AIC - Investment Trust Screener Tool review
Posted: September 26th, 2021, 8:47 am
Prompted by a discussion on a separate HYSS thread, I thought it was worth taking a closer look at the great AIC Investment Trust screening tool that's available via the superb AIC site, as I think it contains lots of neat features that might interest those of us who want to spend some time honing in on specific performance-related aspects of their prospective income-investments, and which the great AIC screener tool can help with in that regard.
The AIC Investment Trust screening tool can be accessed using this link - https://www.theaic.co.uk/investment-company-screener
Note - all snapshots below have been generated from the above AIC Screening Tool page.
By default when using the above link, the number of screening options is fairly limited, but using the 'Show More' button towards the right of page will open up a larger number of filterable options -
The AIC screener page will open will all filters reset by default, and with a full complement of AIC-listed investments shown under the above section of filters, and as we apply different filtering criteria using any of the above options, the list of trusts will automatically be updated to then comply with those changing filter-criteria.
The resulting list will by default show the 'Overview' tab of company-related information, but as the snapshot below shows, there are other selectable tabs (Price Performance, NAV performance, Charges & Gearing, etc..) that will show different investment-related information for any underlying list of investments -
By default, the number of underlying investments listed will be set to 10, which is often quite limiting but can be altered using a drop-down option underneath the list, which can be manually set to show a list of 10, 20, or 50 results. It's worth noting that even listing 50 results might well be quite limiting in some circumstances, and so I've found that manually changing a URL setting on the browser address bar can actually achieve a much longer list of results than those available using that rather limited user-option drop-down -
There is a very useful 'Export' option available under the 'Actions' drop-down menu, which will export the whole set of underlying fields, including all the information on every one of the above tabs, into a CSV file which can then be opened using any of the popular spreadsheet applications, and I often prefer to use that method of data-extraction without any filtering criteria being applied on the site, because it then allows me to play with some broader optioneering with all the underlying sets of data being visible at once on a single spreadsheet page, rather than having to use the above tabs to view the different areas, and it also allows me to manually remove any of the VCT results that might be brought back, as it's not currently possible to specifically filter those VCT's out of the results using the available filter criteria -
Finally, one of the most useful additional benefits of this AIC screener tool is the ability to compare up to 7 of the listed investments, using the tick-boxes to the left of the listed items and then selecting the 'Chart' icon above the list, which then generates a great set of performance-comparison charts in a completely separate browser tab, and from there many options are then also available to change things like chart time-scales etc., on that separate chart-related tab -
All in all, I think the AIC Screening Tool is a great resource for those of us who might wish to spend some time investigating our potential income-investments, as well as perhaps checking on the underlying performance of existing portfolio holdings, and I hope the above post goes some way to show how useful a tool it can be.
Cheers,
Itsallaguess
The AIC Investment Trust screening tool can be accessed using this link - https://www.theaic.co.uk/investment-company-screener
Note - all snapshots below have been generated from the above AIC Screening Tool page.
By default when using the above link, the number of screening options is fairly limited, but using the 'Show More' button towards the right of page will open up a larger number of filterable options -
The AIC screener page will open will all filters reset by default, and with a full complement of AIC-listed investments shown under the above section of filters, and as we apply different filtering criteria using any of the above options, the list of trusts will automatically be updated to then comply with those changing filter-criteria.
The resulting list will by default show the 'Overview' tab of company-related information, but as the snapshot below shows, there are other selectable tabs (Price Performance, NAV performance, Charges & Gearing, etc..) that will show different investment-related information for any underlying list of investments -
By default, the number of underlying investments listed will be set to 10, which is often quite limiting but can be altered using a drop-down option underneath the list, which can be manually set to show a list of 10, 20, or 50 results. It's worth noting that even listing 50 results might well be quite limiting in some circumstances, and so I've found that manually changing a URL setting on the browser address bar can actually achieve a much longer list of results than those available using that rather limited user-option drop-down -
There is a very useful 'Export' option available under the 'Actions' drop-down menu, which will export the whole set of underlying fields, including all the information on every one of the above tabs, into a CSV file which can then be opened using any of the popular spreadsheet applications, and I often prefer to use that method of data-extraction without any filtering criteria being applied on the site, because it then allows me to play with some broader optioneering with all the underlying sets of data being visible at once on a single spreadsheet page, rather than having to use the above tabs to view the different areas, and it also allows me to manually remove any of the VCT results that might be brought back, as it's not currently possible to specifically filter those VCT's out of the results using the available filter criteria -
Finally, one of the most useful additional benefits of this AIC screener tool is the ability to compare up to 7 of the listed investments, using the tick-boxes to the left of the listed items and then selecting the 'Chart' icon above the list, which then generates a great set of performance-comparison charts in a completely separate browser tab, and from there many options are then also available to change things like chart time-scales etc., on that separate chart-related tab -
All in all, I think the AIC Screening Tool is a great resource for those of us who might wish to spend some time investigating our potential income-investments, as well as perhaps checking on the underlying performance of existing portfolio holdings, and I hope the above post goes some way to show how useful a tool it can be.
Cheers,
Itsallaguess
