Our universe data provides a good reference point that investors can use to gauge the peer-group relative performance of an investment. Our universe performance data is displayed in tabular form and shows the “breakpoints” in the distribution of returns within a universe over the stated time period. The standard breakpoints we use are the 5th, 25th, 50th (or median), 75th, and 95th percentiles. Our use of the 5th and 95th percentile cut-offs means that we exclude the extreme performance outliers.

Our proprietary universes cover the major public market asset classes in which our clients invest: Canadian Equities, Fixed Income, and foreign equity universe, consisting of the International, Emerging Market, Global, and U.S. Universes.

Eckler’s universe calculations are based on self-reported rates of return from active investment managers that submit their data through our third party database service. We scrub the data coming through this third party provider and remove those investment managers and products that we believe are not representative of viable institutional investment products for the prescribed universe. For example, there are a number of Canadian equity products submitted to the third party that contain a significant allocation to foreign equities and which were designed for the retail market. This would be one type of product excluded from our proprietary Eckler Canadian Equity Universe.