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HYPTUSS Modification

Discussions regarding financial software
Darka
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HYPTUSS Modification

#221228

Postby Darka » May 13th, 2019, 9:56 am

For quite a while now, one of my investment trusts (Smithson, SSON) has returned "n/a" for the following entries, so when this is added to the Portfolio page it causes problems with the ranking, etc.

' latestyield
' forecastyield
' latestcover
' forecastcover
' latestPE
' forecastPE

So, I've modified the VB in my own copy of the spreadsheet to place a zero in these cells when the value of any of these data fields is "n/a", for both shares and Investment Trusts.

It's worked well and stops me having to manually put in "0" for SSON to get the ranking working.

I think it might be a worthwhile change to the master copy of the spreadsheets - but happy for it to be ignored too as it was something I needed but maybe no one else would.

regards,
Darka

kiloran
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221267

Postby kiloran » May 13th, 2019, 12:04 pm

Personally, I would be against such a change, though I'd support any decision made by Itsallaguess.... it's his tool.
.
I think there is a significant difference between n/a and zero.

n/a means Not Available. The data could be high, it could be low, but we don't know, so it's a prompt to look elsewhere or make a personal estimate.

Zero means precisely that.... zero.

So a company where Sharecast (Digital Look) provides a Latest Yield of zero, I would expect there to be no dividend. If it's n/a, I would look elsewhere to get some realistic data (which might be zero, we just don't know) and then manually edit this into HYPTUSS.

Anyone else got any views?

--kiloran

Alaric
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221269

Postby Alaric » May 13th, 2019, 12:11 pm

kiloran wrote:n/a means Not Available. The data could be high, it could be low, but we don't know, so it's a prompt to look elsewhere or make a personal estimate.

Zero means precisely that.... zero.


In the context of the Smithson (Fundsmith) IT, I suspect n/a could in fact mean zero. Although the fund earns dividends from some of its investments, they aren't high enough to finance the charges, so there's no distribution. Maybe I'm thinking of "FEET" though. Is it that the fund is new enough not to yet have established a dividend distribution record?

Darka
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221278

Postby Darka » May 13th, 2019, 12:27 pm

kiloran wrote:I think there is a significant difference between n/a and zero. --kiloran


I agree with you, however for the purpose of my own copy it makes more sense to me that I can use the top up/rating information, to do so previously meant having to manually type a zero in everytime I did an update, and sometimes I would forget.

With regards to using n/a as a prompt to check elsewhere, I simply use zero instead to prompt me.

Like I said in my initial post, just a suggestion and not going to compain if people don't like it :)

seagles
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221282

Postby seagles » May 13th, 2019, 12:52 pm

I prefer the n/a route. One of my ITs (thanks Kiloran for adding it, not sure when but noticed it there last update), returns n/a as Sharecast has little information on it and I use the "new" IT Dividend feature on AIC to scrape the right yield (mind you I use the same for all my ITs as sharecast never seems to be current, SCF is "always" half the actual yield, when I want more accurate forecasting).

Itsallaguess
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221330

Postby Itsallaguess » May 13th, 2019, 4:16 pm

Darka wrote:
So, I've modified the VB in my own copy of the spreadsheet to place a zero in these cells when the value of any of these data fields is "n/a", for both shares and Investment Trusts.

It's worked well and stops me having to manually put in "0" for SSON to get the ranking working.

I think it might be a worthwhile change to the master copy of the spreadsheets - but happy for it to be ignored too as it was something I needed but maybe no one else would.


Hi Darka,

Thanks for the suggestion, and I can see why you might find such a VB tweak to give you a personal advantage where holdings repeatedly give you this 'n/a' issue, but I agree with kiloran that we should try to differentiate between three different types of data-states for the Share Cast (Digital Look) data -

1. Relevant data in the yield, cover, and PE fields where it's available

2. '????' in the yield, cover, and PE fields where a URL issue occurs (the tool can't find the share page on the Share Cast site - often due to a change in the URL context..)

3. 'n/a' in the yield, cover, and PE fields where the share page exists on the Share Cast site, but no relevant data is available to scrape (as in your example here..)

I think to start replacing any of the above situations with self-generated yield, cover and PE data is likely to cause more downstream confusing issues for more people than it is likely to help, so I think sticking with the default position above, for each of the three data-states, is probably the safest thing for us to do with the vanilla tool. Again though, I can fully see why you would want to implement such a change for a 'known-issue holding' that causes repeat-issues every time you refresh the data...

With that said, you've raised the prospect of us perhaps trying something that I've wondered about for a few years now - this feels like the sort of minor VB tweak that might lend itself to being delivered via a little 'coding tutorial', where a post could be made here with clear instructions as to how anyone who also thinks they might want to enable this feature might then be able to do so via the VB editor.

Then, you can offer the change with an example of how it benefits the tool, and the post will always be there if the issue crops up in the future, if others feel they too might benefit from this particular coding-tweak.

Would you be willing to give that a go?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

vrdiver
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221346

Postby vrdiver » May 13th, 2019, 5:08 pm

just thinking about the "n/a" => "0" change....

Agree that a "0" substitution could be misleading, as whilst it would be a fix for a specific case, it could mask other missing data that users might not notice, thus generating false expectations and possibly feeding into decision-making processes that would otherwise have ended differently.

An alternative to the straight "0" swap might be to use the zero, but to format it so as to be very visible to anyone looking at the data: say red text with a yellow background (yeuch!) and to put a text message in an appropriate cell for that record, to state that the substitution has occurred.

A bit more work than the straight swap, but worth it the first time it shows up unexpectedly!

Just my two cents worth (feel free to change to zero cents worth...)

VRD

Darka
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221355

Postby Darka » May 13th, 2019, 5:35 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:With that said, you've raised the prospect of us perhaps trying something that I've wondered about for a few years now - this feels like the sort of minor VB tweak that might lend itself to being delivered via a little 'coding tutorial', where a post could be made here with clear instructions as to how anyone who also thinks they might want to enable this feature might then be able to do so via the VB editor.

Then, you can offer the change with an example of how it benefits the tool, and the post will always be there if the issue crops up in the future, if others feel they too might benefit from this particular coding-tweak.

Would you be willing to give that a go?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


Hi Itsallaguess,

Completely agree with the reasoning behind keeping it as it is, as you say mine was a specific example.

With regards to the coding tutorial, I'll find some time and sort one out for this sample.

regards,
Darka

seagles
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221366

Postby seagles » May 13th, 2019, 6:26 pm

I have one that I use to breakdown ITs into various different sectors. Allowing changes to the data sheet but still maintaining the code to show the fields in red. That is if anyone is interested in this little tweak?

TUK020
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Re: HYPTUSS Modification

#221371

Postby TUK020 » May 13th, 2019, 6:43 pm

vrdiver wrote:just thinking about the "n/a" => "0" change....

Agree that a "0" substitution could be misleading, as whilst it would be a fix for a specific case, it could mask other missing data that users might not notice, thus generating false expectations and possibly feeding into decision-making processes that would otherwise have ended differently.

An alternative to the straight "0" swap might be to use the zero, but to format it so as to be very visible to anyone looking at the data: say red text with a yellow background (yeuch!) and to put a text message in an appropriate cell for that record, to state that the substitution has occurred.

A bit more work than the straight swap, but worth it the first time it shows up unexpectedly!

Just my two cents worth (feel free to change to zero cents worth...)

VRD


Another variation is to show that cell as "n/a", but to base all of the subsequent calculations on the basis of it being value 0


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