About Us » Company Profile and History

Company Profile and History

EconomicInvestor is a creation of the Center for Computationally Advanced Statistical Techniques (c4cast.com, Inc.). c4cast was founded in 1998 and incorporated the next year, during an exciting time when the Internet seemed to promise instant success to any who rode the crest of the dot-com tsunami -- with or without a seaworthy idea. Many companies founded in those exciting times are gone, crashed on the economic shores when the tsunami crested. However, c4cast is still moving ahead, developing, testing, patenting, and implementing a range of diverse products and technologies.

We had an idea.  We saw the potential of the Internet and the ability of new generations of computers to gather and process information in creative ways which had never before been possible. EconomicInvestor, our first product to be released to the general public, is built on this foundation.

c4cast was founded by a team of financial experts, statisticians, computer scientists, economists and econometricians, led by finance professors G. Michael Phillips, Ph.D. and the late M. Chapman Findlay, Ph.D. (see bios). Perhaps it isn't surprising that we chose to apply our idea to investing first.

The uncertain world of investing, where a bit of well-founded foresight can translate into monetary gain, is a useful subject for testing the value of statistically driven forecasts. More importantly, our economists recognized that commonly accepted investing strategies weren't taking into account important economic information. In 1999 we set out to prove that The Economy Matters^® to stock prices.

Eta^® Analysis is the culmination of decades of academic research and consulting experience on the part of its inventors. Using technology that wasn't available to the "founding fathers" of traditional investment analysis, we were able to explain how the economy relates to investment values for assets including stocks, mutual funds, and many indices. We created an analytical platform that uses this information to gauge how current economic conditions can be expected to impact the short-term price fluctuations of individual investments. (For more information, please visit "What Makes Eta Analysis Unique" or "Eta Analysis: Behind the Scenes." )

During our initial development phase, we rigorously back-tested our model using data from the '70s and '80s. This process revealed which set of economic variables produced the best "predictions" of subsequent stock prices. These are now our 18 MacroRisk Factors.

Since that time, we have continued to discover more applications for our patented technology, and have developed new ways to use it over the Internet. We have built on our experience of providing these analytical services to major banks and Wall Street investment firms to find what we believe to be the best set of analytical tools relating the economy to individuals' portfolios.

At EconomicInvestor.com users can generate powerful reports, such as our MacroRisk Profile Report and Climate Rating Report, to appraise the economic risk of stocks, funds, or entire portfolios. Users can compare investments not only to traditional benchmarks, but to over 20,000 individual stocks, funds, and market indices. We also offer forms of traditional analysis, the Beta+ Report and Performance Report, to supplement our Eta Analysis tools - free of charge. To date, our research has resulted in nine issued patents, with more on the way.

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