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AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

Closed-end funds and OEICs
PrefInvestor
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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#219404

Postby PrefInvestor » May 3rd, 2019, 10:39 pm

Hi All, My investment spreadsheet does all I need in terms of predicting my investment income over the year, so I don’t really need a tool like this to do the job for me, though I can quite see that it may be useful for some people. And of course my spreadsheet does the job for everything in my portfolio (ie stocks, bonds, preference shares and ETFs as well), whereas this tool just does ITs.

I also personally have a significant aversion to putting a lot of my personal portfolio data into any online tool for various reasons, notably:-
a) General data privacy concerns
b) Concerns regarding how the information might end up being used
c) Concerns lest the system get hacked and the data become available to hackers and fraudsters.

While I am sure that the system is well intentioned it’s not clear to me exactly what AIC get out of developing it, perhaps a knowledge of what ITs people are putting their money into ?. They must be getting something out of it you can be sure as company’s rarely engage in activities that cost them time and money without some specific business objectives.

Despite these concerns I nonetheless registered and had a play around with the tool. I had hoped that I could use it to extract a comprehensive list of all of the dividend payments for the year for all of my ITs (going back to the start of the year and ahead to the end of the year). That would be of use to me as I could then import it into my spreadsheet and save myself having to look around for those IT dividends which are sometimes missing from the likes of dividenddata and investorease. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to obtain such a list using the tool.

ATB

Pref

DavidM13
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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#219642

Postby DavidM13 » May 5th, 2019, 11:27 am

Many thanks for taking the time. I see the tool as no different than other elements of the website such as Watchlists, Interactive Statistics, Analyse ICs, Find & Compare etc. Just providing research and data so investors can explore and analyse companies further for themselves. The site is built out to promote the Investment Company industry as a whole and this tool is an extension of that.

I wish to assure you there will be absolutely zero aggregation or analysis of any portfolios just as there isn't on any other saved preferences. This is also clarified in the Terms of Use.

We have provided a download function of derived data as you will note. However, the raw dividend data is not available for download due to licensing. You can well imagine that Morningstar do not want valuable data-sets available in xls. for free on public websites. So although you cannot extract the raw dividend data to a spreadsheet, hopefully there is still some time-saving for you by linking your portfolio/s to the dividend diary. Then only relevant days will appear so you can quickly note the data down. At the least it may be a sanity/quality test. There are no forward looking forecasts on raw dividend dates/value, so only those that have already been declared will appear in the diary.

Finally, to the earlier posters who have requested an addition to include "Tax Year". This is something we will do shortly - no promises on timescale just yet though :)

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#219687

Postby PrefInvestor » May 5th, 2019, 4:54 pm

Hi DavidM13, Thanks for the clarification, I can see that this is an addition to your toolset for investment trusts and many here (who invest exclusively in ITs) will I am sure find it useful for managing the distribution of their income. However in your post you said

DavidM13 wrote:There are no forward looking forecasts on raw dividend dates/value, so only those that have already been declared will appear in the diary.

If that is true then does that mean that dividends that are to be expected based on the investments normal pattern but have yet to be declared will NOT appear in the tool ?. If so then surely that will present a possible gap In someone’s income profile that does not actually exist ?.

Personally I maintain a complete list of ALL dividends that I am expecting for EVERY investment that I hold up to the end of the current calendar year. Included in this are every dividend that I expect to occur based on what happened the year before plus any changes that have been published. This is what drives my income profile for the year and I hope that it is reasonably accurate. I look at the likes of dividenddata.co.uk and investorease regularly as the months go by and if any changes to my list occur then I update it. As you can gather it requires a fair bit of work to maintain it though, especially in December which is when I produce the list for the following calendar year. But then what else is there to do in December !.

ATB

Pref

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#219690

Postby DavidM13 » May 5th, 2019, 6:07 pm

Hi Pref,

OK to be totally clear.

Dividend Diary - this is the calendar function with the red or white squares for each day. One can look historically for last three years or in the future at all dividend dates and values, or, if you prefer, only those associated with a company within your linked portfolio. This is solely based on actual declared dividends so you will not see many further than 2 or 3 months in the future as most future dividends clearly haven't yet been declared.

Income Builder - this is the tool which graphs potential dividend streams. This is based solely on historic dividends (hence the disclaimer that there is no guarantee that these will be repeated). On this tool you can choose to look at last 12 calendar months or any of the last three discrete calendar years. So imagine a company that in the calendar year of 2018 paid 4 quarterly dividends each of 2p in March, June, September and December each year. That is what this tool will display in the graph and the table underneath. With total dividend revenue depending on theoretical number of shares held. This can be seen as a proxy for what may happen in 2019 and judging by your post this is very similar to what you do? And choosing last 12m allows for more up to date known data, again similar to your methodology. We do of course make it clear there can be no such guarantees that the future streams will replicate the past and it is really important that all users understand that.

So there are no gaps in an income profile. There are are just historic facts that if one believes will be repeated, provide the calculations and totals for that company.

I hope this makes a bit more sense. Also happy to reply to any private messages if you think its going a bit off topic or detailed!

David

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#219708

Postby Bialystock » May 5th, 2019, 11:14 pm

DavidM13 wrote:Hi Pref,

OK to be totally clear.

Dividend Diary - this is the calendar function with the red or white squares for each day. One can look historically for last three years or in the future at all dividend dates and values, or, if you prefer, only those associated with a company within your linked portfolio. This is solely based on actual declared dividends so you will not see many further than 2 or 3 months in the future as most future dividends clearly haven't yet been declared.

Income Builder - this is the tool which graphs potential dividend streams. This is based solely on historic dividends (hence the disclaimer that there is no guarantee that these will be repeated). On this tool you can choose to look at last 12 calendar months or any of the last three discrete calendar years. So imagine a company that in the calendar year of 2018 paid 4 quarterly dividends each of 2p in March, June, September and December each year. That is what this tool will display in the graph and the table underneath. With total dividend revenue depending on theoretical number of shares held. This can be seen as a proxy for what may happen in 2019 and judging by your post this is very similar to what you do? And choosing last 12m allows for more up to date known data, again similar to your methodology. We do of course make it clear there can be no such guarantees that the future streams will replicate the past and it is really important that all users understand that.

So there are no gaps in an income profile. There are are just historic facts that if one believes will be repeated, provide the calculations and totals for that company.

I hope this makes a bit more sense. Also happy to reply to any private messages if you think its going a bit off topic or detailed!

David


I think it is a useful tool and grateful that you have gone to the bother of producing it.

Shame something similar isn't available for funds / OEICS.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#223691

Postby DavidM13 » May 22nd, 2019, 3:00 pm

Parky wrote:Would be more useful(for me) if based on tax year rather than calendar year.


BobGe wrote:
Parky wrote:Would be more useful(for me) if based on tax year rather than calendar year.

That's a fair point, maybe they could arrange to have a calendar switch for that?


Last tax year is now live :)

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#224063

Postby Bialystock » May 23rd, 2019, 5:33 pm

Current tax year would be pretty useful too.

Pretty please :D

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#224334

Postby DavidM13 » May 25th, 2019, 8:29 am

Thanks for the note! I feel this may be a change too far though.

The tool has been designed to run on exactly 12 months, to modify that would have all sorts of knock ons to averages and charts that may not be desirable. You could get pretty close using a combination of the last 12 months then ignoring anything pre-April on the charts and finally using the dividend diary feature to zone in on just the four or five days in early April that are part of the previous tax year.

We will continue to monitor all feedback though and are also working on other parts of the site to improve the range of data available. I’m sure I will pop on here to inform in due course ;)

Since I’m on the subject of enhancements - The new sectors and constituents are now live and can be found off the statistics tab.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#224939

Postby jonesa1 » May 28th, 2019, 11:50 am

For your wish list. Currently the data shows an annualised view of 5 years worth of dividend changes. For some ITs (e.g. BNKR, HICL) the last 5 years is fairly representative of a longer period. For others (e.g. MYI, SLPE) the 5 year number doesn't tell the story, which for MYI is a progressive deceleration in dividend growth and for SLPE the 19.9% hides a very lumpy performance which could suggest the large increase in 2018 may be followed by several years of much lower growth. It might not be possible, but a chart showing how the trend has varied over time would be useful (e.g. plotting the 5 year average over time?), especially as its a while since we had a significant and lengthy down-turn in the markets.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#225473

Postby ffacoffipawb64 » May 30th, 2019, 11:27 am

ASEi Aberdeen Standard Equity Income went xd today but the June dividend does not appear in the dividend diary.

Is there a reason why, because it is included in my portfolio.

Thanks

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#225515

Postby seagles » May 30th, 2019, 2:12 pm

ffacoffipawb64 wrote:ASEi Aberdeen Standard Equity Income went xd today but the June dividend does not appear in the dividend diary.

Is there a reason why, because it is included in my portfolio.

Thanks


There maybe a delay before it appears. I had one earlier that appeared the day after declaration.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#225537

Postby ffacoffipawb64 » May 30th, 2019, 3:42 pm

seagles wrote:
ffacoffipawb64 wrote:ASEi Aberdeen Standard Equity Income went xd today but the June dividend does not appear in the dividend diary.

Is there a reason why, because it is included in my portfolio.

Thanks


There maybe a delay before it appears. I had one earlier that appeared the day after declaration.


The dividend was declared a fortnight ago though. It just went xd today.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#226034

Postby mickeypops » June 1st, 2019, 4:47 pm

I’m loving this tool. It’s great to see the upcoming dividend values and payment dates once declared. Also, to get a feels for what’s going to be paid out in upcoming months based on last years actual.

I have all of my retirement income investments in ITs and this is a great help.

MP

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#226406

Postby DavidM13 » June 3rd, 2019, 9:16 am

seagles wrote:
ffacoffipawb64 wrote:ASEi Aberdeen Standard Equity Income went xd today but the June dividend does not appear in the dividend diary.

Is there a reason why, because it is included in my portfolio.

Thanks


There maybe a delay before it appears. I had one earlier that appeared the day after declaration.


Sorry for the delay. Was on holiday :) There should always be just a one day delay on the data appearing. e.g. if an announcement comes out today our data provider Morningstar will pick it up today and it will appear on the function tomorrow morning. On this occasion it seems they have simply missed it. They would pick this up at some stage in the future due to various tolerance checks they have but unfortunately not in as timely fashion as we would all want. I have let them know now so they can provide an update ASAP.

Regarding the request on plotting 5y dividend growth over time, unfortunately our data provider doesn't have that as a "time series" data point, rather it is a snapshot in time on a daily basis. Therefore this would be rather too complex as it currently stands.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#228937

Postby dmukgr » June 12th, 2019, 1:26 pm

When I look at what I recorded as dividends last year against what the tool reports there is a disparity that seems to be due to the share splits of companies such as Witan.

These share splits are a pain :twisted:

Anyhow, I believe it is a bug with the tool as it seems to show adjusted past dividends against the old amount of shares owned.

EDIT - hmmm, thinking about it, am I meant to adjust the amount I own now? That would make sense :lol:

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#228949

Postby DavidM13 » June 12th, 2019, 2:38 pm

I am actually away for a few days but will give it some thought. Clearly you can fix for yourself immediately how you suggested by just editing how many shares you own. It would be ideal if the machine did it but not sure how viable this is just yet. Thanks for the note.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#228960

Postby dmukgr » June 12th, 2019, 3:30 pm

Thanks for the reply.

I did in fact update the data after I realised what had happened so all is good now.

BTW - if you are looking for fancy pants ideas, what I would really like is something like the morning star x-ray tool that tells me what my biggest underlying companies are, which sectors, countries etc. and even more ideally, if the share price is going to go up or tank.

You may be thinking the latter is impossible but it is actually really easy, just look at what I add and at that time, warn everyone else :lol:

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#229769

Postby ffacoffipawb64 » June 15th, 2019, 6:43 pm

Adding the Z score would be useful, as would showing the portfolio yield at the bottom. Individual yields are currently shown so it should be easy, in theory, to calculate the weighted portfolio yield.

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#263448

Postby Steve1982 » November 11th, 2019, 10:04 am

Sometime over the last few weeks, a bug has appeared in the Income Builder.

When clicking on the IT name in my portfolio list, the link for all ITs is now the same ("https://www.theaic.co.uk/companydata/undefined") rather than the correct individual IT profile page.

Can this functionality be restored?

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Re: AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

#263467

Postby puffster » November 11th, 2019, 11:29 am

Steve1982 wrote:Sometime over the last few weeks, a bug has appeared in the Income Builder.

When clicking on the IT name in my portfolio list, the link for all ITs is now the same ("https://www.theaic.co.uk/companydata/undefined") rather than the correct individual IT profile page.

Can this functionality be restored?

FWIW this is working correctly for me.

Regards, Puffster


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