New Custom Asset Classes Risk & Return?

Question

I love the new ability to add custom asset classes. I always hated how Quicken had equities only divided into small cap stocks and large cap stocks. I do total market index funds so I wanted a category that simply said "US Stocks".

Finally I can do that. However, it doesn't let me add the expected risk and return for that class (not that I've seen, anyway). so the Investing tab has 'Unknown' under those for the target asset allocation.

Is there a way to fix that?

Bob_L · Answer

I agree with your point, though it begs the larger question of how to calculate expected returns and risks for the entire portfolio.  In the past, the expected return and risk used to be provided by Newport. I had always assumed that it was done using Modern Portfolio Theory, though that was never explicitly spelled out.  (As I am sure you know, MPT return and risk is more complex than just a weighted average)

As you suggest, providing users the ability to enter expected risk and expected variances for the default classes and the custom classes would be better than what is now the case.  Quicken could then provide a weighted average expected return and weighted average expected variance.  While this would be superior to what we now have, I personally would have preferred to stay with the default cases, assuming that someone like Newport would provide expected returns and risks using  MPT.  However, it could be  that this became too expensive or was no longer offered by Newport.