YCharts Splits Charting Capabilities, Preps Expanded ETF, Mutual Fund Data

Today, Thursday May 1, YCharts introduced the ability for users to split out and compare data on multiple metrics across multiple charts, whereas the platform previously plotted all of a user's chosen data on a single chart. YCharts chief executive Shawn Carpenter says this gives users greater control over how they can analyze increasingly complex sets of data.

While users will still be able to plot whatever metrics they want on the same chart, Carpenter says the complexity of many users' analysis led to demand for being able to compare ratios on different charts. For example, he says, users might want to compare revenue growth for different companies on the same chart, but plot other metrics─like employee growth or profit margins─separately. Users can also save the settings for each chart, making it easier to run the same metrics for different companies.

In addition, in around one month's time, YCharts will roll out a new feature that allows users to create their own individual dashboard displays from the data and tools in its platform.

"We've had requests for this for the past three years because there is such a vast amount of data in the system, and people want to be able to see their own view of the market, and see how all the global macroeconomic data is affecting their positions," Carpenter says.

YCharts is also broadening that volume of content with the addition of data on new asset classes, starting by expanding its coverage of exchange-traded funds to provide constituent data and descriptive data─such as expense ratios, sector focus and the underlying asset tracked by the ETF─in the coming weeks, followed in around three months by similar data for mutual funds, to allow users to see a fund's holdings.

"Adding the ETF and mutual fund data opens up the broader market of passive investors. Lots of advisers actively select equities to invest clients in, but a lot just allocate client funds to ETFs or mutual funds," Carpenter adds.

The vendor has also recently added news content from Dow Jones Newswires─in addition to news from about 10 other sources and proprietary content generated by around 20 freelance staff─to allow clients to set up alerts on news events in addition to macroeconomic factors, and will next add corporate news announcements, sourced directly from companies in the US and Canada.

"We already do alerts on price and fundamental data, covering any variable or ratio─such as if a price goes above a certain level," Carpenter says, adding that the vendor can re-use the same technology that it leverages to collect economic data. "We have technology that allows us to collect this in an efficient manner. We already use that technology to collect─for the most part─over 450,000 indicators. It's not difficult to adapt: we have to do some front-end work to re-jigger the parameters, but we already collect and parse data from all file types─from Excel spreadsheets and CSV files to PDFs and Powerpoint, as well as via APIs."