Investors get communal with Valuecruncher
Mark Clare’s Valuecruncher has stepped up several gears. Originally offering a company valuation service to companies not covered by conventional investment analysts (I’ve used it), Valuecruncher now offers its tools free online to the general public. Valuecruncher is creating a community of investors, some of whom will take up its premium services later.
I’ve known Mark Clare for some years and I saw a preview of the new service earlier in the year. You input your own assumptions on key financial parameters for the company in which you’re interested; Valuecruncher’s algorithms then produce a share price projection. You can play with your projection and share it with others, who can comment on your assumptions and results. The user experience has been developed with the help of renowned web guy Rowan Simpson, who is known for his lean, uncluttered approach to website design.
In the words of Merrill J. Fernando from Dilmah Tea, “Do try it”.
Disclosure: I have no financial interest in Valuecruncher.
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May 15th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Thanks Jim
We would really like people to try the new service and tell us what they think.
Do try it. Great words.
Regards,
Mark Clare
May 16th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Mark I came to your site for a bit of a look and it looks great. Just a question, don’t answer it if it is commercial sensitive. I noted that some stocks have empty valuations, are these due to missing data or are they due to new IPOs where they consequently, have significantly less data than
the other stocks? I tried to look for Xero, but to no avail and since Xero is only a year old, they don’t have enough data for the 3-year period that you build your DCF on? If these N/A valuations are due to either of those , ie, new IPOs and missing data, then look at the following publications with detail of how to estimate the missing data or fill-in for less data in the new IPOs. Once the missing data or less data stocks are filled in, then your DCF could run then on those stocks. I do use fill-in algorithm to patch holes (missing data) in stock returns time-series prior to CAPM analysis.
References:
[1] Roderick J. A. Little and Donald B. Rubin, Statistical Analysis with Missing Data, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002.
[2] Xiao-Li Meng and Donald B. Rubin, “Maximum Likelihood Estimation via the ECM Algorithm,” Biometrika, Vol. 80, No. 2, 1993, pp. 267-278.
[3] Joe Sexton and Anders Rygh Swensen, “ECM Algorithms that Converge at the Rate of EM,” Biometrika, Vol. 87, No. 3, 2000, pp. 651-662.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
FF
Some quick responses.
We utilise a DCF valuation methodology for our valuations - with a 3-year forecast period and terminal growth calculation. For certain companies and industries - i.e. financial services and natural resources - the 3-year forecast period is insufficient or inappropriate to properly value these companies. We are looking at adding additional valuation methodologies to amend this.
We have started with a limited set of companies on international share market indicies. We have done this to start with a limited set of larger companies. Again we are looking at adding to what we have. In NZ we have started with the NZX50. Xero isn’t part of the NZX50 - so isn’t currently in our dataset.
Thanks