Investment Growth Metric should be Agnostic or Show the Correct Currency
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Dew Wallaby
Hi, please refer to attached screenshot.
Investment growth line for non-USD stocks (such as for this stock which is traded in Korean Won KRW) appears on this chart with a $ sign. Does that mean that the investment growth amount (130,630 for this stock for the period selected) has been converted by your system from KRW to USD by applying appropriate USD-KRW exchange rates for each year within the period? Or is that amount actually in KRW but with a $ sign regardless of the currency of the stock, in which case it cannot be compared directly with the investment growth amount for another ticker which is in a different currency (USD in this example for the Investment Growth Amount based on the SPY ETF over the same period) ?
D
Dew Wallaby
Thanks very much. I had even forgotten that I has already raised this issue earlier :-)
Please consider allowing user to select currency, as that will really make this useful. As an investor across global markets, historical patterns of total return is a key factor for me when deciding where to invest. I'm sure other users who look across markets will find this useful too.
At present I do this manually using an Excel by pulling year-end adjusted stock price info for each year from my Yahoo-Finance subscription (which already takes into account the impact of dividends, splits etc), apply FX rates for each date, and then have my own formula to compute yearly total returns. But just looking up each year's data and entering them manually especially for stock which have longer histories becomes quite quite consuming. So if you could please consider this for incorporating into your system, it would be much appreciated. Since your system already has logic for computing total returns across periods as well as FX rates history, hopefully it can be reasonably straightforward to implement. Thanks very much
Conor MacNeil
Merged in a post:
Investment Growth for non-USD Stocks shown in USD ?
D
Dew Wallaby
Hi,
Please clarify whether the Investment Growth numbers which are shown with a $ sign even for stocks listed on non-US exchanges in a different currency, actually mean that they are the USD equivalent value ? In the attached example for Heineken Malaysia Berhad (HEIM) a stock listed on the Kuala Lumpur Exchange in Malaysia and traded in local currency (Malaysian Ringgit - MYR), it appears as if HEIM has grown an initial investment of $10,000 into a much larger current value than the S&P ETF SPY over that same period. For HEIM, the current value of 10k invested in 1992 appears to be over USD 431 K vs the equivalent amount for SPY which has only grown to USD 256 K.
Is this really correct, or is the amount for HEIM actually in the local currency showing growth of an initial MYR 10,000 investment to a current value of MYR 431,685 (just shown with a $sign instead of MYR) v/s the growth of an initial USD 10,000 invested in SPY resulting in a current value of USD 256,506 - in which case the two cannot really be compared with any meaning as the USD/MYR FX rate change between 1992 and today would not have been taken into account.
If the figures for HEIM are actually in USD, that would certainly be a great and very welcome feature for people like me who invest in both USD and non-USD markets and this would then be extremely valuable for us in assessing relative total return across USD vs non-USD stocks (or two different stocks both in different non-USD currencies).
I am hoping your answer will be that the figures are indeed all in USD and already take into account the effect of FX rate variations each year along the way :-). Please clarify. Thx
Conor MacNeil
Hi Pankaj, the data of the output is correctly calculated as per the ticker's trading currency. The issue is that Koyfin applies a $ USD prefix to the metric. For non-US stocks, the output is not calculated into USD returns.
For example, applying the metric to a UK stock starting at 10,000 units with a 10% return would show $11,000 when it actually should either say "11,000" or "£11,000" to reflect reality.
The solutions, of which there are multiple, include
• Removing the prefix
• Applying the correct prefix per the company's trading currency
• Allowing users to alter the currency
You raised this point a few weeks back, and it has been logged as a known issue.
D
Dew Wallaby
Actually, even better would be if you allow users to choose the currency they want to see the investment growth in (just as you already allow currency to be chosen for other parameters), taking FX movements into account for the user's currency vs the stock trading currency. That would be very useful for someone like me who lives in Singapore so SGD (Singapore Dollar) is the most meaningful base currency for me to base my investment decisions on (even when I invest in US stocks, SGD equivalent values are more relevant for me than USD)
Perhaps something you consider for future releases for your international subscribers
Conor MacNeil
Hey Pankaj, it's an issue of showing a USD prefix for all stocks.
The underlying result is correct, but the prefix is always a dollar sign, which we can change. It's a known improvement.
D
Dew Wallaby