As a plebeian to the list, i wanted to ask a few questions. Feel free to answer one, a few, or none-at-all. 1) What is the typical use of R for the list members? a) Is it in model result analysis? b) The derivation of the model itself? c) something that i'm totally missing? 2) If R is used for model result analysis, what is your tool of choice for modeling / back-testing / trade simulation / asset allocation dynamics yada yada ...? 3) How / what do you use to store time-series data? 4) How are you managing ongoing updates of time-series? I have many other ?'s, but i'll save these for another email. -tom ps - i of course have my own answers, but don't want to bring my biases to the table just yet...