vrdiver wrote:Whenever I update the prices, the Expected Dividend changes. That's as per design, as the dividend is a function of scraped price x scraped yield.
Would it be possible* to change the design so as to scrape the forecast DPS, and then use that to generate a calculated yield (which would vary as the price changed) and keep the Expected Dividend constant when updating prices?
This would avoid the over- and understatement of dividends when only updating the prices.
VRD
*Possible, maybe, high enough up the to-do list, I appreciate it may not be!
An interesting idea, VRD. My initial thought is that forecasts have, by their nature, built-in inaccuracies, so we would probably be replacing one inaccurate number by another inaccurate number.
To get the ball rolling, let's take a simple portfolio of 1000 SSE shares. Looking at today's data from
https://uk.webfg.com/equity/SSE, we get
Price: 1279.50
Forecast Yield 7.5%
Forecast DPS for Y/E 2018-03-31: 94.5p
Forecast DPS for Y/E 2019-03-31: 97.37p
Based on the current methodology:
Portfolio value: 1000 * 1279.5 / 100 = £12795
Forecast Dividend: £12795 * 7.5% = £959.63
Based on the new methodology:
Forecast Dividend = 1000 * 97.37p = £973.70
A difference of 1.5%, which I would think is insignificant compared to the inherent inaccuracies in the forecast.
The other issue is what data to scrape. Forecast Yield (if it exists) is always in the same place, in the Key Financials Income and Efficiency section. Forecast DPS is in the Forecasts section. But which row (which Year End)? For SSE we would (I guess) use the second row of data, for Year End 2019-03-31. But what about Diageo
https://uk.webfg.com/equity/Diageo ? Do we use the first row (YE 2018-06-30) or the second row (YE 2019-06-30)?
And what about Investment Trusts such as Merchants
https://uk.webfg.com/equity/Merchants_Trust . There is no forecast, though we could then use the last year displayed in the Key Fundamentals section.
So, lots of things to consider, and reprogramming effort, but but would the end result be any better than what we have? I'm not so sure.
Though I am sure that your post will generate some good and interesting discussion.
--kiloran