Abstract: A plurality of instruments are equitably distributed between a plurality of accounts. One implementation includes: calculating an overall average value for the instruments, and determining the best allocation for the instruments by iteratively distributing the instruments in the accounts and evaluating the errors between the accounts and the average instrument value for each allocation. Another implementation includes sorting the accounts into a first group having an account average instrument value greater than the overall average instrument value, a second group having an account average instrument value less than the overall average instrument value, and a third group where the values are equal. Then, improved distributions are attempted by exchanging instruments between accounts in the first group and accounts in the second group. The process is iterative until all possible instrument combinations between the first group and the second group have been tried and no further improvements can be made.