California-based Barra has introduced a new financial risk assessment tool for retail brokerages and investors.
The Risk Factor product allows stockbrokers, investment advisors and other retail investment professionals to compare the relative volatility, or risk, of an individual stock. The browser-based tool produces a simple, comparative risk number for more than 10,000 publicly-traded US stocks. The Risk Factor result, which is based on Barra's multiple factor model calculations, places any stock in a percentile ranking and compares its risk to its industry, sector or the broad market.
Joe Lanza, head of the Risk Factor product effort at Barra, explains: "Risk Factor is a tailored version of Barra's industry-leading risk valuation models developed for investment professionals serving the retail market."
ILX Systems, a global provider of real-time equity terminals, is one of the first to adopt Barra Risk Factor. The company will integrate and distribute Risk Factor to its 160,000 retail broker subscribers.
Bernie Weinstein, president & chief executive officer of ILX Systems, says: "With a comparative risk number, we are able to provide our clients with new content that can assist in their decision-making process."