Fundamental data screening

[lclfze]

I use fundamental data for working out medium-long term trading/holding.

Currently I use Aspect Equity Review (AER) but it is closing down shortly. I screen scrape this solely for my own use.

The AER stock screener is essentially the same as ComSec's Company Search (under Quotes & Research / Quotes) except it has two major differences. AER can save searches and the results are not paginated (divided into groups of 200).

Does anyone know of any broker or service provider who supplies something like ComSec's, but allows searches to be saved and preferably doesn't paginate, like AER?

Or alternately where do you get fundamental data (I'm talking about fully detailed fundamental data, not just a few like P/E, EPS).

Background
Example of Comsec Company Search http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/sgrkbfiv/comsecCompanySearchExample_zps999ba4d2.jpg
Example of AER stock screener http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/yy310/sgrkbfiv/AERadvancedSearch_zps7acc1269.jpg

I am sure ComSec get this service from Morningstar (who owns AER & Huntley).

Morningstar currently has a pretty fancy portfolio facility, with customisable views, but doesn't operate on the whole market, has no filtering and has a limit of 4 user defined data tables of 35 fields each (and they don't seem to correspond with the AER ones, unlike the ComSec Company Search). You can have ten watchlists and ten portfolios in their portfolio system (each with 200 stocks) so you could cover the whole market, with a bit of stuffing around.

N.B. Already am signed up to Morningstar Premium (from Morningstar, not ComSec), ComSec, Intelligent Investor, Eureka, Colin Nicholson BWTS, BT Wrap.

History:
Aspect Equity Review was a stand-alone company, then bought out some time ago by Huntley, then Huntley was bought out some time ago by Morningstar.

Morningstar announced about 9 months ago they were going to transfer functions of AER to Morningstar Premium, and they did so 6? months ago, except for the stock screener, which they said they would close down as soon as they have developed a new one on Morningstar Premium, but now they have decided to ditch the new one and close the old one, with 2 weeks notice. Would have been good to decide that 9 months ago so I had 9 months to find a new one myself rather than 2 weeks.

 

[pixel]

It's been a long time that I got in touch with Commsec and Aspect - "Huntley" as it was then.
If they have improved their platform, it's been well after I lost patience and left.
However, as much as I can gather from your question, you may like to have a look at Westpac's new tools: https://onlineinvesting.westpac.com.au/public/homepage/announcements.aspx?id=wslannouncement146

Although I haven't started using the watchlist and search facilities (yet), I have been flicking through some of the new videos and believe there's lots of fundamental criteria that can also be saved as search templates. (I'm trading on a T/A basis, using ANalyser software from D2MX and Paritech.)

As Brokers go, I rate Westpac quite highly; have been with them for almost 20 years and have yet to experience a wrong booking, accounting error, or missed order. (Now I've given them a rap, that spate of good fortune will of course come to an end. Maybe next week Friday )

 

[pixel]

On the crossroads between F and T, I've just found this on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YymQBbn421U

See if you can listen to it without a subscriber login.

 

[Valued]

I just copy and paste from commsec to a word document. Simple but effective (and free!).

 

[lclfze]

Thanks for comments.

I emailed Morningstar support and according to them, there is no broker or service provider offering a service equivalent to AER Advanced Stock Screener. However it's possible that Morningstar retail doesn't know what Morningstar wholesale is doing - Morningstar supply data to many (most?) brokers.

 

[tinhat]

I use Lincoln Indicators Stock Doctor (platinum subscription). Their PC application allows quite detailed scanning on fundamental data and they have a technical filter that you can use to filter short lists/watch-lists against technical data. They should have a trial subscription for around $50. The data is provided by Reuters Thompson plus for the stocks they follow their own analysts provide forecasts. Their financial health model is a great way to identify companies with strong balance sheets.

 

[craft]

lclfze

S&P’s Capital IQ and Morningstar’s Finanalysis and Datanalysis are two that I am aware of. (If you can dream it up you can scan for it) and can be applied historically across 20 plus years of raw data or ratio etc CIQ can even populate your own excel templates. I’m sure Thomson Reuters have something similar. I have never seen anything that even comes close as a retail offering. Focus of these products is institutional clients and companies don’t seem to be geared up to foster individual access but it is possible if you get hold of the right person/dept and pay the large (think 10-20K) annual fees.

Retail access in Aus is probably limited until the data providers get serious about the segment, but perhaps they have an incentive not to undermine their institutional/wholesale offerings so don’t hold your breath.

Best bet would be to see what data/scanners, Brokers are repackaging and how extensive it is – Suspect however most will be roughly equivalent to Comsecs offering. Maybe checkout Yahoo, Bloombergs website etc they have data but not sure about scanning though. Don’t know much about other offerings likes stock doctor etc - never stumbled across anything at that level that I thought was value for money.

Good luck with the search and let us know what you turn up.

 

[odds-on]

I use the Financial Times equity screener. http://www.ft.com/home/asia

Register for FREE and you get an Equity Screener with upto 5 years Fundamental Data about a company. The Equity Screener has numerous criteria and you can save custom screens. I personally like the Financial Overview section about each company as it shows some nice little charts of Revenue, EPS, DPS, Cash, Debt, etc over the last 5 years plus ROE, ROI which are very useful before deciding to allocating time to studying a company.

Yet to find anything better than FT for FREE!

Cheers

 

[Boggo]

I use Lincoln Indicators Stock Doctor (platinum subscription). Their PC application allows quite detailed scanning on fundamental data and they have a technical filter that you can use to filter short lists/watch-lists against technical data. They should have a trial subscription for around $50. The data is provided by Reuters Thompson plus for the stocks they follow their own analysts provide forecasts. Their financial health model is a great way to identify companies with strong balance sheets.

I tried quite a few years ago and Lincoln Stock Doctor was way superior to anything else. You could also just call the and speak to Elio if there was any aspect of a company that you didn't understand or needed additional info on.

 

[lclfze]

Executive summary:
Westpac has Company Search [1] at Quotes & Research > Quotes > Company Search
Would be good to know if this a) has saved queries and b) is paginated at max 200 per page or displays all the results.

Edit: just seen tinhat's response and those following, will follow-up later, thanks.

Rest of long-winded guff you can read if you wish follows...

Comsec also has Company Search which is almost the same as the AER tool I have been using. However there are no saved searches on Comsec and it is paginated.

Looking further at Comsec and Westpac[2], they both have Aspect Huntley sourced "Stock Screener" (a different thing to "Company Search"). You can save searches. Has quite a lot of fields to choose from. Results aren't paginated but it adds more rows as you scroll down, so you have to keep scrolling to the end repeatedly before you get to the end of the data. However you can sort by any column which offsets the scrolling issue somewhat.

However the way acceptable values of some of the fields is specified in the "Stock Screener" leaves a bit to be desired. For example, if I am looking for new 52 wk highs, I select field "Relative to 52 week high" and it won't let me enter 1 (if I enter 1, it changes it to 0.95031, which appears to be the highest value of that field at the moment).

St George directshares.com.au (rebadged ETrade) has "Advanced stock filter"[3] from Morningstar but don't know if this is the same as the Comsec/Westpac "Company Search" or "Stock Screener".

Directshares[3] and ETrade and Comsec are both still spruiking the Value Model Tool even though according to Westpac [1] "it has been discontinued by Morningstar".

Qudos to Westpac for providing the best public information on what research tools they offer. NAB trade is worst at public info of those I looked at.

[1] https://onlineinvesting.westpac.com.au/Public/ContactUs/FAQs.aspx

[2] Virtually identical demo videos:
Comsec Stock Screener video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr3vnquKC2g
Westpac Stock Screener video at http://info.westpac.com.au/tradingresearch/

[3] https://invest.directshares.com.au/QuotesAndResearch/ResearchTools/Default.aspx

 

[lclfze]

Lincoln Indicators - have looked at this in the past, and I've read (part of) Lincoln's original PhD thesis, which appears to contain the majority of their methodology (of course they add the software, data and some tweaks they've made since then). Might revisit in the future but at the moment I am just trying to get back to where I was in terms of fundamental data. Also Lincoln is a bit expensive, if the price was under $1k, I'd be more receptive to it (perhaps I'm being penny wise and pound foolish).

Financial Times equity screener - couldn't find this using my existing free ft.com login. Looks like you need a paid subscription? Closest thing I could see was "5 year company financials archive" which needs a "Standard online subscription" at $5.99/wk [1], but maybe I am just looking in the wrong place.

I had a look at Morningstar professional and wholesale but they don't have any prices of anything on the web so I suspect is is much more than I want to pay. Bloomberg professional and Capital IQ similar.

There is free data at http://www.afrsmartinvestor.com.au/share_table/
It's updated about once a month I think.

[1] http://registration.ft.com/registration/subscription-service/signuppsp

 

[Boggo]

Also Lincoln is a bit expensive, if the price was under $1k, I'd be more receptive to it (perhaps I'm being penny wise and pound foolish).

Error, if you are comparing the cost rather than the quality that is.

 

[hollandpark]

Hi
Apologies for tacking on to your thread. I too used Aspect Huntley Equity Review for many years for analysis. I too am trying to find a replacement. I found it excellent for basic screening of stocks that fitted my criteria, namely price to sales ratio, company size and liquidity. I still have not found an adequate replacement, particularly the price to sales ratio is difficult to come by. I have tried asxiq but found it to be unreliable/inaccurate.

Have you discovered anything that comes close to the functionality of Equity Review?

Many thanks

 

[lclfze]

Have you discovered anything that comes close to the functionality of Equity Review?

See here https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26146&p=798874&viewfull=1#post798874

 

[lclfze]

Financial Times equity screener - couldn't find this... maybe I am just looking in the wrong place.

Found it http://markets.ft.com/screener/customScreen.asp
Help here http://help.ft.com/markets-data/equity-screener

It appears similar to use to one of the search facilities on Comsec, Westpac and presumably others. However the data is © Thomson Reuters. Additionally it normalizes data to Pound, US Dollar or Euro.

The similar thing on Comsec is accessed from Quotes & Research -> Research -> Toolbox icon -> Stock Screener -> Custom Screener. Comsec Westpac etc also have Company Search (which is like the old Aspect Equity Review company search screener).