Features of the ASX Fund Statistics Comparison App
App Updates
8th May 2020 Update: Added new April 2020 data from the ASX which was published earlier today. Also made a change to how Performance tab showcases ETP Category and ETP performance on bar charts. Previously, you had to select a single month in the Period filter to showcase the data for that month. Otherwise selecting multiple months meant the bar charts showed the average performance (1-month, 1-year etc) over the period selected. Now, the bar charts show the latest performance for those measures based on the selection of the user.
6th May 2020 Update: Added 2 new features to allow users to compare different funds and also view data as a table (if that’s of interest). See end of this article for those details
Introduction
If you’re interested in the markets and look at Index Funds or ETF’s (Exchange Traded Fund) and wanted to track performance then you might know about the data that’s provide by the ASX (Australian Securities Exchange). The data sits in PDF’s or Excel files and you can access it here: https://www.asx.com.au/products/managed-funds/market-update.htm.
Because this data is in these file formats, you need to download multiple files and then take time to do analysis if you want to aggregate, visualise or compare performance over time.
Instead of doing all that, you could instead access an app that we’ve built that helps users better visualise, interact with and gain insight from this public source of information. It’s been built using Microsoft Power BI to pull in data going back to November 2018 and covers 7 different categories.
This initial version only sources data available from these ASX statistics and only covers Exchange Traded Products (ETP’s). In future I will look at their other products such as LIC’s, REITS and others. Additionally, there is no share price data in here as that’s not available in the source but I will look at adding that later on.
The App
The app is publicly available and can be accessed here: LINK
Features
Navigating the Menus and Sub-Menus
As mentioned above, the app gives users the abiltiy to visually analyse 7 different areas of Performance, Historic Yield, Liquidity, Transactions, Spreads, Inflows/Outflows and FUM. These areas can be navigated to by clicking on each name on the main navigation panel on the left.
Within each menu are sub-menus which have various options for the user. The sub-menu page you are on will be indicated by the yellow underline on the menu name.
In this example, I’m in the Performance section and looking at the 1 month vs 1 year performance chart
I can switch to the Ranks by Category page by clicking on that and can see the yellow indicator confirms this choice.
Expanding and minimising charts
With all charts in this app, they are interactive but have been scaled down in size to fit more on the page. If you hover over a chart you will see 2 options — 1st is to show the filter/s that are running on it and the 2nd is to maximise the chart.
With the bar charts above you won’t see much on them in their current state but you can scroll up and down them. If you click on the maximise button you will see the chart take over the whole page. For example:
You can click on the “Back to Report” button to go back to where you were.
Filtering the data
What’s a good dashboard without filters? That’s a rhetorical question but it’s good to have these so users can hone in on certain selections and gain some insights from them.
Filters are the same on all pages (for now) and these are located at the top panel of each page of the app.
There are 5 different filters along with a date filter. The Type filter refers to the instrument type. The ETP Category is based on the categories that each ETP is put into on the monthly ASX reports (e.g. Equity — Australia, Equity — Australia Strategy).
The next filter is the provider. This is the name of the provider of the ETF and this field was manually created by me using the Fund Name as the basis. Providers include ETF Securities, Betashares, Fidelity, State Street and others (even the Perth Mint).
There is the aforementioend fund name which refers to the full name of the ETF listed in these ASX reports.
Finally, there is a date filter which is a slider even though the data in here is only provided on a monthly basis. For the Performance menu, the bar charts showcase the data as at the latest date selected. If you make the end date an earlier period (e.g. 31 December 2019) then performance ranks will be as at that date. On other pages, the bar charts show the average over a period of time — e.g. average yield over the period of time selected in the bar chart or average liquidity.
Additionally, As the user navigates to each part of the app the filters will follow. Initially, each drop down filter will say ‘All’ on them indicating that no specific selections have been made. If you make a single selection the filter will indicate what that is. If you want to make multiple selections you need to hold down CTRL as you select other options in the filter and it will then say ‘Multiple selections’ like this.
To reset the filters, hover over the filter and select the eraser on the top right hand side.
Using tool-tips to provide more insights
Bar charts are great as they can tell you what’s happened at a certain point in time or (as per above) what the performance average has been over time. However, they only show you a single snapshot but not how that certain measure has progressed over time. To fix this I have used tooltips.
Tooltips in Power BI allow the user to hover over a single bar that might be of interest to see what the historical trend of that data point has been. For example, if I look at the Performance menu and look at sub-menu ‘Ranks by ETP’, I can see that MNRS had the best 1-month performance for the period of April 2020.
If I hover over the blue bar I get a popup tool-tip that shows me how that measure evolved over time.
This also works for scatter plot charts (aka the ones with the dots on them). In this example I look at the Performance sub-menu “1-month vs 1-year” page. I can hover over the NDQ dot in the upper right quadrant and see this popup menu showing how it’s 1-month and 1-year performance evolved over each month showcased in the ASX data.
Interacting with charts to do filtering and making multiple selections
Using the CTRL button to make multiple selections does not have to be just for filters. You can also do it on bar charts too. For example, on the Transactions page and the first menu “Transacted Value” I can select the top ranked funds by average transacted value over the time period selected by holding down CTRL as I click on each.
The result of selecting the top 3 looks like this
The time-series bar chart at the bottom of the page now shows the average for those 3 funds in terms of transacted value. You can reset this by clicking on blank space within the chart you made selections in.
Selections go both ways so you can select a particular month to see how the ranks chart looked in that particular month. For example, I can select January 2020 in the time series chart and see what the ranks of funds were in that month per Transacted Value.
Comparisons
Firstly, I’ve added a Comparisons section which can be navigated to from the main menu (2nd last option). In this section the user is able to compare 1 fund (or group of funds) or ETF versus another.
In the example above I’ve selected BetaShares Crude Oil Index tracking ETF (ASX:OOO) and we can see its average monthly performance and cumulative 1-month performance. I’ve selected the ETF Securities Physical Gold product (ASX:GOLD) on the other side so you can see things side by side.
Right now this is only for 1-month performance but I will add other options later on.
Table
There is also a table option that displays data as a table. The sub-menu here only showcases this information for performance related measures such as 1-month, 1-year, 3-year and 5-year returns.
There is also a hyper link that takes the user to the relevant link in Yahoo Finance (for now).
For both the table and the comparisons option there will be new sub-menus added to this over time.
Get in touch
For more information about this app or other things data analytics related, feel free to get in touch with me below.
Mark Monfort (Head of Data Analytics and Technology, Prosperity Advisers)
- Phone: 02 8262 8700
- Email: mmonfort@prosperity.com.au
