Down-Market Capture Ratio

  

Investment managers have a singular goal: make money. But it doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's because the manager put all the firm's money into Fyre Festival 2. Other times, the manager is invested in the market when the entire market goes down, and she shoulda held cash. The general market drops and the fund loses money along with everyone else.

In those times, when the fund loses money because the general market is down, how do you know whether a fund manager did a good job or not? They lost money. But everyone lost money.

You need some kind of benchmark. Enter the Down-Market Capture index. It provides a way to measure the performance of a fund manager when the overall market is down. It's a kind of relative strength index or relative performance metric.

Every fund has a benchmark index. You run a fund that invests in technology stocks. To figure out whether or not you're doing a good job, you compare your performance to an index fund that tracks the overall technology space, something like the Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector Index. (And you had better beat that number consistently, because index funds are cheap for the investor...like 0.3% or so a year to manage versus a mutual fund paying your fat fee of 1% or more a year.)

To see how you did, you compare how your fund performed compared to the performance of the Nasdaq-100 Tech index. If the Nasdaq-100 fell 7% and your fund only fell 5%, you did all right. If your fund fell 10%, then maybe you should consider going back to law school.

Here's how you figure out the Down-Market Capture Index. Take your performance and the performance of the benchmark. Figure out the ratio between the two. Multiply the answer by 100. If the answer is above 100, you beat the market. If the answer is below 100, you'll need to fix your performance, or your clients will start looking elsewhere.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What Are ETFs?275 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop shmoop what are efs Well first this

00:07

is the random financial terms you want to be asked

00:10

in the financial term spelling bee and second you should

00:13

know that e t f stands for exchange traded fund

00:18

f's are kissing cousins of index funds with one key

00:22

subtle but important difference f don't change at least generally

00:26

speaking an index fund might reflect the transportation industry and

00:31

have so much exposure to ford gm united airlines tesla

00:35

etcetera But it's required tohave say sixty five percent of

00:39

its exposure to companies based in the united states in

00:42

its charter every month that index fund has to re

00:46

balanced that exposure So if the auto companies do very

00:49

poorly in a given month index fund has to re

00:53

balance by buying mohr shares of those auto companies to

00:56

make up the difference you know given that they've performed

00:59

poorly relative toa airlines trucking company's railroads jeff howard segways

01:03

and so on But in a t f the fund

01:06

is basically set once and the shares just really kind

01:10

of float if over a decade the auto companies do

01:13

really well then in an e t f the auto

01:16

companies will just have a dominant influence on the overall

01:19

performance of the fund The management company doesn't have to

01:23

buy and sell shares regularly in an e t f

01:25

till fulfill the legal promises it agreed to at the

01:28

outset of the fund in the way in index fund

01:31

re balances its shares by buying and selling them So

01:34

what does that mean to you Well it means that

01:36

fc may drift in given directions like this guy For

01:40

example a generic technology e t f might have had

01:43

a total exposure of say five percent to internet stocks

01:47

in the beginning of nineteen ninety seven but amazon ebay

01:50

yahoo netflix and a well performed massively better than the

01:54

broader technology market which did well but just not omg

01:58

dot com well so that five percent waiting twenty years

02:02

later might be more like fifty percent or mohr of

02:05

that particular e t f but one other key aspect

02:08

of it is that it's traded like a stock i

02:11

e in one block and trade throughout the day there's

02:15

a bid and an ask price The bids are all

02:18

added up and shares in the fund can be bought

02:20

And sold at any time throughout the day Although the

02:23

market sets the price of an f just like it

02:25

does on a stock Well there now you're all ready

02:28

for the financial term spelling bee And they might also

02:31

ask you to spell lipo Yeah you might want to 00:02:33.69 --> [endTime] write that one on your arm

Up Next

Finance: What's the Difference Between Mutual Funds and Index Funds?
121 Views

What is the difference between mutual funds and index funds? Mutual funds are professionally managed. Those investors trade shares and realize taxa...

Finance: How Do You Judge the Performance of an Index Fund?
132 Views

How do you judge the performance of an index fund? For index funds, they're really just a reflection of the stocks and bonds they, uh... reflect. S...

Finance: What Are Mutual Funds?
189 Views

What are mutual funds? Mutual funds are an aggregation of stocks, professionally managed for a "small" fee. Investors wanting exposure to a given a...

Finance: What are Different Types of Mutual Funds?
20 Views

What are the different types of mutual funds? There are many different types of mutual funds, including bond funds, equity funds, money market fund...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)