Sharesight - New Zealand's online share portfolio manager

NZ Shareholders Association AGM

Posted by Scott Ryburn on July 20, 2009

Sharesight is proud to be sponsoring the NZ Shareholders Association AGM this Friday 24 July at the James Cook Hotel in Wellington.

The event will feature the following guest speakers:

Morning Session:

• The Hon Bill English on Creating an Ownership Society. Bill is the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Minister of Infrastructure.
• Tim Brown on Preserving Shareholder Value in Difficult Times. Tim specialises in financial structuring at Infratil. He is also a director of Wellington Airport and NZ Bus.

Afternoon Session:

• Oliver Saint on Using Z Scores to Rate Companies. Oliver is a Chartered Accountant and a former merchant and investment banker. He now works from home as an equities fund manager.
• Rodney Dickens on Recessions and Investing in the Share Market. Rodney is Managing Director and Chief Research Officer of Strategic Risk Analysis Limited and has worked in the share broking industry for 12 years as an economist, strategist and head of research.

For members of the public the cost is $20 each for the morning and afternoon sessions or $50 for the full day including lunch. For Further information please visit The NZSA Website

If you are a Sharesight subscriber we have some limited free spaces available at the morning and afternoon sessions, please email contact@sharesight.co.nz before 4pm Wednesday 22 July if you are interested.

Back to the Future (Have we got too smart for our own good?)

Posted by Tony Ryburn on April 17, 2009

I was brought up in an era when life in general, and in the world of finance in particular, was a lot simpler than it is now. Borrowing money was frowned upon. You worked and if you were frugal, you might save enough to buy a few non-essentials if not luxuries.

If we wanted something we saved for it. The idea that you could borrow and have things now, rather than having to wait, did not feature in our thinking. We didn’t know much about interest and we had no idea about compounding. But we did have this vague, uneasy feeling that if you paid interest you were heading down the wrong path and would be worse off in the long run.

But we didn’t have the benefit of the advice that Yuwa Hedrick-Wong gave us all a couple of days ago. He said:

“The benefit offered to the consumer to acquire a short-term loan anytime and anywhere without any security coverage is not available on any other payment option except the credit card. The importance of the option for a consumer to borrow for short-term needs is more significant today as the global economy is heading into a period of constrained credit.”

(Maybe I should mention that Yuwa Hedrick-Wong is MasterCard’s economic adviser).

I’m getting that vague, uneasy feeling again. It is telling me that we need advice like this like a fish needs roller skates.

What we knew clearly in the good old days was that if you did need to borrow, the bank might not have funds available when you needed them. So relying on borrowed funds was a bad idea. Today we have MasterCard and all those collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps designed to ensure that banks always have the capacity to lend. But I for one am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.

We used to have this outdated belief that if you did borrow money you had to pay it back – no ifs, no buts, no maybes. Today we have revolving credit facilities and interest-only loans so that repayment is no longer necessary. I’m not sure this is a step in the right direction either.

Of course it wasn’t all bad in the good old days. Some of us did save a bit and stock exchanges were set up to allow us to participate fully in the capitalist society. These exchanges were pretty simple – they allowed you to buy and sell shares in companies. Despite this clear, simple mandate we had this irrational fear that somehow these exchanges would morph into giant casinos. Some would say this fear has now been realised which suggests that stock exchanges may not be heading entirely in the right direction either.

I hasten to add however that you can invest in the share market in a way that avoids the casino element, gives you good returns and enables you to ride out the volatility. See Why you should invest in the sharemarket

As well as the stock markets, what if the wonderful new financial instruments that are now available for us to make money were available in the old days? We wouldn’t have understood them, that’s for sure. But we probably would have had this vague, uneasy feeling that they had been developed with little regard for the risks. Risks that are inherent not only the instruments themselves, but also in the mechanisms for trading them.

However if the actions of the current generation are any guide, we would have headed off in the wrong direction. We would have ignored the risks, brushed aside our lack of understanding and gone for these  new financial instruments like rats up a drain pipe.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

Who needs economists?

Posted by Tony Ryburn on December 15, 2008

I agree with Chris Worthington’s contention (Dom Post 13/12/08. Super fund has no room for nationalism) that a Government directive to the NZ Super Fund would set a dangerous precedent.

But I question almost everything else in this article. Economics was never my strong point however, so maybe that’s why I have a few questions.

1. Is diversification the great free lunch of finance?
   
   See my thoughts on this.
2. Is it really true that over the long term, investment in NZ assets would have underperformed diversified international investment?
   
   As Chris himself admits, this has certainly not been true over the last 5 years and I doubt that it has been over the last 50 years either.
3. Are small countries unusually vulnerable to country-specific shock?
   
   The country specific shocks of the last year or so have generally hit larger countries the hardest. (I admit that Iceland is an unhelpful exception to my contention!) But if you look back over history I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with persuasive evidence that small countries are particularly vulnerable.
4. Is there really a rule-of-thumb that the correct allocation towards NZ assets should be less than 1% because our share of global assets is less than 1%?
   
   Since when has there been any evidence that asset allocation based on share of global assets has any relevance at all to investment performance? Quite apart from this, an investment strategy based on such a ‘rule-of-thumb’ would be totally impractical.
5. Is it really true that if NZSF invested more in NZ this would crowd existing investment into foreign markets?
   
   Evidence please Chris. And if it is true, why would that matter?
6. Are NZ assets really less desirable to the NZ Government than foreign assets, all else equal?
   
   Really? What precisely are all the things that have to remain equal? Will they? And if they don’t does that mean NZ assets aren’t less desirable for the NZ Government after all?

We all agree that we are in difficult times at present and if we are going to get things sorted, we need more than platitudes and perceived wisdom from those who, unlike me, do understand economics – if anyone does!

And what we don’t need are experts who have a bob each way. In October I questioned Rod Oram’s contention that the doomsayers have got it wrong. In this article Rod claimed that ‘other countries are rejoicing at the stability similar schemes (to NZ Government’s bank deposit scheme) are bringing to their banking systems’. Now he is now telling us ‘we don’t yet get the gravity of this crisis’.

Are you any the wiser?

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

How do you choose which shares to buy?

Posted by Tony Ryburn on November 26, 2008

As DIY investors we all have our own strategies for achieving better than average returns by making our own investment decisions rather than putting these decisions in the hands of a ‘professional’.

In a previous article on why you should invest in the Sharemarket, I gave my top 10 tips for DIY share market investment.

One of my tips was as follows:

“There are innumerable share purchase recommendations for free and there are many individuals and organisations that provide recommendations to paying subscribers. They can be a valuable source of guidance and information but don’t follow them blindly. Do your own homework and come to your own decisions.”

Clearly some recommendation services are better than others, and I didn’t want to bias the article with my own personal opinions on the matter, particularly as there are probably some great services out there that I have never used and some that I have not even heard about.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d be interested to hear what services others are using and what they think of them, so here’s your chance to contribute!

Please post your comments on which services you subscribe to, how closely you follow their recommendations, what you think of them and why.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

God Bless America

Posted by Tony Ryburn on November 14, 2008

Have you noticed how America always has to be centre front on the world stage?  The Iraq war did the job nicely for quite a while and just when even diehard Americans started tiring of that, they conjured up a financial crisis that started in their banking system and then reverberated throughout their entire economy before engulfing the rest of the world.

Things got seriously out of hand as we are all now painfully aware and America turned to its economic policy advisers to come up with a solution. Unfortunately what they came up with left a lot to be desired.

Their solution was to grab $US700 billion of tax payers’ money and buy bad bank loans.  This would have been grossly unfair to taxpayers who were basically being asked to pay megabucks for a load of worthless junk with no compensating upside.

Fortunately the European Union and Britain were alert to this inequity and came up with a much more reasonable, if blindingly obvious solution.  If tax payers’ money had to be used to bail banks out it should be used to purchase equity in the bank.  That way, long-suffering taxpayers would get a commensurate share of the good stuff as well.

Eventually, the wisdom of this proposal dawned on the Americans and they announced that they would follow the European and British lead.  And what happened when they finally got it right? A few billion (or was it trillion?) was promptly wiped off the American share markets! So it’s not just the banks and economic policy advisors in America who seem to have lost the plot.

And the point is? Well, the Americans led us into this mess but, based on their performance to date, we would be foolish to expect them to lead us out.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

What Does the Economic Future Hold for NZ? (Have the Doomsayers got it Wrong? part 2)

Posted by Tony Ryburn on November 2, 2008

For those of us with an interest in the share market this is an issue of some importance.  We all know that when the markets take a tumble they will rise again, but it would be great to get a handle on how long it will be before we see an upturn and how strong that upturn will be.

Here’s my take on the situation. Caveat: I might change my mind next week!

There is no doubt that there is going to be a major reorganisation of credit globally.  In my last blog I said that the consequences of such a massive change that will embroil the Government (and quasi-government organisations) so extensively in the financial markets, are impossible to predict.  I hold to this, but I also think that while this process is occurring, the productive sector will quickly get back to something approaching normalcy.  In other words the players will soon stop obsessing over the score and concentrate on the game.

Clearly NZ will not escape the impact of the credit crisis (particularly as our household debt is so high) or the recession that is likely to hit most of our trading partners. But there are good reasons to believe we will be less severely affected than most.  Unlike many countries we have not had major bank collapses, our financial system has not been hijacked by out-of-control derivatives trading and the Reserve bank has more latitude than its overseas counterparts to provide further stimulus via interest rate cuts if necessary.

All this suggests to me that the NZ economy is likely to be less severely affected than most (in marked contrast to the situation that prevailed after the 1987 share market crash).  Reduced demand as a result of the looming world-wide recession should keep the lid on oil prices for some time and further aid NZ’s recovery. In addition, renewable energy and sustainable food production are likely to become watch-words and NZ will be in the vanguard in both these vital areas.

So back to our share market. What might all this mean? I believe it will be good news. Our economy will recover more quickly than most and be less severely affected. This will enhance NZ’s reputation as a sound place to invest and re-stimulate investment in our share market from both local, and more importantly, offshore investors.

This is not to say it will not be tough going in NZ for a few years but here’s another bit of good news.  I believe that the full impact of current downturn in the NZ economy is already fully reflected in the NZ share market and then some.

Not convinced? Consider this quote from Michael Hill http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4745815a6445.html “I’ve given up looking at my own share price because it doesn’t make any sense to real life at all.  I mean if I looked at it I’d think there was something gravely wrong with the company, which there is isn’t.  I mean it’s bloody stupid.”

So how long before an upturn and how strong will it be?  I don’t know but I have certainly persuaded myself not to give up on the NZ share market.

How about you?

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

Have the Doomsayers got it Wrong?

Posted by Tony Ryburn on October 28, 2008

Wouldn’t it be great if we could buy Rod Oram’s argument that the doomsayers have got it wrong about the Government’s bank deposit guarantee scheme? (Sunday Star Times, 26 October). Oram has the powerful forces of wishful thinking on his side but it would be nice if these forces could be armed with rational argument.

Oram says our alarm at the bank guarantee scheme is ‘one of the weirder NZ responses to the global credit crisis.’ He contrasts this with other countries that are ‘rejoicing at the stability similar schemes are bringing to their banking systems’. Maybe I’m on a different planet but I don’t see any sign of rejoicing and no sign of stability either. And even if I’m wrong about this any rejoicing would more likely be because these unnamed other countries’ banks have been falling over like nine pins. This is not the case with our banks which Oram admits are ‘conservative, well-capitalised and good judges of risk’.

Oram suggests the Government bank guarantees are a ‘massive regulatory shift’ that starts to bring NZ back into the ‘global mainstream.’ He implies that this is a good thing. All I can say is that the ‘global mainstream’ is a turbulent, muddy, cesspool that everyone is frantically trying to get out of. Why it is weird for us to be reluctant to dive in to it is beyond me.

I share Oram’s concern about the NZ banks’ offshore borrowing but surely this adds weight to the uncomfortable thought that the doomsayers have got it right: not wrong? To think that a Government bank guarantee will forestall or alleviate any problems that this offshore fund-raising might cause is wishful thinking.

I agree that a challenge (although not necessarily ‘the central challenge’ as Oram suggests) is to ring fence the guarantees so they benefit only the NZ banks and not their Australian parents and shareholders. This is more than a challenge – it’s an impossibility. Any benefit to a wholly owned subsidiary will surely also be a benefit to the parent company.

There are also other challenges that cannot be ignored. When it comes to fund-raising, any action that favours one segment of the market (banks) will have adverse consequences for the rest (managed funds, share market and any others that cannot avail themselves of the guarantee). This is patently unfair and could have serious adverse consequences for organisations whose only crime is they are not one of the banks that Oram says have ‘made a mockery of monetary policy’.

The consequences of such a massive regulatory shift that embroils the Government so extensively in the financial markets are impossible to predict. However history suggests that anomalies, distortions, loopholes, exploitation and ever increasing complexity and cost will rule.

Do you think the doomsayers have got it wrong? I would like nothing more than for someone to convince me they have.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

Who’s to blame for the financial meltdown?

Posted by Tony Ryburn on October 7, 2008

As an investor in the share markets, I’m keen to discover why such a serious meltdown has occurred in the world’s financial markets and I want to gauge whether the US government’s rescue package will work. Dr Gareth Morgan has had a lot to say recently about the financial meltdown and, as he is well-qualified to assess the situation, I have been reading his views with interest. Maybe it’s just me, but I soon found myself getting some pretty contradictory messages.

Dr Morgan advised that an increasing predilection by the world’s central banks to “save the world” whenever the going gets tough can singularly (my emphasis) be blamed. He then opined that “what‘s behind the current crisis is an orgy of debt – an unrestrained appetite for lending and borrowing, no matter the risk of the transaction”.

This seems like a bank problem to me and it made me wonder whether there might be a dual rather a singular source of blame. But Dr Morgan explained that a message has been sent to the effect that, in the event that an institution over-stepped the mark, it was odds-on that the Central bank would step in. This points the finger at the Central banks with the implication that they have made financial institutions irresponsible by their apparent willingness to bail them out. However in the next breath Dr Morgan suggested that the Central bank might have done no more than aiding and abetting the suicide of the financial sector. This seems to redirect the finger at financial institutions.

The suggestion that financial institutions indulged in an ‘orgy of debt’ because they believed the central bank would bail them out does not sit well with me. I do not for a moment believe that staff in any financial institution anywhere in the world have done shonky deals on the basis that if they go wrong that would be ok because the Central bank would bail them out. That point aside, financial institutions want to succeed not suffer the ignominy of a collapse or a bail out.

The multitude of finance companies that have failed in NZ after indulging in an ‘orgy of debt’ certainly had no expectation of a bailout by our Reserve Bank or the Government. On the other hand, management at the ANZ undoubtedly realise that ANZ is too significant in NZ for the Government to allow it to fail. Despite this there is no suggestion ANZ has indulged in an ‘orgy of debt’.

There is little point in trying to assign blame unless it is part of a process to identify the source of the problem so that it can be fixed. To my mind the primary, if not singular, source of the problem is the lending institutions themselves, not the Central banks. And they have been aided and abetted not by the Central banks as Dr. Morgan suggests, but by the derivatives market.

Derivatives are highly risky instruments with no underlying asset to support them. They started with securitisation (the selling of parcels of loans) and moved on to include credit default swaps (a type of credit risk insurance). These instruments were relatively straight forward initially but variations on them (derivatives) were  developed over time allowing them to be used as a tools for financial speculation. At this point things got absurdly complex and the rot set in.

Transparency went out the window along with trust. The linkages back to the security of the original asset were broken and this created great uncertainty about the value of the assets the financial institutions are holding. In some cases this value is less than the value of the financial institution’s loans which, in the minds of many, is a pretty good definition of insolvency. No one is too sure which financial institutions are insolvent (apart from the ones that have already fallen over!) and this has made financial institutions wary about dealing with each other. Interbank trading is a crucial part of the financial system so it is not surprising that this has triggered a catastrophic chain of events.

So I think to fix the problem we have to start with financial institutions and find ways to monitor and control the derivatives market. This is what the US Treasury is planning to do and they have to be applauded for that. But whether they are going about this task in the best way is another question entirely.

One last thought. Maybe the real culprits are not the financial institutions, or the central banks or the derivatives market. Maybe we need to blame the borrowers. If they had not borrowed excessively in the first place none of this would have happened. Or would it?

We at Sharesight would be interested in your views. What do you think? What are the implications for the Australasian share markets?

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

Why you should invest in the Share market

Posted by Tony Ryburn on August 29, 2008

I wrote the following article for Her Magazine, which was published in their August issue:

For some, the thought of investing in the share market is enough to make them go weak at the knees or worse. It conjures up thoughts of gambling and crippling losses. And it reminds them of the only two years in recorded history that they associate with a financial event: the share market crashes of 1929 and 1987. You would have to be nuts to even think about investing in shares.

Wouldn’t you?

Well, no actually. A better definition of nutty would be not thinking about investing in shares. Why? The answer is simple. Shares produce higher returns than other types of assets. Stock exchanges have been around for a very long time and innumerable studies have come up with the same result: over the long haul shares do best.

The phrase ‘over the long haul’ is important because occasionally there can be quite long periods when shares look as if they are not going to deliver the best long term performance.

A major reason that people lose money on shares is that when the market falls, as it inevitably will, they panic and bail out, usually after most of the damage has been done. When the market rises again, as it inevitably will, they are not there to reap the benefit.

When you commit to shares for the long haul you soon realise that it is not about share prices; it’s about companies. If you focus on the share prices you are likely to get caught up in financial ratios, trading strategies and a high-risk game of trying to predict (in reality, guess) whether prices are going to go up or down. And even if you are lucky enough to predict a price rise or fall, that will not help you much unless you can also figure out when. We all know it is going to rain sometime in future but unless you know when, you can’t be sure the washing won’t get wet.

We are not talking rocket science here folks. You DO NOT have to be a financial guru and you do not need a financial advisor to do well in the share market. All you have to do is focus on companies. Look for companies with a proven track record offering top quality products and services that you understand and that you think will be in strong demand well into the future.

Here are my 10 tips for DIY share market investing:

1. Plan to be in there for the long haul.
2. Only invest money that you are confident you are not going to need at a particular time in the future. Otherwise you might be forced to cash up your shares in a downturn before they have delivered the superior return you are looking for.
3. Start out small and increase your investment over the years as your knowledge and confidence grows. That way you also avoid the risk of investing all your money at a high point in the market.
4. Spread your investment over a number of different companies in different industries. For example, if you have $10,000 to invest consider spreading this over, say, 5 companies. Diversify further as your total investment grows. And remember it is as easy to buy Australian shares as those in NZ.
5. Read articles about companies of interest to you in news papers, magazines and online. You will be surprised how quickly your knowledge and confidence grows. You can use online tools such as Sharesight to check the historic performance of a company to help you with your investment decisions.
6. There are innumerable share purchase recommendations for free and there are many individuals and organisations that provide recommendations to paying subscribers. They can be a valuable source of guidance and information but don’t follow them blindly. Do your own homework and come to your own decisions.
7. Focus on companies not share prices when you make your investment decisions.
8. Don’t panic if share prices suffer a sudden fall. You know in advance that this is likely to happen from time to time just as you know that in the long run shares are likely to give you the best return.
9. Start using a good share portfolio management system such as Sharesight from day one. It’s important to keep a good record of the shares that you own because you will need this information to file your tax return. It’s also crucial that you can easily and accurately assess how well your shares are performing. Sharesight virtually eliminates the administrative work associated with owning shares. All the data you need for your tax return is provided automatically including your Foreign Investment Fund earnings if you are caught up in this nightmarish piece of legislation. And, best of all, Sharesight shows you the true, annualised financial return on your shares including capital gains, dividends and currency movements.
10. Have fun! Believe it or not, studies have shown that most DIY share market investors thoroughly enjoy managing their investments.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

Calculating Share Returns

Posted by Tony Ryburn on August 6, 2008

One of our most important objectives in setting up Sharesight was to give you the true return on your shares. One of the many shortcomings of the so called ‘free’ sites is that they fail miserably in this vital area.

One of the reasons they fail is that providing you with the true, annualised return on your shares is trickier than it sounds. For a start you need to have a large amount of data at your fingertips and you need to be able to account for corporate actions like dividends, share splits, amalgamations and bonus issues because these will make nonsense of return calculations if you don’t.

To further complicate matters, there are two common arithmetically correct ways to calculate returns and in some circumstances they can give radically different answers. The two methods are the compounding method and the simple or non-compounding method.

The easiest way to appreciate the difference between the two methods is to consider a deposit account at the bank. If the bank quotes you a 7% interest rate this is a compounding rate. This means that if you do not withdraw your interest it will remain in your account and you will receive interest on that interest. Under the simple or non-compounding method, interest is calculated only on the original amount invested.

It is clear from the table below that $1000 invested for 10 years at 10% using the simple method does not equal 10% using the compound method. The simple method results in the return of your initial investment of $1000 plus a further $1000 of interest at the end of 10 years, whereas the compounding method results in the return your original investment of $1000 plus $1593.74 of interest. In fact an investment of $1000 that results in a return of that investment plus a further $1000 of interest over 10 years, equates to a compound return of approximately 7%.

To compare apples with apples a compound return calculation must be applied to your share portfolio if you want to compare its returns with a bank deposit. In the example above the correct return to compare to a bank deposit is 7% compound not 10% simple.

So what does Sharesight do?
Until now Sharesight has used a simple return calculation. This method is widely used to calculate share returns. Although it is arithmetically correct, it produces figures that overstate share returns in comparison to a compound return on a bank deposit.

This is why we have introduced a compound return calculation that you can select and apply to all tables in Sharesight that display return information. We use a daily compounding formula as this is standard practice among banks. Although simple interest will remain as the default setting you can choose to switch to compounding returns on a per portfolio basis by editing the portfolio settings (found under the settings link at the top right of the screen). There is also a link to change the percentage return method at the bottom of each page for which compounding return figures are available.

So which is correct and what should you do?
Both methods are arithmetically correct. We at Sharesight do not wish to get embroiled in a debate concerning the merits of one method over the other. You are free to choose which ever method you prefer.

Some more technical information about the formulas that Sharesight uses to calculate returns can be found here.

We also answer some common questions about compounding interest (and a variety of other questions) in the frequently asked questions section of the help documentation, which can be found here.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.