As an investment professional, you know there is more than one way to look at risks and returns. Many investment products help you to manage portfolios using traditional variables such as P/E ratios, dividend yield, and company size. But intuition probably tells you that inflation, interest rates, real GNP growth, and stock market sentiment are at least as important in determining stock market prices.

Now there is a way to take into account the economy-wide surprises that arise from unexpected changes in these macroeconomic forces. The BIRR Risks and Returns Analyzer is a sophisticated PC-based set of portfolio management tools that answers all of the traditional investment questions. But BIRR also allows you to answer questions such as these:

What stocks are most sensitive to inflation surprises? How can I pick stocks that will have superior performance if I believe that there will be a surprise increase in the economy's growth rate?

How can I use my own stock selection methods, picking stocks that I believe will achieve superior performance, and still control for economy-wide surprises so that my portfolio's volatility will match that of my benchmark?

How can I achieve an optimal asset allocation that does not entail more interest rate risk than the S&P 500?

Our software also allows you to evaluate the performance of mutual funds and to find an optimal mix of mutual funds that meets your tolerances for exposures to economy-wide surprises in interest rates, inflation, real economic growth, and market sentiment.