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Rita offers 24 factors from which you can choose to weight by importance to your investment goals. The following definitions specify how Rita uses each of these factors in helping you make the best choices for your investment goals.
(Actual) Performance Factor Weightings are the weightings applied to the performance factors when calculating the scoring of the mutual funds. These weighting are shown within parentheses () so that it’s clear which type of weighting is displayed. These weightings are calculated from the relative performance factor weightings and the overall weightings of the applications slider control.
Annualized Standard Deviation (ASD) is a volatility measure associated with risk, lower values are more desirable as a measure of risk. But overall volatility cut both ways and higher values can reflect higher “upside volatility” related to higher returns.
Assets Under Management (A.U.M.) are the total assets managed by the fund, higher numbers are preferred when identifying manager where more money is being invested.
Downside Deviation is like ASD, but it’s only a measure of downside (risk-related) volatility; lower numbers are preferred as a risk adverse measure.
Expense Ratio is an annual fee expressed as percentage of assets deducted, lower fees are preferable.
Focus is a percentage of the fund’s assets allocated to its top 10 holdings, if trying to minimize systematic risk, lower numbers are preferred as it represents more diversification in assets.
Manager Tenure is the number of years the current manager has been managed the portfolio.
Relative Performance Factor Weightings are calculated relative to the other performance subfactors within the same category of Return, Risk, and Miscellaneous. These weightings help define the importance of the performance subfactors factors relative to each other.
Return Performance Factors are total returns that are annualized if they cover 12 months or more.
Turnover Rate is the percentage assets replaced on an annual basis, higher turnover rates could generate taxable short-term capital events, so lower rates may be preferred.
Yield is reported for income generating funds over a 12-month period.
12b-1 Fees are included in expense ratio, but are a distribution & marketing fee component.
Rita is accessible from most modern browsers and devices. However, the reduced screen sizes of mobile phones may make viewing more challenging.
There are two main panels within Rita – the search panel, and the analysis panel.
The first step is to use the search screen for finding the funds to evaluate. Using words separated by spaces, the Rita searches for the names of mutual funds and ETFs that contain all listed words.
In the image above, the word “large” was typed, to find all funds with large in the name, then “column” was added to narrow the list to Columbia funds. The order of the words isn’t relevant.
Also, searching using a ‘ticker symbol’ will find the oldest fund share class within a funds’ family, however, a ticker symbol may not match exactly. The oldest fund share class is used to analyze the funds longest performance history. A list of ticker symbols separated by commas, will allow you to enter multiple mutual funds and ETFs for analysis.
Once your search list has been typed in, selecting funds for analysis is simple. Click the fund names, and they will be added to an asset class category listing, as shown here: 
Click the Gray Gear Icon on the right side of the green bar of a fund.
Clicking the Grey Gear Icon of a category will open a new analysis screen in your browser, with all your listed fund(s) highlighted within a scored and ranked table.
Revisiting the search panel tab and clicking the Grey Gear Icon of a different fund will open an additional browser tab for each category, so that it is possible to review multiple asset classes.
The analysis panel above is a fully interactive interface, that instantly scores and ranks the mutual funds and ETFs within the asset class.
This panel will default to showing the top-10 scored funds, with a total of 6 default performance factors (3 return-related and 3 risk-related factors).
Rita defaults to showing the oldest share type of the selected mutual fund, so you may not find the specific share class you are searching for, but rather a representative of that fund with the longest performance history.
There can be minor difference in performance depending on the specific share classes, and the fees charged for each share class.
Consequently, in making any final investment decision, you should always perform a qualitative due diligence review which should always include a review of the various share classes available, so you can select the one that is “best” for you.
The Factor hamburger menu icon, in the upper left corner, will open a left side panel of return, risk, and miscellaneous factors, pictured below, that can be selected and weighted for use in your comparative analysis of investment choices. There are currently 24 performance factors available for selection.
The colors of the factors represent the categories they belong to, green for Return-related factors, red for Risk-related factors, blue for Miscellaneous factors.
Clicking the Factor Name will toggle that factor on / off.
Factors that are toggled “on” will start with the weighing / signal level meter at 3 bars (just like your cell phone signal level indicator) which is a relatively “Important” state.
Clicking the Signal Meter will increase the Importance of the performance factor to the highest signal (5 bars) and then, with one more click, back to zero (0) bars.
Continuous clicking will rotate through all six relative importance settings.
The Signal Meter: There are 5 possible degrees of importance in this application, and they are represented by the signal graphic seen in Figure 5. This range is defined from low to high:
Rita automatically figures out the relative percentile weightings.
A blank signal meter represents a zero weighting, and that factor is displayed for reference only in the table without any weighting or effect on the overall composite score.
Rita was designed to be used as a tool that individuals like you could use to quickly compare the overall performance of the mutual fund and ETF investments you have in your retirement savings plan or brokerage account.
The use of Rita will often reveal significant differences in the average annual returns of the funds you are holding versus those you could have selected.
These gaps in performance can prove to be significant over multiple year periods (e.g., 5 years and 3 years) and, often, with less risk and sometimes with lesser cost as well).
Some Limitations:
All funds are scored and ranked against peers based off an industry accepted classification scheme, however, it isn’t uncommon for outlier funds (potentially miss-classified funds) to show up in these groups.
Although the main slider can allocate an upper limit of 95% (not 100%) to any one category (e.g., Return, Risk or Misc.), turning off the factors within the other categories (or setting their sub-factor weightings to 0%, i.e. 0 bars for display) will achieve that 100% weighting on one category effect.
An investment advisor is, by law, a “fiduciary.” This means that he or she is subject to a statutory duty to act in his or her clients’ best interests.