Getting Started

The Sector Strip tool allows you to see how any company is performing in relation to its individual sector, with the added benefit of allowing you to enter two data plots at once. If you want to find which company has the highest operating margin and most shares in issue, which shares have the best Dividend Yield and Price to book and much more, the Sector Strips provide an easy-to-use way of highlighting the relevant market information.

Click on the guide to the right to watch a video walkthrough.

How To Use

The first step is to select a data set, eg a sector. Choose 'Sector Averages' to see all sectors plotted against one another.

Then select the data plot categories that you want to use (e.g. Share Performance, Growth Ratios, Director Deals, etc).

Once that is selected you can choose from the specific data point that you want to see in the Sector Strips for each plot (e.g. if you have already selected Growth Ratios as your data type you can now choose from EPS Growth, Dividend Growth, Turnover Growth, etc).

Do the same for the Colour of the strips.

Finally, choose whether to sort the results by ticker, colour or size value.

The resulting Sector Strip will show the information based on the options you selected in the control panel.

A colour key is shown along the top of the Sector Strip. The colours range from a deep red through to a deep blue. The deeper the blue, the better the data point. The deeper the red, the worse the data point.

In parallel, the larger the strip, the better the data point. The smaller the strip, the worse the data point.

The company’s ticker, which is found within each strip, links you to the company research page. Also, if you hold your mouse over a ticker without clicking, the company name and data values will be displayed.

Data Available

There are dozens of data points available to view as a Sector Strips, all grouped according to type. The following key data types are available:

Growth Ratio – This gives the options of finding out what companies have a good EPS Growth, Revenue Growth, Pre-Tax Growth, Dividend Growth, Forecast changes and NAV per Share Growth.

Income Ratios – In this section you are given the option of finding out Dividend Yields and Payout Ratios over a chosen period of time.

Valuation Ratios – By using key fundamentals like Price/Book, PEG, Gross Gearing and Operation Cashflow per Share you will be able to find what companies have been undervalued.

Share Performance – This not only gives the option of sorting via share price movement, it also lets you chose either RiskGrade changes or Trade volume and value.

Technical Analysis – This uses the 6 popular charting indicators including RSI and MACD.

Management Effectiveness – This gives the option of finding companies with a good Operating Margin, ROCE and Return on Assets.

Profitability – This allows you to find companies with a good profitability by using the EPS ratio.

Profit/Loss Account – Gives the option of finding companies with a good Pre-Tax Profit, Revenue, Post-Tax Profit, Operating Profit/Loss or a years forecast on Revenue.

Balance Sheet – In this section you are given the option of finding out the company’s assets, total cash and Shareholders Funds.

Company Basics – Looks at either the Market Cap or Shares in Issue.

Director Deals – Sorts companies by looking at the Director Deals amount or volume over a given period of time.

Broker Recommendation – Finds companies that have a certain percentage of Buys, Sells, Hold etc over a given period of time.

So, to find EPS Growth, Turnover Growth, Dividend Growth, etc you would look in the Growth Ratios. To find Price Rise/Fall, Trade Value, Beta, etc you would look in Share Performance. For buy and sell signals, you would look in Technical Analysis, and so on.

Check out the General, Fundamental and Technical Glossaries to find out what some of these terms mean.