Mark Hulbert calculates advisers’ track records by buying when they say “buy” and selling when they say “sell”—and letting the chips fall where they may.

The track records reported in the scoreboards linked below were calculated by the Hulbert Financial Digest through January 2016, using the performance tracking methodology described here. The track records since January 2016 were calculated by Hulbert Ratings LLC using the identical methodology.

Here’s a guide to the data in the columns that appear in each of our performance scoreboards:

• Newsletter: For each newsletter we calculate the average return of all its individual portfolios that are, or have been, tracked. These averages appear in ALL CAPS. Clicking on any newsletter’s name will open a new window in your browser displaying the home page of that newsletter’s website.
• Portfolio: In addition to the newsletter’s overall average, we also report the return of each of its individual portfolios that are being monitored
• Return: Returns for all periods longer than one year are annualized
• Risk: This reflects the volatility of a newsletter’s performance, as measured by the standard deviation of its monthly returns. Higher numbers reflect greater volatility and risk.
• Sharpe Ratio. This is a measure of risk-adjusted performance. Higher numbers mean that the adviser did better in relation to the amount of risk he/she incurred. We calculate the Sharpe Ratio using monthly data, and then annualize it by multiplying by the square root of 12.