap. Some stores even host book-signings and lectures.

Unlike the corner bodega, the shops offer enormous selections of craft or specialty beers—small production beers from around the world made from premium ingredients—that can range in price from roughly $1.25 for a single bottle to $25 for a 750-milliliter bottle (about 25 ounces), and up.

Ramsay de Give for The Wall Street Journal

A sampling of the beer selection at City Swiggers in Manhattan.

At the new City Swiggers on the Upper East Side, customers can plunk down $41.99 for Drie Fonteinen Oude Kriek, a sour cherry Belgian beer aged in oak. Or for $25.89, they can take home Nebraska Brewing Co.’s Apricot au Poivre Saison beer brewed with, of course, apricots and pepper.

The rise of specialty beer shops is reflected in growing numbers of state-issued tavern wine licenses, which allow holders to serve wine and beer—but not hard liquor—and to sell beer to-go. Since 2005, the number of tavern wine licenses issued in the city has nearly doubled, to 157 from 82, according to data from the New York State Liquor Authority.

The marketplace for beer in New York is now at a “tipping point,” said Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery and editor of “The Oxford Companion to Beer.”

“What’s really happening is that craft beer is not a trend or a fad,” according to Mr. Oliver. “It’s a return to normality.”

Historically, it’s abnormal to “have three [kinds of] beers for 300 million people,” Mr. Oliver said. Now, “people are looking at beer for what it is: which is food.”

But at the same time, those getting into the specialist beer business have a much higher threshold to succeed because the average New York bar now has a pretty wide selection of specialty brews, Mr. Oliver said.

To be unique, he said, a store now has to stock “sufficiently obscure” beers.

“Everybody’s got great beer now,” Mr. Oliver said, but “there’s an arms race on the geeky end of things.”

Major grocery stores and first-time business owners alike are now opening up shops to cater to beer devotees.

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In November, the Whole Foods Market at Columbus Circle opened a tavern-like space within its store, replacing what had at one time been a wine shop and later an area for personal-hygiene products.

It’s a first-of-its-kind tap room and café for the Northeast region, with 10 beers and eight wines on tap and another 150 bottled beers. The location was the “perfect space,” said Michael Sinatra, a spokesman for Whole Foods Markets in the Northeast region, for capturing “the enthusiasm that’s out there among shoppers in trying different beers and trying local beers.”

This month, Ted Kenny, a former Wall Street trader, will open Top Hops on the Lower East Side. The store and tasting room will sell some 700 to 800 beers in bottles and offer 20 beers on tap, with a stock evenly split between domestic and imported brews.

Mr. Kenny, 42 years old, has worked in the beer industry and began his plans for a specialty beer store a few years ago. Seeing others successfully get into the retail business encouraged him to open Top Hops with his cousin and business partner, Bryan Weadock, co-head of global fixed-income commodities for Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

“I wanted to do a place that really celebrates beer,” said Mr. Kenny, who is planning to make education and proper pouring a cornerstone of his store. “I feel very fortunate that I’ve found a way to hopefully make a living at something that I’m very passionate about.”

Also new to the beer shop industry are Alan and Pamela Rice, who spent three years brewing up the idea for City Swiggers, their two-month-old shop and tasting room.

So far, the neighborhood response has been “overwhelming,” Ms. Rice said. “We’re trying our best to keep up.”

Mr. Rice, 48, previously worked in the financial-services industry, and City Swiggers is his first retail store. Beer has long been his passion and he’d been active in the city’s beer community as president of Brooklyn’s Malted Barley Appreciation Society.

City Swiggers carries some 500 beers hand-picked by Mr. Rice. The couple designed the store to be approachable to people just learning about beer and those coming in with strollers. Still, Mr. Rice said, a fair number of customers are serious connoisseurs willing to travel for something unusual. He said beer blogs and online forums have fueled the local “craze” for exotic beers.

“I hope this isn’t just a fad and that this is a true trend,” he said.

Is That A Plastic Baby Jesus In My Cake?

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:15 +0000

Story By: by Eliza Barclay

Sucre in New Orleans is one of many bakeries that leaves the plastic baby out of the king cake.

If you’ve been in New Orleans for carnival season, or if you’re lucky enough to taste a cake that has arrived in the mail from there, there’s a pretty good chance that yes, there is a plastic baby that comes with your cake.

The baby, meant to represent Jesus, has become a fixture of the king cake (galette des rois in France or rosca de reyes as it’s called in Mexico). It’s a frosted yeast dough cake that New Orleans bakeries churn out between King’s Day, January 6^th, and Fat Tuesday, the last day of indulgence before Lent.

But just how that baby got in the cake is a strange tale â featuring a mysterious traveling salesman â that’s worthy of the best Mardi Gras lore and ritual.

First, let’s talk a little king cake history. The custom of eating a wreath-shaped or oval cake on January 6th to honor the Three Kings goes back to Old World Europe, most notably France and Spain. Then the French and the Spanish brought the cake to the Americas, where it seems to have been most heartily adopted in New Orleans, Mexico and some other parts of Latin America.

Early king cakes were simple, dusted with a bit of sugar, and eaten at home with the family.

But historians say that sometime in the late 19^th century, the Twelfth Night Revelers, a New Orleans social group that hosted the first Mardi Gras ball of the season, began hiding a bean (which was later replaced by a pecan or a jeweled ring) inside the cake. According to the Times-Picayune Creole Cookbook, the lucky finder of the treasure would then be crowned king or queen of the ball.

Poppy Tooker, a preeminent New Orleans food expert and host of Louisiana Eats on NPR member station WWNO, tells The Salt that the big king cake revolution came along in the 1940s, thanks to a baker named Donald Entringer and a chance encounter.

His bakery, McKenzie’s, was one of biggest and most famous commercial bakeries in 20^th century New Orleans. By1950, king cake had become such a fixture of the Mardi Gras season, served over and over between King Day and Fat Tuesday, that people increasingly turned to commercial bakeries like McKenzie’s to source their cakes.

One day Entringer was approached by a traveling salesman who had with him little porcelain dolls from France of a size that would fit in a dollhouse. “He had a big overrun on them, and so he said to Entringer, ‘how about using these in a king cake,” says Tooker. “That sort of entranced them, and he began baking these porcelain dolls into the king cake.”

Entringer got permission from the health department to bake the dolls into the cakes, the Times Picayune reports.

After a while, Tooker says, Entringer ran out of porcelain dolls. So he went down to the French Quarter, where he “found the little plastic king cake baby that we know today from some importer. And so little plastic babies became the absolute positive rule.”

The babies are ubiquitous now, and come in a rainbow of colors, from somewhat realistic pink and brown, to green, purple and gold (the colors of the season).

But recently bakeries have stopped baking the baby into the cake, leaving it in the center of the oval for revelers to insert discreetly before serving. (Apparently, the idea of baking a piece of plastic in food doesn’t go over as well anymore.)

Indeed, the cake we ordered in the mail from Sucre bakery â called the 21^st century king cake because of its untraditional laquered silvery frosting â last week had a gold plastic baby rattling around inside the package for the trip from New Orleans to Washington.

Tooker sees this is as a small tragedy. “We’ve become such a litigious society that nobody will put the baby inside the king cake anymore. That’s really kind of sad.”

Yet in an intriguing reversal, one New Orleans woman has revived the tradition of using a porcelain baby. Alberta Lewis sells porcelain figurines to Haydel’s bakery, and comes up with a new design every year. And we’re told by a friend in Mexico City, where plastic babies have remained a fixture of the rosca de reyes tradition, that porcelain is making a comeback there too.

King cakes are so symbolic of Louisiana cuisine that they can be found as far away as Berlin, as this NPR story reports.

Whatever form the baby takes shouldn’t diminish from the festivities that king cake helps mark â the sugary crown for a sweet season.

Kiribati profile

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:00:15 +0000

The 33 atolls that make up Kiribati – the former Gilbert Islands – occupy a vast area in the Pacific. They stretch nearly 4,000 km from east to west, more than 2,000 km from north to south, and straddle the Equator.

Kiribati's economy is weak and is affected by rises and falls in the world demand for coconut.

Fishing licences, foreign aid and money sent home by workers abroad also play their part, as does a trust fund set up with revenues from phosphate mining on the island of Banaba. The mines were depleted by 1980, precipitating the evacuation of much of the population.

Kiribati is home to the South Pacific's largest marine reserve.

It is also one of the low-lying Pacific island states seen as highly vulnerable to rising sea levels and global warming, and frequently lends its voice to calls for action on climate change.

Pictet Faces Down Challenges in Asia

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:00:15 +0000

By DUNCAN MAVIN

Most investment managers will remember 2008 mostly for the precipitous tumble in financial markets. But for Pictet Asset Management, the year also marked its first offering of funds in Hong Kong, and another step in the Swiss firm’s Asian strategy. A unit of 206-year old private bank Pictet & Cie., the asset manager has long targeted Asian clients. It has had an office in Japan for the past three decades, as well as offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

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Pictet & Cie

Laurent Ramsey

Résumé

Education: Bachelor’s and master’s in international management from HEC Business School of Lausanne. European diploma of financial analysis and portfolio management.
Career: Joined Pictet in 1993. Has had stints in Hong Kong, Singapore and Geneva.
On Asia: “Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea—they’re all interesting. The question is [whether they have] the regulatory framework for us to access savings.”
On financial advice: “Advisers are in a tough position. There are a number of uncertainties—sovereign debt, inflation, and U.S. consumption.”

As of March 31 Pictet + Cie had about $418 billion in assets under management (2010, $383 billion; 2009, $321 billion)—Pictet Asset Management accounts for about a third of the total figure for 2011, and is one of the largest institutional asset managers in Japan.

Since the financial crisis, Pictet Asset Management’s efforts to ramp up business in Asia has faced a set of challenges familiar to just about any financial services firm—a war for talent, stiff competition, and an ever-toughening regulatory environment. Laurent Ramsey, the asset manager’s head of global distribution, was in Hong Kong recently and talked with The Wall Street Journal’s Duncan Mavin. The following interview has been edited.

WSJ: How has your business in Japan been affected by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear tragedy?

Mr. Ramsey: It’s still a very important market for us and we continue to invest resources there. People are sitting on cash and the appetite for foreign assets is growing despite the strength of the yen.

WSJ: It seems like you’re, understandably, more optimistic about Asia than Europe.

Mr. Ramsey: I’m optimistic in general. Obviously in Asia the dynamics are different. Balance sheets are sound. Growth is there. But in Europe, there are other dynamics that are positive—within Europe, people were hit by the crisis, missed the rebound, and are still sitting on time deposits. That cash still needs to go somewhere.

WSJ: Around 14% of your Assets Under Management are in themed funds, which focus on agriculture, clean energy and water, for instance. Are themed funds a trend that will last?

Mr. Ramsey: I think there’s room for [more] good ones. I think there are a lot of products out there that have been launched because they’re fashionable. I think [themed funds] have some advantages if they’re focused on mega-trends. They provide diversification. People tend to invest because they believe in the long-term story.

WSJ: What do you think of the general quality of investing research these days?

Mr. Ramsey: I think nothing is going to replace primary research. If you want to be a good investment manager, you need to go and talk to the companies and the regulators. Our fund managers always did but they probably do so more now. This was critical [before the financial crisis] but it is more critical now. Probably you’re more suspicious of what you read now.

WSJ: What are the main challenges for asset managers in Asia?

Mr. Ramsey: There are three. Different regulatory cultures in different countries. Talent—a lot of firms are expanding and chasing just a few talented people in the region. And savings and investment pattern—people tend to be more short-term focused.

WSJ: How do you persuade investors with that mentality to buy mutual funds?

Mr. Ramsey: It’s a long-term effort. Education is a key, especially on the need to save for old age and to diversify investments. In that respect, the financial crisis has had a good effect as it has put a premium on good advice. In Europe, we’re talking about whether university students should have lessons [in investing]. The industry can bring more clarity, through the way we classify and distribute funds, for example. Also, in product design we really need to think through what can provide value to clients and not just what is exciting or fashionable right now.

WSJ: How do you attract, and hold on to, good people?

Mr. Ramsey: On the asset-management side, we’re talking about [hiring] more or less 80 people in investing and distribution. It will mean doubling our distribution resources in Asia ex-Japan and opening up in Taiwan if we get a license there.

We’ve managed to attract talent that before the crisis would have been difficult for us [to attract]. We have had a clean track record during the most difficult times.

WSJ: Are salaries rising sharply in your industry?

Mr. Ramsey: In general, we’re not at the levels of 2007. It’s always a risk [that new hires don't fit in]. First of all, they have to meet a lot of people. [We need people who] focus on the long-term, people that can say no to a client, people who are entrepreneurs, doers not thinkers. In Asia, [we're hiring] all locals. We don’t have a rule that we need expats or locals. But in any region, you need to understand the culture. We never compromise on timing to hire mediocre people. In Japan, we lost money for 15 years before becoming the biggest [foreign] asset manager.

Write to Duncan Mavin at duncan.mavin@wsj.com

In the lap of luxury on Saadiyat island

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:00:14 +0000

Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat island is pegged to become one of the region’s most celebrated cultural and artistic communities.

With the Zayed National Museum, Louvre Abu Dhabi and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi set for completion in the near future, plus a marina with berths for 1,000 boats, a championship golf course and sea-view homes already complete, the 27-square-kilometre island offers residents and visitors a fresh take on being entertained in style.

While several grand hotels and five-star resorts give people the opportunity to enjoy the island temporarily, it’s also possible to make your stay more permanent by investing in a high-end, luxury villa in the Saadiyat Beach Villas residential community in the Saadiyat Beach District.

There are currently three villa styles on offer, namely Arabian, Mediterranean and Contemporary. The InsideOut team spent a day photographing the latter – a beautifully designed and constructed five-bedroom modern villa.

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Beachfront Homes

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:00:14 +0000

Beachfront homes $6 million and under, in Dana Point, Calif., Osterville, Mass., and Loveladies, N.J. Juliet Chung has details on The News Hub.

DANA POINT, Calif. $5 Million

A 4,000-square-foot home, with four bedrooms and five bathrooms, on a 0.2-acre lot

DETAILS: This two-story, Cape Cod-style home has a master suite that runs the length of the house and has a double-sided fireplace and a terrace. The property also has a fire pit, outdoor fireplace, lawn and patio. 2011 property taxes are about $88,700.

View Slideshow

Jeri Koegel

Dana Point, Calif.

BY THE SEA: The beach is sandy and is near Dana Point Harbor.

HANG TEN: Stewart Surfboards, six miles away in San Clemente, offers handmade custom surfboards and also rents out boards.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Chance of rain, high 67 degrees.

SOURCE: Doug Echelberger, Echelberger Group, 949-498-7711, doug@echelberger.com; Realtor.com

OSTERVILLE, Mass. $5.5 Million

A 3,400-square-foot home with seven bedrooms and four bathrooms, on 2.2 acres in Cape Cod

DETAILS: This beachfront Colonial was built in 1935 and renovated over the years. The L-shaped property fronts a saltwater pond and also has a tennis court. It’s about a mile away from the center of the village. 2011 property taxes are nearly $46,000.

BY THE SEA: The private beach fronts Nantucket Sound. The area is popular for biking and walking.

HANG TEN: Boarding House Surf Shop is eight miles away in Hyannis.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Windy, high 52 degrees.

SOURCE: Jack Cotton, Sotheby’s International Realty, 508-957-5500, jack@jackcotton.com; Realtor.com

LOVELADIES, N.J. $6 Million

A 4,300-square-foot home with five bedrooms and five bathrooms, on 0.7-acre on Long Beach Island

DETAILS: The home has a double-height family room, an elevator, plus a screened porch and several ipe decks. There’s also a pool. The home is being sold furnished; 2011 property taxes are $34,000.

BY THE SEA: The property has 125 feet of beach frontage. Grassy dunes lead to a sandy beach.

HANG TEN: Ron Jon Surf Shop, seven miles away in Ship Bottom, offers surfboards and apparel.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Clear, high 52 degrees.

SOURCE: Benée Scola, Benée Scola & Company, 609-494-0077,

benee@beneescola.com.

—
Juliet Chung

Fidelity Amps Up Cross-Border Offerings

RTielman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:00:14 +0000

Fidelity Investments has just expanded by five the number of foreign markets in which its customers can trade, for a total of 17. And it will be the first retail online broker to open up its entire cross-border menu to all non-retirement-account holders—formerly the preserve of only high-account-value customers and high-volume traders.

Other mainstream brokers, such as E*Trade (www.etrade.com) and Charles Schwab (www.schwab.com), give direct international-market access to a subset of their customers. TD Ameritrade (www.tdameritrade.com) allows limited access to Australian and Canadian markets.

Formerly at Fidelity (www.fidelity.com), only those with $1 million or more in their household accounts got access to international markets. Now, cross-border trading is open to all levels of brokerage customers.

THENEW CROSS-BORDER VENUES are: Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, along with their associated currencies. That’s in addition to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway, the U.K., and six European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal. And customers can now trade in 13 foreign currencies.

Jim Burton, president of Fidelity’s brokerage services, says of the expanded offerings, “I like to think of this as proof of our commitment to continuing to make user-friendly services available to people.”

Burton thinks that, in general, most investors should have 30% of their stock portfolio in international equities, in order to benefit from diversification and tap into growth advantages.

There are a number of ways to attain that 30%, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, and American depositary receipts (ADRs).

ETFs and mutual funds are, by far, the easiest ways to get into international markets. Many ETFs have the advantage of being optionable as well, allowing the investor to generate additional income through covered calls, among other strategies.

Access to ADRs can get tricky; although approximately 1,500 international firms have ADRs available for trading—mostly over the counter—not all brokerages allow access to all of them.

We’ve seen online brokers expand their international-trading capabilities significantly in the past few years. Interactive Brokers, which focuses on very active traders only, was the first major online retail broker to let its customers trade internationally, and still has the widest range of international offerings www.interactivebrokers.com).

Fidelity customers who hold non-retirement brokerage accounts can check out the international trading details by selecting “Accounts & Trade” on the top-level home-page menu, then click “International Trading” to see the offerings displayed. Click those you’re interested in, and you should get a message saying that your account is ready for international trading. Fidelity does require that you chat with one of its international trading specialists prior to placing your first international stock-trade or currency-exchange order, to see if you’ve understood the educational information on international trading and are aware of the risks.

So, once the switch is flipped, you can trade straight through to any of the 17 marketplaces, in either the local currency or in dollars.

If you prefer to use the local currency, Burton says you have a number of choices in foreign exchange. For example: If you want to trade on Mexico’s bourse, but you hold only dollars, you can convert some to pesos (fees are sliding-scale, and lower-percentage for bigger transactions) to make the trades, or just to hold the currency. Or if you want to buy one or two positions and don’t want to hold excess foreign currency, you can hold the position in dollars. When you exit the position, you can exit to dollars or hold pesos.

Fidelity’s international trading platform also lets you hold foreign currencies—even if you don’t trade in those markets. Unlike many forex brokerages, however, Fidelity doesn’t allow the use of leverage. That reduces your risk considerably—but also can dampen your gains. Says Fidelity’s Burton: “What you’re paying [for foreign-exchange transactions] is basically a fee, which we think is very reasonable, on top of the interbank rate.”

Costs range from about $14 to $40 per trade, net of currency exchange, depending on the market. Burton notes, “There’s a lot of plumbing here, so $14 to $40 is very reasonable, I think, for all the work to execute and settle a trade.” To keep trading costs down, he recommends limiting your number of currency conversions.

You’ll find a great deal of information about Fidelity’s international offering at www.fidelity.com/internationaltrading.

Bon voyage!

WE’VE SEEN LOTS OF INNOVATION from Barron’s 2011 online-broker survey winner, TradeStation (www.tradestation.com). And many of its new offerings appear to be aimed at the mainstream trading market.

We’ve long thought of TradeStation as a great place for very frequent traders to back-test their strategies on its huge database. Now, TradeStation is aiming to bring less-experienced traders into the fold without abandoning the needs of the established customer base. These projects include a first-time user’s walk-through on their recently (and now, seamlessly) redesigned Website, and one-on-one sessions with customer-service representatives who will help newbies use its extensive tool kit.

Another area where TradeStation has improved its offerings is in portfolio reporting. After acquiring the technology from Rina Systems in 2010, a new feature called Portfolio Maestro—a portfolio-testing and optimization tool—was launched. Portfolio Maestro considers the overall performance of all of your holdings across asset classes, and offers risk assessment and optimization to help you improve your game.

Most trading-strategy optimizers consider a single item at a time, such as a stock, an options strategy or a forex pair. Portfolio Maestro considers portfolio-wide constraints, such as funds committed to other investments, to help protect profits and limit downside risk. The resulting reports can be viewed in a variety of tabular or graphical formats. The goal of acquiring Portfolio Maestro and incorporating it into the TradeStation platform was to offer traders a realistic and complete perspective on their portfolios. It’s worth a look.

E-mail:
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