The “Export Selected” function in Klein Decisions’ K⁴ Fund Selection is a helpful feature that sends scenario results directly to Excel. The exported data includes the fund rankings as well as each fund’s actual result and score on each factor and filter. This is a convenient way to view and use all the data for a group of funds, particularly if it is a group you are periodically monitoring such as a watch list or funds for further review.

But sometimes you want to track information on factors that weren’t part of your scenario. For example, you may want to see how the funds on your watch list have performed over the past one-year period even though that isn’t one of your factors or filters. While you don’t want to add it as a factor in your scenario, you would like to be able to see it every time you export your results.

You can do this by using a “dummy filter.” K⁴ Fund Selection allows you to export data for up to ten different filters. In most instances, you probably aren’t using that many so there’s your chance to export that additional information. The trick is to use filters to do this without altering your results. From the earlier example, you can add the “1-year return NAV” filter in order to export the one-year return data, but you have to be careful not to eliminate any additional funds.

You can do this by entering an extreme value for minimum return when you add the filter. In the example illustrated here, we’ve used “-100” which would eliminate any fund that lost more than 100% over the past year. You’d be pretty safe using that as a dummy filter. It shouldn’t eliminate any funds (funds that lose 100% in a year tend to go out of business!) and will allow you to see each fund’s actual 1-year return. You can come up with similar entries to make just about any filter a dummy filter.

You aren’t just limited to one dummy filter per scenario. If there are other data items you want to export, you can add filters for them, too, as long as you don’t exceed a total of ten. As you can see, sometimes it’s good to work with “dummies.”