Understanding Benchmarking

zzricezz

In v2.4 is it safe to assume benchmarking against the index and total return index is simulating the same buy and sell using the closing price?

ie. on march 1, buy $2000 BMO, it would simulate the same buy of $2000 of the indexes?

Also HXS had a stock split and therefore using it as an index benchmark is skewing the results, anyway around it?

VidasMatelis

Hi,
Benchmarking does not look at your transactions at all - it is much simpler than that.
When you compare your year performance to index performance, it simply calculates how index did over the year, assuming you hold index over the year.

For HXS issue - is there any other index you could use, for example: ^SP500TR

zzricezz

Thanks Vidas for the clearification.

In the case where buy and sell were through out the year, then comparing to the index is not apple to apple comparison.

It would be great if the script can simulation the transaction, since the quotes for the indexes are being captured already. This will give a good comparison for those that are wondering how their portfolio are doing comparison to the index if they bought the index instead.

My current workaround is to simulate the buy of the index using xeqt using a separate account to do the comparison.

VidasMatelis

I agree it would be much more accurate to do a better comparison, but that would be expensive calculation.

zzricezz

for 2022, the S&P return was -19.44% but portfolio slicer is calculating -19.80% for the Market 2 Index return %. I even manually looked at the quotes and did the math and it should be -19.44%, is there a reason for this?

zzricezz

Looks like I just had to wait for the start of next month for it to work properly.

VidasMatelis

@zzricezz
Here are my calculations, but for version 3.
Symbol used in calculation: ^SP500TR
Quotes:
2022-12-30 8178.02002 ^SP500TR (LastPrice)
2021-12-31 9986.700195 ^SP500TR (PrevPrice)
Adj%=0 as AnnlAdj% in CompareTo table is empty (not specified), so dividends or Management Expense Ration does not have any impact.


Formula:
LastPrice / PrevPrice - 1 + adj%

=8178.02/9986.70 - 1 + 0 = 18.11%


In version 2.4 calculation should be the same:
LastPrice/PrevPrice-1: 18.11%

If you are using v2.4, what is the value (symbol specified) in worksheet src, table Config, column: MarketIndex2?