Marco,
Would the RIA venture consider licensing Designer Models? Since you have full visibility into them (i.e. they’re not black boxes), they could be prevalidated for soundness and appropriateness. That business model would be somewhat like what Quantopian is doing.
And I’m not sure what a proper fee would be, but 0.35% sounds too low. Is that sufficient for sustaining a business? When it comes to investing I don’t believe that low fees signal credibility.
Walter
Merryl Edge was in a drop down menu for linking brokers, I believe.
Alphafolio might run into some performance guarantee legal issues, though Alpha Architect seems to have avoided lawsuits so far.
Maybe y’all should just be “Salerno & Gerstein”. Sounds like a vicious investment bank that would have a logo of snakes wrapped around gold coins. I’ll keep brainstorming for ya! 
I’m telling you, every time I tell people I use P123 they look at me like I must be using something cheap-ish, childish, or dangerously naive, and basically not ‘the best’. Pretty much the opposite of P123 - expensive ultra high quality quant capabilities built on the most expensive data.
When I think of firms managing billions or trillions (like P123 Advisor obviously should be), their name is an idea that people associate with solidity, power, and seriousness or simply names of people. Definitley, not children’s toy blocks. Maybe you should go with something having to do with Chicago.
I think the marketing angle of bringing lay people up to the highest quality, as opposed to bringing the highest quality down to their ‘123’ level, would be a better stratagem.
-Ebenezer
Walter - models can’t be validated for soundness, and if P123 thought they could, they would be opening themselves up for liability if/when they lose money.
EbenezerScrooge → I second that strongly, P123 Needs a better Name, whenever I talk to People they stop listening at “I am using a quant platform portfolio123” whatever I say afterwards is overheard. I sounds like a Portfolio tracker (the once that we used in 2000 to track Performance)…
My firm I will found in a year will be called QuantScale, I am ready to give that Name up and “give” it to p123 
or
Salerno & Gerstein QuantScale Inc.
Regards
Andreas
by the way, I still can not logg into the new Website…
Amazon.com? Yahoo! BlackBerry: a fruit. Really?
Even International Business Machines. That’s pretty lame for computers if you think about it. Big Blue is better—for UK basketball.
I DO LIKE VIRGIN AIRLINES. But what does that have to do with airplanes? Still: VirginQuant? Hmmm… Probably too close to home for the best quants.
Facebook, Twitter……
There is a lesson to be learned about what people pick out to be critical-of and what is given a pass. It is a big part of the reason objective investing works, I think. But that is another story.
I honestly do not care either way. But even now Portfolio123 is above the median (good) of the lesser-lame names.
Ebenezer Scrooge. Now that is a good name.
If you do change your name, I like Abacus (okay, taken), then NanoAbacus (or some such modification). Mostly I just liked Abacus, however.
-Jim
The worst ever ? How about using words like “micro” (small, tiny) and “soft” (limp, flaccid) ?
I’ve disliked that name for a long time. But my real problem was that windows was just terrible until windows 7.
judgetrade
We’re trying to see exactly what the problem is with a couple users not being able to log in.
Can you tell us exactly what page you get the error on and what the exact error is?
Are you using a password manager? If so, can you try opening an private/incognito window and try logging in without the manager enabled?
thanks
ted
QuantScale is pretty good. Or perhaps “Inefficient Markets.com” or “Weighing Machine”.
This is pretty strong indictment of how bad it is. 
I have had the same experience as Judge Trade - I’ll be telling people I do ‘various strategies’ and I ‘mine the data’ and test it for ‘robustness’ and ‘figure out what worked in the past’ and they are fascinated and then I say “P123” and their face goes ‘limpid’, ‘flaccid’ and they seem to begin to think their guy at Stifel, or Morgan, or Merrill, of Fidelity must be up to the same thing when, in my experience, they are likely morons who used to sniff glue in grade school.
Abacus is a cool name. Nano Abacus… not so much.
I think most P123 users are highly technical people - and I think designing your own strategy even if it is simple would most appeal to micro manager types - the dentists, the doctors, the engineers. Perhaps, a name that references physics somehow would be good. I’m guessing a lot of users liked ‘the green box’. Something Physics -y or Geometry -y.
I couldn’t disagree with this more. I think the lesson to be learned is that P123 has a few hundred users or a few thousand, while Fidelity and Morgan Stanley are directing trillions of assets using inefficient, interest mis-aligned, cap weighting and the slickness of their brand - Not even bothering to screen out companies with enormous debt and no profits. I’ve never had a friend respond, “oh, I want to own companies with no profits and enormous debts”. Even friends who are doing the Bogle. Why is that not selling better for P123?
I focus on the name because I think P123 doesn’t much need improvement on the data side of things. Usability is good. I think it’s just about as easy as it can or should be. If you really want to lower the bar then gving the “one to five click user” what he wants is the way to go - that would be P123 Advisor (with a slicker name). Just do it all for them. That is the mass market.
The new pricing terms are very good. If you can get the watchlist crowd coming to P123 everyday because it’s free, then very gradually they will learn the research language. That, I think, is a stroke of genius. Be better than Yahoo finance and the new horrible google finance. Get people checking their watchlists and looking up PE ttm ratios for free and gradually they’ll get curious about doing things better.
P123 really needs cursors that move up and down charts and which read out the ratios and prices at the cursor. You need to catch yahoo finance, google finance, and y charts on that. CME has spectacular moving charts. Those might be a little overboard though.
A cursor that ‘rides’ the chart is best. The magnet cursor.
There has to be some javascript package for cursors following lines and reading out y values. The mass market loves little things that bounce and move. ‘Poofs’ when things are deleted from watchlists. The new backtest completion bar is good. More satisfying than %s.
“Scrooge and Marley” would be a great name, albeit a little playful.
-Ebenezer
Ebenezer,
I was not really kidding about anything—just names after all.
Including I like Ebinezer Scrooge: unique and hard to forget. With a laughing picture (so meant to be light).
Not sure I wouldn’t laugh and say “pretty cool” if I heard about a site called VirginQuant either but I definitely have no complaints about the airline name.
And I took my own shot at another name suggestion in the unlikely event that Portfolio123 changes its name.
Best,
-Jim
I echo the opinion of all other users, P123 is a terrible name that doesn’t fit with how amazing P123 is as a backtesting platform.
I for one never though p123 is an inferior name/brand. I like the sound of it! Don’t change it.
Looking forward to European data 
Really like the clean look of the new site.
But did the current Models>My Subscriptions view get dropped? I liked this view because one could list subscribed & watch models along with the Benchmarks (Dow; SP500; SP500w/Div; etc.) to see absolute performance over the 3Mo, 1Yr, 2Yr periods. I personally use that view as a quick comparison to my actual performance which I keep separate from P123.
I see the Invest>Models>Designer Models view which is good, but I get relative (excess) returns for 3Mo; 1Yr; 2Yr periods to their chosen benchmark. Not quite the same cut of data as the other view.
David
Does anyone know why the new site is producing the following message when attempting to run the Optimizer?
Study Aborted! class base.ConStack accessed incorrectly
The old site does not produce this message.
Thank you.
Hugh
I agree. I think Portfolio123 is a good name.
It might be interesting to do a little poll on the name; simply, is it good or bad. You could have two polls. One for subscribers and another on a sample of all those trial accounts that don’t convert. I’m guessing current users would rate much more highly, because they love p123. And others would rate lower, perhaps alarmingly lower, because they don’t have any positive associations with P123 yet.
It might also be good to start a forum about renaming where people can submit suggestions. Maybe, I’ll do that.
I have said above that Portfolio123 is a good name and one could do a lot worse (e.g., Microsoft, LOL). No change in opinion now.
But as long is we are dreaming:
[color=indigo]Ensemble[/color]
This has multiple layers of meaning:
First, it has a high-end feeling/association from the musical meaning.
It has a rich machine-learning meaning with bagging, boosting and stacking being types of ensembles. Note that P123 uses ensembles. Using multiple nodes in a ranking system is just one clear example. But it is not just a quant thing.
The meaning can be generalized to having a diverse portfolio–with the elements working together–which everyone agrees with: Qaunts to Mom-and-Pops. And again, the diversity association hits at many emotional levels.
Ensemble is already taken.
Something like [color=indigo]EnsembleInvesting[/color] is really good, IMHO.
The robo-advisor would then recommend an ensemble of portfolios: [color=indigo]RoboEnsemble[/color]
I don’t think it would be going too far to give the investment styles a “color palate.” If you do then make market-timing black–for Black Art;-) It would definitely attract the women investors who really control the money (and make the money) today. More correctly, it would appeal to anyone who does not identify with being color blind—which turns out to be people with a Y-chromosome for the most part. Ensemble presently has meaning with regard to fashion (and therefore color). You would definitely have a [color=seagreen]Green[/color] hue for socially conscious investments.
You could recommend Quartettes and Trios of investments. AND you could STACK those investments to keep it serious in a true quantitative sense. Stacking (a type of ensemble) would be easy and would be a true advancement—in addition to the stacking that is already being done at P123.
Probably call one stacking option that is already in place at P123: The [color=darkblue]BookStack[/color]
The current users will know where to find us (and I assume there would be a link) after any name change. So I am not totally against a great name. But it has to be great.
You could just stay with Portfolio123 and be making a good choice, I think. But if EnsembleInvesting is not taken……………
Note: [color=indigo]EnsembleIQ[/color] “For the intelligent quantitative investor” keeps the highbrow feel without having to add 123 at the end.
FWIW
-Jim
This Jim fella has the right idea!
EnsembleInvesting is really nice.
RoboEnsemble with trios and quartets could serve the P123 advisor very well.
Ensemble Invest sounds like something ABOVE and BEYOND what your local Merrill or Morgan or TD Ameritrade broker/advsior might do for you, as opposed to P123 which sounds like you’d better off with anyone calling themselves an advisor and saying we manage trillions.
A Trio:
Pick a US strategy.
Pick a Bond strategy.
And pick a European strategy (when you all sort out the data)!
Machine Learning is a great place to look for names if P123 decision makers don’t like Ensemble Invest.
Though I hear it’s not a good business strategy to slam your competitors, I think P123 would be well served to take a shot at the passive crowd - “Why own an index fund with companies that are losing money? Let’s buy them all except the ones that don’t make money and are at risk of going bankrupt … Try Index Plus Quartet at EnsembleInvest.com” - Even Bogle heads would be into that. It’s hard to argue with the logic!
Or:
“Did you know your local firm uses cap weighting because it is advantageous for THEM, allowing them to push their assets under management into the trillions, when they know equal weighting WOULD be advantageous for you! - indeed the primary advantage of the broke guy like you. Read this white paper.”
-Ebenezer
Hi all,
Going back to the original feedback question re: the alpha site…
After a 30-min browsing session:
Sleek modern-looking design. Very well done. Great progress there.
Under the top bar / Invest / Stocks → Would suggest adding in the drop-down menu all the shortcuts to the sub-items available in stocks such as prices (https://alpha.portfolio123.com/app/stock/prices)
When I click on invest / portfolios, there is no way to add a portfolio from research. Is that intended?
Once research is over, how does one move a strategy to the invest part of the site?
Through :
Can I confirm that it will still be possible to use a live portfolio via research / live strategies the same way it works today?
Specifically, that the rebalance buy/sell orders and $ amounts will still be accurate?
This is out of concern from Marco’s initial comment “Everything in Research is just a model, the $ amounts of positions are irrelevant and might as well just be expressed in weights.”
For me the $ amount are very relevant (real money)
I would keep a link to system status up top on the main navigation bar (1-click access) as it is today. I always check it before rebalancing. The Alpha burries it under research / Data.
clicking on connect / contact us loses the top main navigation bar. It should not (I think)
Thanks,
Jerome