TSP Center

Hello, when do TSPCalc strategy statistics (i.e., mean and standard deviation) update? I always change my strategy plan at the beginning of the year, but I would prefer to decide after December's final performance numbers are reflected in the system. I assume this happens automatically, but I'm not certain.
Happy Holidays!

Everything updates in real time. So whatever numbers you're seeing, they're accurate as of the close of business on the last trading day.

Edit - Thanks for correcting me on this, MJ.

Everything on the "Seasonal Calculator" page updates daily.

The "Seasonal Builder" updates at the close of each month, and can take a couple of days. The year range of the data is indicated in the upper-right corner of each table when you're using the builder.

Thanks for helping. Yet I do want to make sure we understand what I am referring to. I am talking about the "Seasonal Strategies" box on the right-hand side of the main page and the update for each "Strat. ID". So what I am understanding is that each "Strat. ID" Mean and StdDev updates in "real time". Right?

olijoel wrote: ↑Mon Dec 29, 2025 4:49 pm Thanks for helping. Yet I do want to make sure we understand what I am referring to. I am talking about the "Seasonal Strategies" box on the right-hand side of the main page and the update for each "Strat. ID". So what I am understanding is that each "Strat. ID" Mean and StdDev updates in "real time". Right?

No, "real time" would imply it looks up share prices every time you load the page. Real time share prices don't exist (for official TSP prices, you CAN get real time share prices for the underlying index).

The TSP publishes share prices once per day, at close of business. Within a couple hours of the official TSP share price publish, TSPcalc downloads those published share prices and updates the statistics in that table.

So it's once per day.

On TSPcalc at the bottom of the page, just under the share price table it will tell you when it last calculated the Seasonal Strategies table. If you catch this page during the update, the tspcalc share price table will be dated "today" while the text for "seasonal strategies update" will indicate yesterday. That means tspcalc has retrieved the new share prices but it hasn't finished calculating yet. None of the "seasonal strategies" table gets updated until the calculation is complete. Because the calculation takes time, all of the data gets calculated first, then the entire table updates at once like flicking a light switch. It is not possible for a user to load the page and see a partially updated table- it will either be yesterday data or today data.

Perfect! Thanks for clarifying that.