Stockopedia 2014 - Going Global, Mobile And More...

24th Jan '14 by Edward Croft

19 comments 30542 reads

Before discussing the plans for 2014, I wanted to make you aware of the search improvements we just rolled out to the site. Personally I've been using Google for a long time to hunt our content archives on Stockopedia and this had always irritated me. Over the last few weeks we've put a team effort into improving the search pages on Stockopedia to remedy this.

We've built up a range of indexes using the cutting edge open source Sphinx search library with a few key goals. Firstly we wanted to make all our help articles, glossary terms and blogs searchable within the same place. Secondly we wanted you to be able to drill down through various different indexes across Stocks, indexes, sectors, Screens, Content, Authors and so on. While there are still improvements we are keen to make - such as bringing in all our youtube videos it's a big advance on the previous search page. It also lays the platform for us to add future content types - such as the massive ownership library detailed below. Check our the new search and give us feedback here.

Getting the best ideas from the best investors

Next up for Stockopedia is the launch of the 'Ownership' database. Our philosophy here is different to most financial websites. We don't treat data as a commodity, we treat it as a source of very valuable alpha. Our obsession is - How can we use this data to find the vital stock selection signals that can help our subscribers to massive outperformance in the market?

The ways we can do this with 'ownership' data are many. We've blogged about the Insider Rank (or which companies are most liked by company directors) and Best Ideas rank (or which companies are most liked by institutional fund managers). but there's also valuable alpha in knowing which companies are being heavily short sold by smart hedge fund money. All of these signals, combined with key Broker upgrade data are going to be wrapped up into a unified Stockopedia Smart Money Rank - providing an unprecedented ability to find out which companies are most liked by those that have far greater research capabilities and insights than the typical private investor.

These rankings are completely independent from…

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jamez1969

25th Jan '14

great news

jjis

Can we have an Android App too please?

cig

Doing it as a mobile-friendly website is likely to be better than an app for the sort of thing stocko is doing, as well as being a more efficient way to do it so that they can have more time for the content. You can always launch the mobile website from an icon on your android device.

Edward Croft

Yes - this is precisely the way we are going. We'll be providing a prompt for mobile users to add the icon to their desktop. It will be an HTML5 website that works multi-platform rather than as native Android/iPhone apps.

theFireEscaper

26th Jan '14

The approach Stockopedia is taking is to use a responsive design with HTML/JS. This will/should work across all devices and platforms

superguy

1st Feb '14

I am a Canadian investor , i really like the layout and content of the Stockopedia website. However, it costs over $100 to make a trade for a Canadian Investor for a European or U.K. Stock. I find this to be an inordinate cost, so I have only bought European and U.K stocks that have ADRs. Because I can Make so few purchases , I have not subscribed to Stockopedia yet. However as soon as your beta North American site opens I intend to give it a good workout. I believe I am not alone , if Stockopedia is priced reasonably I believe it has the capability of becoming an international website not just a european one . I would really appreciate more visibility into when the beta North American beta edition will be available - early in 2014 is too vague.

One other comment has occurred to me . When the North American edition is issued there may be slight problems with some of the English terminology in tutorials and reports. A North American audience will not be familiar with terms such as Gearing.

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ seem to accept Canadian customers. You'll pay less for UK and euro stock trades than most UK and European investors pay with their domestic brokers.

Stocko is also closed for business for continental European customers -- the euro edition is priced for UK landed gentry with multi-million portfolios, out of reach of ordinary retail investors. Arguably they may need local partners to get traction if they tried the broader retail market.

PhilHofGrowYourDough

2nd Feb '14

the euro edition is priced for UK landed gentry with multi-million portfolios, out of reach of ordinary retail investors

I'd like to offer an alternative view. I'm a long long way off even a million £ portfolio. However last June when the Euro edition was launched I was hesitant about the Euro pricing and whether it made sense given the size of my portfolio. Ed suggested that it would pay for itself with one good trade. Given my successes with the UK version I took a leap of faith.

Since July last year, I'm up over 25% across my consolidated holdings and my average gain on my European stocks is 21%. Ed was proved correct.

Perhaps readers can make a more informed decision (given their portolio size and usual investment amount) about the potential risk/rewared of the Euro package.

You can see some of European selections in my fantasy fund which is closely related to my actual investments.

Consider Awilco Drilling (OSL:AWDR) a scottish based drilling contractor listed on the Oslo exchange. Their rigs are currently booked out until 2015 and there is strong demand in market (95% from memory).

Get ready for the numbers ... a Fwd PE of 4.2, a Fwd PEG of 0.4, EPS Growth of 11.8.

A really good ttm Price to FCF of 4.95. The board has committed to disttributing a large proportion of FCF and so the current dividend was ... ... 19.9%

Of course DYOR ...

Perhaps Ed might even consider opening up the AWDR stock report?

Best of luck

Phil

Some minor corrections to my last post ...

£ADWR own two drilling rigs. The 1st is contracted to until Nov 2015 with an option for another 275 days, whilst the 2nd rig is contracted until mid 2017 with an option for another 27 months.

From the Q3 presentation ...

Future quarterly dividend payments will be in line with the Company’s intent of distributing all free cash flow above a robust cash buffer to support operational working capital requirements and planned capital expenditure

and

The UK Market is close to Sold Out until mid-2015

which is keeping the day rates high.

Superguy - I'd love to set an exact date for the North American edition launch, but unfortunately in my long experience they are impossible to set until you get very close to a release. First up is to release the Ownership module which is shaping up nicely.

Regarding terminology, yes this is indeed an issue, though we'll be gradually supporting translation on the site. It might seem odd to support translation to American, but terms like 'Profit' are used here while 'Income' is used there, 'Sales' vs 'Revenue', 'private investor' vs 'individual investor'. It's difficult to get spot on I'm afraid. I studied the CFA and my own terminology is rather Americanised as a result and we've run into confusion issues with British subscribers too !

@cig - regarding pricing. It's very hard to get right. Very few people have complained at the UK Edition pricing though a few have at the European. That may suggest we've priced the UK too low and Europe too high? (Maybe GBP 250 and GBP 500 are more appropriate). I do though think one has to compare the price of one's research tool against the value added as PhilH has mentioned. Somebody with £100,000 in an actively managed fund could be paying £3000 or more after the costs for the privilege annually. In that context I don't see that a £600 subscription for a product that brings the potential for significant outperformance vs products that charge many multiples more is a large sum. Since launch it has proven itself to be a steal !

No doubt pricing is hard to get right, not sure what I'd do if I was in your place. I just believe very few typical continental retail investors would pay more than 20-30 euros a month for a service like yours, while quite a few may be interested below 30. If you don't actively promote towards euro investors, then it may not be that big a loss as they wouldn't necessarily spontaneously find you and the UK market for Euro stuff may be more price insensitive (as the thrifty end of the UK will probably stay domestic).

That someone in a fund may pay 3% is not a very solid argument: paying that much gives a very high chance of underperforming passive. You're not trying to say that people could equally underperform passive by using your service, are you?

You can't either compare 3000 vs 600 given that some of the trading costs the fund faces (which I presume you include, 3% in raw AMC is rare!) are also there for the individual investors, and some will be more (e.g. a fund is not going to pay the typical retail UK brokerage markup for forex, or the CDI spread).

In Phil's example, if we convert the not very interesting nominal number to relative perf for a passive substitute, say an eurozone small cap ETF like iShares EMU small cap (CES1 in £, first one I found, trying not to data mine) we see perf since July last year is about 20%, so not much alpha left to pay for Stocko... Costs (be it info services, brokerage, taxes, forex, etc) should be benchmarked against one's long term alpha because that's where there is added value from not going passive. In the long term you won't get 20% beta every year to make the costs look misleadingly low in nominal terms. Cherry picking one "good trade" is also not meaningful, it's the averages that matter.

PS: you should fix that "bug" that expands the £ sign plus a number that happens to be a ticker to a stock link as it's rarely what people mean as we can see here :-).

3rd Feb '14

i use Guru Focus which is a comparable service ;it charges $299 for U.S premium service and $189 for the Canadian premium service. This is about $32.50/month. I also use Stock Rover which charges $19.99/month. I consider Stockopedia to be slightly superior to these services. so an appropriate subscription cost might be $40/month or maybe $400/annum.I use multiple services because even when I am supposedly using the same stock strategy, I get different results, possibly due to different data sources.

I read somewhere that if customers cannot understand the value that your product brings, they will compare you on the only thing they can measure... which is price. Competing solely on price isn't something that we should be aiming for - we should be competing on value, service and, if I dare say it, enjoyment !

Our pricing should start at what's appropriate to create and sustain value, service and enjoyment for our subscribers. The last thing that subscribers should want is for us to launch prices that are incredibly cheap but lead to no company growth or investment. Every penny we earn is being reinvested back into the website to provide an even better service, and that will continue to happen until we've brought the vision we have into fruition.

Iti is true that one successful investment can return the subscription cost . however that is also true for all the competing websites that you are in competion with. Investors Business Daily Charges $249/annum, Morningstar Premium charges $174/annum, , Zacks Premium charges $200/annum, and Marketgrader charges $180/annum. I subscribe to all those sites, plus the websites I have mentioned previously, plus a few others. I am not scared to spend money to obtain useful information. However, I do insist in value for money spent. The companies I have mentioned indisputably give me useful information, at a reasonable price. No matter how good your product is you cannot charge a huge premium over your competitors if you expext to survive in a competitive market. I remain very interested in your product at a reasonable price.

AlanJenkins2

Hi,Superguy,hi Edward.I also subscribe to both Gurufocus and Stockopedia,and it is interesting to compare the two.The basic concept of Gurufocus revolves around following the holdings of respected investment experts/gurus - as in what they are buying,holding and selling.Whilst I do like their stock screeners and in particular their warning signs,I am not convinced that following Gurus is likely to deliver a markedly superior investment performance - especially since many of them have to concentrate on larger cap stocks.
Basically,I like to see the 'raw' data [Revenue,operating profit,net profit,debt etc] alongside the distilled measures [Pitroski,Altman,Magic Formula etc]. I find that that helps me to build up a useful picture of what is going on,within the limits of historical data.I don't want a service that distills the data and provides its own conclusions without showing me the data itself.So I prefer Stockopedia,because it does just the right amount of the work,and then allows me to reach my own conclusions.

To be fair to Gurufocus,their service does allow you to see the historical data when you click on it,but I find the Stockopedia presentation easier to follow.

Alan what you say is true to a certain extent .Personally I do not use the inputs from gurus much at all. It has all the measures and raw data that you mentioned , though not presented in the most orderly fashiion. It also has a very useful discount cash flow calculator where you can feed in .it also has useful dividend data , and stock buyback data.The reason I subscribe to to different services is to build up as complete picture of a company as I can viewed from many different viewpoints.Stock Rover also gives me many screening strategies. All this being said I believe Stockopedia has the potential to be more complete, better organized than any of these stock research websites .However, value versus cost must be considered regardless of what Stockopedia executives may claim . I dont mind paying what I consider a reasonable price but not an exorbitant one. I subscribed to Value-Investing.eu at 299 euros/annum for a while but I do not consider that site to have the same level of quality and organization as Stockopedia.

chrigil

10th Apr '14

I have to say Ed that, whilst I wish I could disagree about your pricing structure and tell you that it's too expensive, sadly I can't! £25pm IS right at the top end of what I can afford. I invest a few hundred pounds a month maximum and to say it massively eats away at my profits is an understatement. On face value it's prohibitively expensive.

Given the above, you might ask, why I actually subscribe at all! Simply put, Stockopedia is the first single online resource I have found that has enabled me to significantly further my knowledge and understanding of how and why I am investing my relative pittance.
I come from a computer science background and like the people behind Stockopedia, feel that separating the wheat from the chaff can be done very effectively using purely scientific, statistical analysis.

So whilst logically, at first glance, my £25pm would be better off invested rather than 'wasted' on a subscription, I feel that this would in the short term result in potentially throwing good money after bad, and in the long terms, prevent me from learning the skills necessary for when I do have a significant sum to invest.

Keep up the good work, and if you need a front end programmer, gimme a shout!

muckshifter

11th Apr '14

Superguy,
if you are still reading this thread, why don't you open an account with TDW in the UK to reduce your dealing costs? They were the only online cheap broker I could find who would provide an account in the UK for my brother in Australia, and although they were a real pain in the arse to set him up with, it now works.
Regards.

Stockopedia 2014 - going global, mobile and more...

Getting the best ideas from the best investors

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Edward Croft

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