Rita℠ is a web-based tool for rapidly comparing the overall performance of specific mutual funds and ETFs against all other available choices, in a way never before available to individual investors. Rita℠ is powered by Decision Technologies Corporation’s patented decision-assistance technology.

Rita℠ is designed for use by individual investors for their own personal investing. No commercial use of Rita℠ or use for the benefit of others (with or without compensation) is permitted. If you are an investment advisor, financial planner (CFP), or a securities broker and are interested in this newly available technology, there is a professional version of Rita℠ – the “ProRRT℠.” For more information about it, please click this ProRRT℠ link.

To get potentially much better investment results with much less expenditure of time. How much is your time worth to you, and could it be better spent doing something else than trying to comparatively evaluate thousands of investment choices without the proper tools to do so? Rita℠ will not only significantly improve your chances of identifying superior mutual fund and ETF choices, Rita℠ will dramatically reduce the time and increase the efficiency of your selection efforts. It will also help to protect you from unscrupulous operators trying to recommend or sell you something that’s better for them than for you. Use of Rita℠ will make you a much better-informed investor and that information will help you to better protect yourself from exploitation, conflicts of interest, and simply bad advice.

Rita℠ was designed to enable individual investors to rapidly see how their mutual funds and ETFs are performing in comparison with other available choices and to identify those that have proven best over time at producing the composite investment effects that you are seeking. Rita℠ was specifically designed to help you improve your investment results.

Rita℠ enables you to select from a total of 28 performance factors those that matter most to you. Rita℠ lets you weight them, in order of importance to you. This enables you to profile the ideal investment effect you are looking for within any covered asset class. Using that composite blend of weighted performance factors, you can score and rank literally hundreds of choices in a manner specific to your individual needs, goals and preferences, and you’ll be able to do so in mere moments. In other words, you will be able to objectively and transparently identify which mutual funds and ETFs have been the best over time at producing the composite investment results you are seeking.

Yes, we’ve received both U.S. and foreign patents on the unique, decision-assistance technology that powers Rita℠.

Better results. Why? Because, by using Rita℠, you will be seeing comparative mutual fund and ETF performance information that has never before been available to individual investors, and this will help you make better informed decisions about the mutual funds and ETFs you select or decide to keep or replace. Logically, better information leads to better decisions which lead to better results.

As you will see from your use of Rita℠, many (if not most) actively managed mutual funds are only “average” in their performance. Consequently, it’s not surprising that so many investors have moved to passive choices. There are, however, a number that consistently outperform passive index funds and ETFs over time. The problem is that, before the creation of Rita℠, it has been very difficult (if not practically impossible) to identify these relatively few truly superior actively managed mutual funds. This highlights the unique value of Rita℠. It was created specifically to objectively identify the best performing (highest scoring and ranking) mutual funds and ETFs within each asset class. And a significant number of those often dramatically outperform the passive investment choices in that class. Try it and see for yourself just how much better some of these are.

Lots . . . and there’s a very important reason why. How much time are you currently spending on investment selection and ongoing performance monitoring? Weeks? And how do you do it? For instance, how do you select from the over 600 mutual funds that fall within the “large cap growth” asset class? With Rita℠, here’s how you will be able to do it. Within mere minutes, you will be able to score and rank all 600+ using the weighted blend of performance parameters you select. You can then focus your qualitative due diligence (your personal research) on only the top 3-5. How much time would that save you, and how much is that saved time worth to you?

Not at this time.

No.  With the exception of the professional version of Rita℠ – the “Professional RapidReview Tool℠” (“ProRRT”) for professional investment advisors – there is no similar tool of which we are aware for individual investors. While performance data on mutual funds and ETFs exists and can be downloaded and manipulated, that might take you days and even weeks to do, assuming you have access to the data and the skills to do so.  In contrast, Rita℠ can enable you to perform that in mere moments. How much is your time worth to you?  We can pretty much be certain that it’s worth much vastly more than the modest cost of an annual subscription to use Rita℠.

Not exactly, because (as you likely know) past performance is no guarantee of future results. However, what we have found (from over a decade of testing and practical use with real clients and their investment dollars) is that choices lying within the top 1-2% (not the top 25% or even 10%) appear to have a higher degree of positive correlation between past and future performance.  In other words, they tend to remain “good” longer. Moreover, the regular use of the Rita™ reveals something that we believe no other methodology is capable of showing you – it provides an answer to this key performance monitoring question: “How did my choice do versus all of the other choices I could have selected?”  If your mutual fund or ETF starts to decline in rank, with Rita℠ you will now get to see which ones are moving up – all within the same asset class, with the same investment goals, and in the same market conditions.  This will help you avoid one of the principal causes of chronic underperformance: holding poor performing choices far too long.

Yes, it should, within every covered asset class.

In its present form, Rita℠ is only now being introduced and made available to individual investors. However, the patented decision-assistance technology which powers it has been tested, refined, and in use within an investment advisory environment for well over a decade.

They can’t use Rita℠ to give investment advice . . . Rita℠ can only be used for an investors own, personal investments.  But, investment advisors do have access to the technology through a much more expensive and more powerful professional application of this technology – Decision Technology Corporation’s “Professional RapidReview Tool℠” (“ProRRT℠”). But the ProRRT℠ has only recently been made available to securities brokers and investment advisors.  It has not yet gained wide acceptance and most have no idea that this type of technology and what it empowers them and their clients to do and see even exists.  It will likely come as a shock to most of them that their clients can now comparatively evaluate the mutual funds and ETFs that they are selling and/or recommending in this objectively transparent and powerful new way.  Will they adopt and use this technology?  We believe that they will.  The broad use of it by individual investors, like you, will likely force them to do so.  Why?  It’s because we believe few (if any) investment advisors can afford to have their clients know more about the relative performance of the investment choices they are recommending than they do?  To understand what we mean, click here for an explanation of we call “The Rita Effect.”

It might be wise to do so.  Why?  It’s because, if you are testing what your advisor is recommending (through your individual use of Rita℠), more thought and care may be devoted to the advice and recommendations being given to you.  You will also be in the unique (and never-before-possible) position to ask your broker or advisor, “Why are you recommending this one, rather than these others with composite (i.e., blended factor) performance that looks objectively better?”  If a broker or advisor knows that his or her client will be in a position to ask such a question, they’re likely going to do the extra work to have a reasonably logical answer (or risk losing you as a client).  In other words, even if your broker or advisor has licensed the ProRRT℠, do you have any way to know that they are actually using it?  If they are, they could show you online what factors they’ve used and what rankings it produced.  After all, the ProRRT℠, like Rita℠, is an online Tool.  Your use of Rita™ will help to ensure that the ProRRT℠ @l@lis being used to identify the “best” performers for further evaluation – i.e., for a next step “qualitative due diligence” review.

By using Rita℠, you’ve identified those mutual funds and ETFs that have proven best over time at producing the composite blend of investment results you are seeking.  That will permit you to narrow your focus to only the top 3 to 5 choices, for further research.  What type of research?  Well, thoroughly reviewing the information contained in the prospectus for each particular choice is important and should be done before a final investment decision is made.  A number of important things can be learned, which might convince you not to select even the highest scoring and ranked choice(s), including without limitation (and without any order of perceived priority or importance):

• Information about the management team, their qualifications, their investment strategy, and how long they’ve been together.• The makeup of the investment portfolio

.• Whether the strategy they say they are using matches with how the Rita℠ classifies their strategy;

• Whether there is any litigation affecting the fund or the management team.• A listing of the available share classes, so that you can select the one best for you: and,

• More.

One of the reasons that individual investors may wish to engage the services of an investment advisor (who is using the ProRRT℠) is to have someone (a professional) perform that qualitative due diligence for them.  However, there is no reason why you cannot do your own qualitative due diligence and read through prospectuses yourself.

Although such a calculation will depend on a number of factors specific to you, the “return” on your investment in Rita℠ could be quite significant. Here are several things to consider:

i. If, through use of the Rita℠, you can improve your investment results on $30,000 of investments by just 1% per year, you will have more than paid for your annual subscription, and (as you will soon see) it may be possible do much better than that.  How much could the RITA℠ improve the overall investment return of your portfolio? It is not uncommon to see performance gaps of over 6 – 8+ % in many equity asset classes and over 2+% in fixed income classes.

ii. And, just as important but harder to quantify, what’s your time worth? Rita℠ will save you a huge amount of time in researching mutual fund and ETF choices and monitoring their performance?

NO! On the contrary, Rita℠ delivers a completely independent, decision technology-based process with no marketing relationships or associations with any mutual fund and ETF companies. In fact, by transparently using pure performance factors to score and rank mutual funds and ETFs, Rita℠ effectively “filters out” all conflicts of interest, both known and unknowable. This is hugely important, since this will both improve your own mutual fund and ETF choices, Rita℠ will help to eliminate the fear that many individual investors legitimately have – that, because of pervasive conflicts of interest (including possible hidden incentive compensation arrangements for promoting particular funds and fund companies), recommendations coming from the traditional financial services industry may not be in their best interests (i.e., that they may be much better for those recommending than for the individual investor client).

The short answer is: To empower YOU, the individual investor!  The financial services marketplace has been “vendor dominated” since inception.  The vendors of mutual funds, ETFs, and other financial products simply don’t want individual investors to be able to comparatively evaluate their products and have a way to identify which others may be better than theirs.  If they had wanted you to have this information, Rita℠ -type capabilities, they would have developed and made available to individual investors long ago. . . . but they haven’t and are unlikely to ever voluntarily do so.  Why?  It’s simple, really.  If you have no way to independently to determine which investment choices are objectively best for you, then you simply have no power to avoid having that inability taken advantage of and used to your potential disadvantage . . . you would have no way to know if what is being recommended and sold to you is “best” for you or “best” for those recommending and selling it.

We’re fighting against the disempowering “status quo” of the financial services marketplace.  How?  We’re committed to giving you, an individual investor, the knowledge and, most importantly, the Tool needed to answer this key question for yourself: “Of all the available choices, which ones are best for me?”  In the process, we’re providing you with the ability to filter out all conflicts of interest, both known and unknowable, which could be corrupting the investment “advice” and recommendations you are being given and can degrade your investment results.  Have you suffered those ill effects?  Or, more concerningly, how would you know if you had?  Well, while you may never know for sure, one way to prevent being adversely impacted is to use Rita℠ to score and rank what has been sold or recommended to you and see it how it compares against other available choices.  You are quietly likely to be shocked at what will be revealed.

NO.  Some may be, but we believe the vast majority are likely good people, who care about their clients and want to do what’s best for them.  From our point of view, it’s not the individual brokers and advisors that are most often the problem, it’s “the system” . . . it’s the historic structure and culture of the vendor-dominated financial services industry and how it works.  Unfortunately, for many brokers and advisors working within it, they are as much “prisoners” and “victims” of that system as their customers and clients are.  For too many, they can only recommend what the firms that employ them allow them to recommend and sell, and how a mutual fund or other investment choice gets on that “approved list” is often not shared even with the firms’ own brokers and advisors, and that information is virtually never shared with customers and clients.

We’re fighting for an honest, transparent and fair financial services marketplace in which what is in the best interests of individual investors is the driving force and guiding principal in all that is done . . . in both structure and function.  Will the financial services marketplace provide this on its own?  No, we don’t believe it will . . . why would it?  If individual investors have no effective way of “vetting” or effectively questioning the recommendations and/or “advice” they are being given / if they have no way to comparatively evaluate what’s being recommended and sold to them against all other available choices, then individual investors effectively have no true power.  We’re working to empower individual investors, by transferring the balance of power from a vendor-dominated financial services marketplace into the hands of individual investors.

Probably not.  Why?  It’s because Reg. BI focuses on disclosure . . . requiring financial services firms to disclose if there are conflicts of interest.  What it doesn’t do is get rid of them entirely.  How does this disclosure of “conflicts of interest” often work, in practice?  You are simply given a disclosure document; are too often told that it’s simply another government required form that needs to be signed; and, there is likely no encouragement to read, discuss, or understand what’s in it.  There’s quite often the strong suggestion that you simply need to sign and get that out of the way, so they can get on with the business of selling or “advising.”  In stark contrast, by scoring and ranking your choices, using weighted blends of performance factors that you select, Rita™ effectively filters out all conflicts of interest, both known and unknowable.  That’s something current government regulations can’t do.

We believe the answer is “YES.” One reason is that securities brokers and investment advisors are subject to different standards of conduct.  Investment advisors are, by statute, “fiduciaries.”  That means that they have the duty to act in the “best interests” of their investor clients.  In contrast, securities brokers are not subject to any mandated “fiduciary duty.”  Instead, what they sell to their customers must only be “suitable.”  Therein lies the problem for smaller investors.  If individual investors don’t have enough investable assets to secure the advice of a registered investment advisor, they can still be “sold something” by a broker, who is under no obligation to “advise” them or to even sell them what is in their best interests (not the brokers’ best interests).  This is where the pervasive conflicts of interest – the behind the scenes deals, relationships, incentives to recommend one product over others – can really takes a toll.  But there’s now a way for smaller investors to pro-actively protect themselves from being sold inferior investment products . . . e.g., poor performing mutual funds (by brokers and brokerage firms financially or otherwise incented to sell them).  Now, with Rita℠, a small investor can plug in the mutual fund or ETF being recommended and score and rank it against all available, similar choices.  If it, for example, it scores 176 out of 600+ choices, and has underperformed the #1 ranked choice by (on average) 6+% per year for the last 5 years, with less volatility, and possibly even less cost, there is likely no way that that small investor is going to be convinced by a broker to purchase that recommended fund.  That whole business model – selling “stuff” to unknowledgeable investors, simply because one can / because there is no way for the “little” investor to independently evaluate the recommendations they are being given – will, with help from Rita℠ , soon be dead, and good riddance.

“Yes,” the version that we are offering to brokers and investment advisors is named “ProRRT℠,” which stands for “Professional RapidReview Tool℠.” If you click on the ProRRT℠ link, you can go to the site and see the differences.  One of those differences is the price – the ProRRT℠ is much more expensive than Rita℠.  Why?  One of the more important reasons for the dramatic difference in price is that the licensed use of Rita℠ is limited to non-commercial use by an individual investor solely his or her own individual investments.  The license to use the ProRRT℠ is a commercial license.  Brokers and investment advisors can use the ProRRT℠ to help optimize investment recommendations and advice to customers and clients who will pay them a fee for such advice.  There is another obvious and key difference and that is the number of factors available for selection and weighting in each Tool. The ProRRT™ has 48 while Rita™  has 28.  And, as you can see if you visit the ProRRT site, the rationales and motivations for securing a license to professionally use the ProRRT℠ extend beyond simply optimizing investment selection to providing a significant competitive advantage (over firms not using the technology) as well as the ability to provably demonstrate to regulators that what is being recommended and sold to clients is actually in the clients’ best interests.

No . . . not from within Rita℠ itself.  Rita℠ provides no trading capability.  To use the information that Rita℠ provides to purchase and/or sell mutual funds and ETFs all you need is a securities brokerage account, and there are a number of low cost, discount brokerage firms where such accounts can be established and used to do so.

It doesn’t. Rita℠ uses the oldest reported share class. Trying to include all of the share classes would “clog up” the resulting scoring and ranking tables with so many versions of the same funds as to make Rita℠ annoyingly impractical to use. So, at present, Rita℠ provides no practical way to screen out or select specific share classes. The evaluation of individual share classes should be a part of the necessary (qualitative due diligence) “next step” after your identification of the mutual funds a d ETFs you are most interested in, through use of Rita℠.  Once you identify the mutual funds and ETFs in which you are interested, you can go to their website, download the prospectus for that mutual fund or ETF and review the share class information to pick the share class most appropriate for you.

Investment advisors using this technology can also help by performing that qualitative due diligence next step for you and more (such as assisting with portfolio design, your selection and weighting of performance factors, etc.). If you are interested in finding out if there is an investment advisor in your area that is using this technology, click here.

We update the performance data in Rita℠ with the reported performance numbers at the end of each calendar month. It could be done more often – for instance, we could update daily – but we don’t. Why?  It’s because investment advice and performance reporting are typically done on a quarterly basis, and the performance data in your brokerage statements and performance reports all use monthly data.  It leads to potentially less confusion if the performance numbers in your reports and Rita℠ actually match. Moreover, the hiring of professional management teams (which is, in essence, what you’re doing when you invest in a mutual fund or ETF) is typically not for short-term performance. Mutual funds and ETFs, unlike individual stocks, are not suitable for day-trading.

No. Rita℠ is a web-based application. So, all you need to do is log into Rita℠ through your internet browser.

You can use it on any device with a screen and internet access, however, the large number of factors that can be and often are used makes the use of devices with larger screens (e.g., laptops and iPad, as opposed to smart phones) more practical and convenient.

Through our Support page, you have access to both written and video instructions and explanations of how to use Rita℠ and the various performance factors and features available within Rita℠. You can also contact us through email.

Not at this time. Reporting may be developed in the future as the needs of users evolve.

At present there is no storage of information from your use of Rita℠. When you close out a session, everything is erased. Each time you log in, you will start with a fresh, new blank slate. DTC may track the of the way Rita℠ is being used – e.g., what factors are being used, with what weightings, generally - in order to improve Rita℠ and provide additional help with its use.

No.  You can score and rank an unlimited number of mutual funds and ETFs.  However, you can only use Rita℠ for your own personal investing.  No commercial use of Rita℠, or use of any kind for the benefit of anyone other than you (with or without compensation), is permitted.  If you attempt to do so, you can lose your access to Rita℠, without a refund.

No. The license to use Rita℠ is for use by a single user and only for that user’s own personal investments. While you can certainly alert others to the existence and availability of Rita℠ (and your experiences with it), and we hope you will, each license is to an individual user. Allowing others to use your login credentials will lead to a cancellation of your license to use Rita℠. However, if you would like to inform others about Rita℠, please let us know by clicking here.  We’ll try to make that easy to do and even provide some discount codes that you can give to family and friends.  If you would like to become involved with a commercial distribution of Rita℠ subscriptions, please let us know.  We appreciate all of the help we can get in getting the word out.

Rita℠ pricing options can be seen by clicking on the “Plans” page, here.