UncleEbenezer wrote:Just been test-driving this for the first time (something I've long intended). Motivated by the fact that Yahoo changes broke the quotes on my old spreadsheet! I think I'm going to try & merge it into my existing stuff. Or vice versa.
I like principle of the data sheet pre-populated with lots of companies. That might be worth opening to direct contributions from the public (or at least Fooldom) so we can contribute updates directly. I found myself making several additions locally, and I noticed a bunch of entries that are no longer valid - e.g. companies that have been taken over.
We do clean up the companies from time to time, though it's not a big deal if there are a few ex-companies in there. If you have suggestions for companies to add, let us know and I can add them in.
Currency issues. I entered PEY (Princess Private Equity). It's quoted in Euros (€10.05), but HYPTUS thinks they're pence and values my shares at 10.05p!
Unfortunately the Yahoo feed does not specify currency. This isn't a problem with the vast majority of shares since Yahoo generally quotes in pence, but we have seen ETFs quoted in pounds and does cause some issues. We are reviewing Google as an alternative source of data since it does specify currency in the data feed. Having non-sterling shares also presents the problem of currency exchange rates.
Verizon (VZ) - a foreign HYP holding. The sheet has VZC, which is dead. Needs tweaking to work with a NYSE code.
The tool is fixed to London-quoted companies. The tool was originally conceived as a simple spreadsheet to support the HYP methodology, which is very much biased towards income-paying UK companies. It's not intended as an all-singing, all-dancing tool.
TRIG (Renewables Infrastructure Group) has no digitallook entry. How to deal with?
This?:
http://www.digitallook.com/equity/Renew ... oup_LtdTheRSAB (RSA Prefs). Since they're fixed income, they'd work nicely with a manual facility to fix income without trying to look up yield.
Sounds like it could be a significant change to handle such an exception. It's always a difficult compromise between having a tool which can handle any eventuality, with the implicit complication, and having a simple but useful tool for the majority of users. I've added this to my "things to think about" list.
Now, as soon as I have any ?????? entries from the above, the weighting and the Top-Up order column die. Not a problem for me, but it's untidy
Maybe the top-up order might be tweaked to exclude any bad weightings?
Having the weighting and top-up order data die is a way of forcing the user to correct the data, otherwise the data may be meaningless. It's only likely to be an issue for unusual shares. For the vast majority of UK high-cap companies (FTSE100 or FTSE350) for which HYP was conceived, it's not an issue.
One more thought: maybe calling Equity Investment Instruments a sector isn't really helpful?
The definition of sectors is a topic that crops up from time to time on the HYP Practical board. Equity Investment Instruments was used by Digital Look but I just looked and it seems that DL now calls the sector "Investment Firms", which I think is a very recent change. You can change the definition of sectors to your own preference (some HYPers already do this). If there is a great demand to change to "Investment Firms", it's no problem to change. Anyone else got any views on this?
p.s. Any thoughts on supporting OEICs and/or Trackers?
Not really. Partly because they don't really fit into the HYP methodology, and partly because we would have to find new sources of data (I don't think Digital Look provides yield information for OEICs or ETFs)
Sorry if this response sounds a bit unhelpful, Uncle Eb, we really do welcome feedback and suggestions, but as I mentioned the tool is really intended to support the classic HYP methodology rather than a mainstream portfolio tool.
--kiloran