Ulcer Index: You discussed an "ulcer index" in a previous issue. I have seen this term and values elsewhere, and it seems to have a different meaning. Are there two ulcer indexes? There are two that I know of. It is such a good name, that more than one author has used it. In the 1996 Third Quarter issue, I described the ulcer index, which is a measure of risk, as defined by Steve Shellans in his MoniResearch Newsletter. To make things confusing, he was not the first to use the term and the methods of calculation vary. Perhaps the first public use of this term was by Martin and McCann in their 1989 book The Investor's Guide to Fidelity Mutual Funds. The qualitative difference between their method and that of Shellans is that Martin and McCann compare return and drawdowns to those of a risk-free money market fund while Shellans compares them to those of a market index such as the S&P 500. There are also technical differences in the calculation methods. Programs in the FastTrack family such as FastTools and FastBreak use the Martin and McCann formula. Each ulcer index has advantages and disadvantages when compared to the other. If you see ulcer index values in different publications, you should be aware that they might not be comparable.