Lesson 3 of 4 · All lessons in this module
  1. Why the GIPS standards exist and who benefits
  2. Who can claim compliance, and the key concepts
  3. Composites: no cherry-picking
  4. Defining the firm, discretion and verification

Lesson 3 of 4 · 10 min

Composites: no cherry-picking

A composite pools every actual, fee-paying, discretionary portfolio run to the same mandate, so a firm's record for a strategy cannot be built from its best accounts alone.

In short

  • A composite is an aggregation of one or more portfolios managed to a similar investment mandate, objective or strategy.
  • Purpose: stop cherry-picking, i.e., using the best-performing accounts to represent a strategy.
  • A composite must include all actual, fee-paying, discretionary portfolios managed to that strategy, including those managed to it in the past.
  • Membership is set by pre-established (ex ante) criteria, never chosen after seeing results (ex post).
  • Every fee-paying discretionary segregated account must be in at least one composite; fee-paying discretionary pooled funds go into any composite whose definition they meet.

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