RiskGrades (RG) is a trademarked method for calculating the risk of an asset. RiskGrades is a standardized measure for evaluating the volatility of an asset across a variety of asset classes. The scale starts at zero which is the least risky rating. A rating of 1,000 equals the standard market risk of a diversified market-cap weighted global equity index. RiskGrades change over time to reflect not only the unsystematic risk of an investment but also increases in overall systematic risk in the market. RiskGrades are based on a variance-covariance approach that measures the volatility of assets or asset portfolios as the scaled standard deviations of the returns.

More complex RiskGrades calculations allow for a few additional concepts. To calculate the RG of an asset, use the following formula:

﻿\begin{aligned} &\text{RG}_i = \frac { s_i \div 12 }{ 0.2 } \\ &\textbf{where:} \\ &s_i = \text{monthly standard deviation of the asset} \\ \end{aligned}﻿

The RG of a portfolio of 2 assets is calculated with the following formula:

﻿\begin{aligned} &\text{RG}^2_p = ( W^2_1 \times \text{RG}^2_1 ) + ( W^2_2 \times \text{RG}^2_2 ) \ + \\ &\phantom{\text{RG}^2_p =} 2 \times W_1 \times W_2 \times r_{12} \times \text{RG}_1 \times \text{RG}_2 \\ &\textbf{where:} \\ &W = \text{weighting of the asset} \\ \end{aligned}﻿

The Undiversified Risk Grade (URG) of the same portfolio uses the following formula:

﻿\begin{aligned} &\text{URG}_p = ( W_1 \times \text{RG}_1 ) + ( W_2 \times \text{RG}_2 ) \\ &\textbf{where:} \\ &W = \text{weighting of the asset} \\ \end{aligned}﻿

To determine the benefit from diversification, we can use RiskGrades to determine the Diversification Benefit:

﻿\begin{aligned} \text{DB}_p = \text{URG}_p - \text{RG}_p \\ \end{aligned}﻿