GIPS composites need same beginning and end date?

There is a question on Scweser Practice Book 2, exam 1, Q4 that states “all composites will have same beginning and ending annual dates” and answer says that is accurate. First time I’ve seen this so curious if that’s correct. I tried to search CFAI materials and did not find.

Hmm … kinda makes sense. If you introduce a new composite mid-way, this isn’t possible but going forward, if you want to compare composite performance it would have to be over the same time period.

I tried doing a search in the GIPS PDF but “same beginning and ending dates” doesn’t show up:

http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/pdf/10.2469/ccb.v2010.n5.1

In the PDF it says several times “period-end date clearly identified”, like below:

  1. One-, three-, and five-year annualized COMPOSITE returns through the most recent period with the period-end date clearly identified.

One could infer that this means that they are all on same date which I guess would make comparisons easier. SO if you create a new composite mid-year, you may have one with a stub period.