StepOne spreadsheet - Gearing missing

[NeilW]

Just looked at the OpenOffice version of this month's StepOne spreadsheet and I notice that the Gearing column is showing 'N/A'.

Looking at the Excel version in Numbers gives a blank column for the Gearing.

Has some data gone missing again?

[kiloran]

Sorry Neil. The data source I use seems to have changed the data layout and availability of data. Gearing is no longer available, nor last results date for ITs. I decided to publish as-is for now and review over the next few days.

--kiloran

[kiloran]

Looks like there is no change to the (lack of) gearing data from Morningstar, so I've added gearing data from ADVFN and updated the spreadsheets at http://lemonfoolfinancialsoftware.weebl ... se350.html. It's a bit of a manual cludge but I'll automate it and update the documentation at the end of April.

--kiloran

[Raptor]

kiloran

Thanks gearing is back.

Query, F Yield is a calculated field from Price and Forecast Dividend. However, it does not seem to match the Forecast yield from ex-digitallook. For symetery to HYPTUSS would it not be better to just extract the Forecast Dividend for this field? IMB now shows 8% when HYPTUSS shows 7.4%..ITV shows 5.7% against 5.2% in HYPTUSS.. Maybe it is a timing "error" or data from Yahoo doesn't match Digitallook. Just a thought. It would also add function as GNK has no FDiv in AB, so the Forecast Divi is "blank"...

Raptor.

[kiloran]

kiloran

Query, F Yield is a calculated field from Price and Forecast Dividend. However, it does not seem to match the Forecast yield from ex-digitallook. For symetery to HYPTUSS would it not be better to just extract the Forecast Dividend for this field? IMB now shows 8% when HYPTUSS shows 7.4%..ITV shows 5.7% against 5.2% in HYPTUSS.. Maybe it is a timing "error" or data from Yahoo doesn't match Digitallook. Just a thought. It would also add function as GNK has no FDiv in AB, so the Forecast Divi is "blank"...

Raptor.

Good question, Raptor. I'm not sure I have a good answer.

The StepOneFTSE350 spreadsheet was designed to replicate, as closely as possible, StepOne's original spreadsheet in 2011, and the data definitions have been unchanged since then. There's just been the occasional change in the source of some data, such as the current Gearing issue.

Yahoo isn't an issue, the forecast dividends and yields come from Webfg (= Digital Look) for the StepOneFTSE350 and HYPTUSS, so the issue is about what the Webfg data means and how it is used.

Looking at IMB, Webfg shows the following data:
Forecast Yield 7.4% (from the Income and Efficiency tab, used by HYPTUSS)
It also shows:

So, it looks like the Forecast Yield in the Income and Efficiency tab is that for year-end 30Sep18, just 6 months from now. The StepOneFTSE350 uses the dividend for next year (203.76p). In general, it looks like Webfg uses the Income and Efficiency forecast for the current fiscal year, so for a company with a year-end of 31Mar, it uses the data for year-end 31Mar19. For a company with year-end 30Jun18, it will use data for year-end 30Jun18, which it could be argued is hardly a forecast at all

You mention there is no data for GNK. The data is there now on Webfg (I assume it wasn't at the instant the data was scraped. Perhaps it was in a state of transition), though it's interesting to note that the 7% shown in the I&E tab appears to be that for y/e 30Apr19 rather than the current 30Apr18.

I could modify the code for the StepOneFTSE350, but I wonder if it would be worth the effort. If I use the data from the I&E tab, what does that data really mean? It could be for a year-end of next month, or maybe 12 months hence. If I continue to use the data for year-end in the next calendar year, that might mean a year-end of 31Mar or 31Dec.

Or I could leave the current data as-is and add the forecast yield from the I&E tab to column AH as extra data.

My personal view is that any forecast will always have inherent inaccuracies and should be treated as a guide rather than an absolute value, so personally I don't care if a forecast yield is shown as 8% or 7.4%. It just tells me that it's probably higher than 5% and probably lower than 10%.

But it's not just about what I think. The tool should do what the users want. Anybody got any thoughts on this?

--kiloran

[Raptor]

--kiloran

Yes I did notice that with GNK? Which threw me then realised the "scrape" was 1st April, so assumed it was not there then. The only problem with the FYield column (for me) is that I use that as a simple criteria selection, so shares like GNK fell through the hole. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I posted some of the data on HYP and it was then that a poster queried the figures and another poster pointed out some missing shares that could meet my needs. As stepone is only used for a starter for me it would be nice to have something in there but as you say any "forecast" is just that and not to be relied on. I think an additional field is probably the better solution and easiest.

Raptor.

BTW. I much appreciate all the work you and Itsallaguess do. I was at a Reunion at the weekend and was talking to an old mate of mine who until recently was a DB consultant and VBA came up, I was surprised how much I suddenly remembered and seem to have let myself into some consultancy work, so if you get a PM you know why.