Fundamental data from Aspect Equity Review (AER) retail website closing

A provider of fundamental data, Aspect Equity Review (AER) is closing it's retail website.
http://www.aspecthuntley.com.au/af/aerhome?xtm-licensee=aer

The website is migrating functions to their owner's main website Morningstar.com.au "One tool that is yet to be built on Morningstar.com.au is an Advanced Search function. ...we plan to build [one] in 2013.
...AER [will] ...close off all but the Search function... on 31st January 2013."

I'm looking for an alternative if there is one for fundamental data that can be accessed by my code (at present I screen scrape and store it).

Commsec is one of the third parties that source data from AER, however Commsec doesn't allow you to save advance stock screener searches nor does it have the Aspect Value Model tool (you can get the latter via subscription from Commsec for $30 a month). The Morningstar website doesn't have the Value Model tool - no mention of it being migrated.

The Value Model Tool provides a black box share valuation based on a number of parameters which you can adjust to see the effect on the value. Here's a pic of what the Commsec version looks like https://www2.comsec.com.au/media/61263/valuemodeltool.gif

I already have a Morningstar Premium (YMW) subscription, the remainder of my AER subscription has been transferred to an extension of my Morningstar Premium subscription.

I'm looking for alternatives or brokers that offer the Aspect advanced stock screener and if possible the Aspect Value Model tool. Preferably something I can download or screen-scrape. AER offers download to Excel of the results of the screener, also you can save search specifications. Comsec search has a paged output (unlike the single page of AER) and you can't save a search - I can work around that but I'd prefer not to.

Don't mind paying a modest amount. AER was around $230 p.a.

Anyone else affected?
Anyone else who downloads fundamental data, where do you get it?

P.S. Not to mention the loss of the advanced announcement search, absent from Morningstar Premium, Comsec has it but not as good. Also the alerting tool (sends emails when certain company announcements are made) - absent from Morningstar Premium and Comsec. Also AER used to rank stocks 1-5 on Value, Growth, Risk, Income. I didn't really use that so...

P.P.S. If I paid $30 a month to Commsec, I'd get the Value Model Tool. Also Model Portfolios whatever that is (is it YMW portfolios or something different - Commsec don't give an example). Plus other stuff I already have from Morningstar Premium like Corporate Calendar.

AER have told me that the Advanced stock screener will stay open on the current AER site until it is available on Morningstar, unknown if it will have saved searches.

The Aspect Value Model Tool will not be available on Morningstar so the only place I know it is available currently, is Commsec at extra cost (I presume it will continue to be available there).

Hi
Posted a query in your other thread about fundamental data analysis. Unfortunately I don't have a solution and wondered if you'd found a replacement. I too used AER and the replacement Morningstar has does not cut it in terms of its advanced stock screener. I basically only need a couple of ratios, price to sales being the main one. I can't find anything with the simplicity of AER. Did you have any luck?

hollandpark said:

Posted a query in your other thread about fundamental data analysis. Unfortunately I don't have a solution and wondered if you'd found a replacement. I too used AER and the replacement Morningstar has does not cut it in terms of its advanced stock screener. I basically only need a couple of ratios, price to sales being the main one. I can't find anything with the simplicity of AER. Did you have any luck?

Click to expand...

You'll probably find Comsec has what you need.

Firstly Comsec has Company Search which has all the fields that AER had (some fields have slightly different names, trivially, like punctuation or spaces). However Comsec company search does not have the ability to save searches like AER, and if your search has more than 200 results, the results are paginated. Accessed from Quotes & Research -> Quotes -> Company Search. No download to a spreadsheet like AER had.

Comsec also has another search facility where you can save searchesAccessed from Quotes & Research -> Research -> Toolbox icon -> Stock Screener -> Custom Screener. This Stock Screener is limited in value thresholds that you can put in, however it might suit you. For example, if I look for P/S less than 1, I type in 1, and it changes it to 1.2 for some reason.

I am pretty sure Westpac broking has the same Stock Screener (and probably some other brokers too, but Westpac is the only one who have detailed info on what they offer without signing up). From screenshots I've seen, the Westpac Stock Screener is identical to the Comsec one.

All the above Comsec info is available if you sign up, with no monthly charges - there is additional info available if you pay a monthly charge or trade a lot, neither of which apply to me.

As an aside, Morningstar has got to be one of the slowest most unreliable websites around. It seems to be unusable on weekends. Considering how much Premium membership costs, it's pathetic. AER was, by contrast, very fast.

Comsec performance is very good, except sometimes charting times out (fails) towards the end of the trading day.

Thank you very much for the info. I'll try westpac as I dislike giving all my details away just to have a look at what they offer!