A few months back, torn between which share (from my short list) to invest in, I ended up choosing by a roll of the dice. To my untrained eye, all the shares I was looking at appeared just as good as one another, hence my quandary. If only I had enough funds to invest in all of them!
Anyway, I now have a new tool which will hopefully help me with my choosing dilemma and I have DivHut to thank for pointing it out to me. Here’s his review of Simply Wall St.
Simply Wall St is a visual tool which looks at core areas of a company, namely Income, Value, Health, Past and Future and produces a ‘snowflake‘ based on 30 financial checks. The greener the snowflake the better.
Below, I compare the snowflakes of the high-flying Next plc to poor old Tesco:
It is this comparison function which will be of most use to me, to help me choose which shares to buy when faced with the dice dilemma!
You don’t just look at the snowflake though, although that can give you an early indicator – see a company with a nice green snowflake and you click on that company to see a whole raft of info such as historical debt, income and growth expectations, etc all in lovely graphical form.
There’s even info on the company, such as number of employees, some info on the CEO (including salary, if publicly available) and a Google-map snapshot of where the HQ is (usually a map of London!) just to add a bit of flavour!
Anyway, plug in your own share purchases and it’ll calculate your average dividend yield (mine’s apparently 4.91%), show your portfolio value based on expected growth, as well as a load of other interesting information.
What I think is a nice touch is that there is a Beginner Mode – select this and below each section, there’s a little graphic plus simple explanation eg the explanation for Historical Dividend Yield:
Since there’s still a lot about stocks and shares I’m not sure about, I found these really handy.
Simply Wall St is currently in beta version so is free to use. I believe there is a premium paid for service planned but I hope they will continue to run a basic free version.
I was able to find all my UK shares (and all the stocks on my watch list – yippee!) and I assume all US ones are covered. Not sure about other countries, I haven’t tried looking.
Currently, it only tracks individual shares and doesn’t track funds, ETFs or investment trusts, and while it did produce info on the latter, there was a warning note saying that their data availability was poor.
Anyway, I think it’s a nice little tool worth checking out, something that can be used alongside traditional spreadsheets, though be warned, you can end up spending a lot of time tinkering on it! (I did anyway!)
Ciao Weenie,
Very interesting tool, will check it out immediately!
Stal
Still have not taken a look. I will do pronto after this. I had assumed–incorrectly as it turns out–that it only included US companies. My error!
Nice little write up, weenie. Thanks for that!
Small world… this is my long time school friends business he started in perth/sydney. I'll let him know it's getting some exposure with UK FI-seekers when I see him in Sept, I'm sure he'd be stoked!
Weenie,
When DivHut published his article I was immediately interested, but I haven't gotten around to testing the platform. Glad to hear it gets a ringing endorsement from you too!
Maybe I'll try and incorporate some of its graphs into my own spreadsheet.
Best wishes,
NMW
Had a quick look today. I could not create a portfolio? I could search for companies – funnily enough my last employer is recommended as a stock to buy – LOL – they are a good company financially – just a shame it didn't suit me as a workplace.
I will try again on another day, maybe its just initial registration problems. Seems a quick way to assess/compare a few companies and drill down before purchasing.
I would be interested when I have managed to create a portfolio and put all my shares in there and see how they report as a snowflake.
You're welcome, DD. It's definitely worth checking out – even in beta-version, I can see how useful it can be!
Ciao Stal
I hope you find it as useful as I have!
Hew Cosmickid
Wow, what a small world but what a brilliant website/tool created by your friend! I wish him lots of success with this, please thank him when you see him!
Hi sparklebee
Hope you sorted out the creation of your portfolio. To create mine, I went to Portfolios, My Portfolios and then 'Add portfolio' to create it. I've plugged in all my shares now and my snowflake is not as green as I would like, it's more yellow which I guess isn't too bad!
Funny about your last employer being recommended though, hehe! Hope you find the tool useful anyway.
Hey NMW
It is a very interesting tool – I look forward to seeing some bits perhaps as part of your updates! 🙂
Will do! I'm enjoying reading the rest of your blog too. Seems I learn a little more on each I check out. Getting interested in P2P now to diversify a little more so enjoying reading about this.
This looks way cool!
If I ever dabble in some individual share action I'll be sure to check it out.
Cheers for the headsup 🙂
Hey TFS
It is a really cool tool! It makes me wish I had a load more spare capital so that I can invest in more 'green snowflakes'! But you can spend so much time on it, as there's so much info! Hope you get to find it useful when you start 'dabbling'!