How Do I Create Custom Assets in Monte Carlo?

ESPlanner allows you to define new assets in the Monte Carlo. You can use the pre-set or "canned" asset classes that more or less match your investments, or you can define your own assets, which we refer to as a "New Asset."

In entering a new asset we request three pieces of information: the nominal return you expect to earn on the asset (the nominal return is the return before any adjustment for inflation), the variance of the asset's real return relative to the variance of the real (inflation adjusted) return on large cap stocks, and beta (the covariance of the asset's real return with the real return on large cap stocks divided by the variance of the real return on large cap stocks).

Use this Excel spreadsheet to input your nominal returns and we'll calculate the relative variance and Beta for you.

Also see:
The care and feeding of user defined assets

Google Finance, Yahoo, Bloomberg, Fidelity, and Morningstar are examples of websites that report the average annual return. You will need to use one of these, or better yet--your fund company website--to find the historical annual return for as many years as you can. Click here to see how Yahoo, for example, reports a .14 percent annual return over five years on the fund FUSEX.