Operating Instructions

Highly-original Research

Investors RouteMap provides investment strategies globally, that are otherwise available only partially or not at all. These include our composite indicators of investment sentiment, measures of fair value, seasonal trading patterns and top-down EPS forecasts. Every investment possibility designed to be comparable against every other through our inter-active online delivery system.

Analysing Markets

This is how to use our government bond, foreign currency and stock market timing system once you have subscribed for our asset allocation software - Go to the RouteMap for whichever class of asset interests you. Once logged-in you, select the radio button to find a set of summary Tables to check the latest rating for every Country or Region based on a variety of investing strategies. To obtain a fact sheet on any particular country, select Profiles. There is also a Slide Show to help you review a collection of similar charts quickly and do your own portfolio management efficiently using our software.

Subscription Section

The set of radio buttons let you choose global investing strategies that suit you.

• Tables are often a good way to start reviewing your investments, because these list all the countries and regions, giving our current Best Guess, using each of our investing strategies, or summarise important historical information, like year-to-date performance and key events.

• Once you have identified a country, region or investment style that interests you, if you want to check out its key investment characteristics, this can be done in Profiles. This section provides a fact sheet on each country or region, covering politics, economics and markets.

• Having identified a suitable country, region or style, and familiarised yourself with it, switch to Charts to analyse its merits, using up to nine different investment strategies. A full set of explanations and descriptions can be found in Chart Library.

Creating Charts

The Chart Menu provides a set of four standardised investment parameters.

• Country: The market timing options include 38 countries and 12 regional groups aggregating them using our specially developed family of P/T market indexes.

• Chart Type: For each asset class there are different investment tools, each analysing a key ratio, for which there is sufficiently widespread data to make international comparisons.

• Timescale: Having looked at the long-term charts to identify patterns, you can focus in on the shorter term chart to look closely at the current situation.

• Investment Perspective: There are three aspects to market timing, designed to meet differing needs.

1. Local Currency option to see how it appears to domestic investors.

2. A common currency basis in US Dollars for international investors.

3. Relative to the World to pick the best performers.

In addition the Styles RouteMap includes a fifth drop down menu called Styles for analysing investment fashions. These include Growth, Value, SmallCaps, Technology, Gold and Resources, Real Estate, Health Care and Finance.

To find out more, take a trip to Demoland for Styles, an investment theme park to give you the feel for the real thing. Similar trips are available for Bonds, Forex and Stock Markets and to choose among these asset classes.

Standardisation makes comparisons easy. Simply eyeball the data by keeping three parameters the same, while you change the fourth. For example, having chosen Chart Type, Investment Perspective and Timescale, the axes will have the same meaning as you switch from one country to another. Then, having identified the country you find most interesting, you could keep the Country parameter the same, while choosing a different Chart Type for successive selections in order to analyse different arguments for or against investing there. Charts for each market show the complete history of market timing signals using either liquidity or momentum-based international investment strategy as well as valuation ratios.  

Slide Show

This enables you to automate the process by flipping through a selection of similar charts at whatever speed suits you. Hold three investment parameters constant and vary the fourth. Selections will appear in the order in which they are shown in the drop-down lists. For Countries and Regions, that is to say alphabetically within each region, followed by the relevant regional index, before moving on to the next region and ending with various global aggregates at the end.

Ranking Tables

There are also summary tables to help you with market timing decisions for government bond, foreign currency or stock market timing round the world. These list the countries available in each asset class according to various investment criteria that reflect the types of chart available for that asset class. At the top level, there is a summary table showing Best Guesses for each country or region, based on combining up to eight trend and valuation strategies. Then there are tables for each one of our investing strategies. There are also tables that alert you to key events - a diary of influential occasions in the year to date and an calendar of upcoming elections. Where appropriate, there are separate tables according to the different investment perspectives.

Statistical Note

Don't expect Investors RouteMap to provide complete coverage. This may be because not all the data is available for all the countries over the whole time period.   Data may not exist, or if it does, only be available for a limited period. Data may not be meaningful for part of the time in some countries because of hyperinflation, or other reasons.