EPFR Debuts ChartBook Fund Flows Analysis, Commentary

EPFR distributes the weekly PDF reports every Friday via email and via Bloomberg Tradebook. The reports provide commentary on the direction of money flows between different asset classes and regions, with additional summaries, charts and analytics created by EPFR's in-house analyst team.

"ChartBook aims to make our data very digestible and make it easy to understand where money is flowing, so you can take it into a meeting or read it on the train, in a consistent format each week, with the top ideas on the front cover, followed by supporting data, themes and summaries of flows by sector and region," says Simon Ringrose, managing director of sales at EPFR. "For some on the funds side, it isn't easy to get an international, cross-asset view in one place, so we've had demand for ... a nice research report that covers the globe, without the user having to collect reports from multiple brokers."

Though the vendor has yet to finalize pricing for new clients who subscribe to the service on a standalone basis, Ringrose says EPFR will provide the reports free of charge to premium clients paying more than $50,000 per year.

"These clients will find the reports useful because they capture what we are seeing in the data, with new angles each week... and because [unlike brokers], we're not trying to pitch a specific stock or trade," Ringrose says. "EPFR has analysts looking at the data day in, day out, and these are the key points and themes they are seeing.... So we are saving investment managers time by pointing to inflection points."

These analysts increasingly need to understand the significance of flows data─and how it can be used to create successful investment strategies─in the same way as those using the data. "We are seeing people using fundamentals, price information and technical. That's where the flow information comes in, and the people we hire need to understand how that works," Ringrose says.

In fact, as a result of launching the service─and the need to respond to customer inquiries and feedback about the reports─EPFR will increase its quantitative research and client service teams by one person apiece, he says. In addition, the vendor wants to incorporate social media-style capabilities to its website, to allow users to provide feedback─similar to Facebook's "like" button─on charts on its website, which will enable the vendor to understand which asset classes users are most focused on.