Jim Slater’s Company REFS Reviewed

Posted in money on 22.03.06@815 by pjh

I received my free sample copy of Jim Slater’s Company REFS this week. Eagerly awaited, I’ve tried a few times before to get a copy. This is the first time that their online form seems to have successfully connected with the back end. It took a week or so to arrive, but arrive it did, in a lovely padded envelope surrounded by a sheaf of order forms and brief instructions.

My first hint of hesitation came when I opened the CD case and saw, on the back side of the booklet facing the CD, the ominous words “Installation instructions for Windows“. At home I use a Mac, so it was hopeful at least that the operating system is mentioned. Into the CD slot it goes, but no joy. It’s a Windows-only beast, with a README file dating from last century.

The next day at work, I installed it. It’s a clunky looking spreadsheet of a program, with a quirky interface that doesn’t always behave as you’d expect. Spreadsheet is too grandiose a word, it’s a table of data that you can filter in simple ways. It seems that you, the user, have three key abilities:

  • create custom column views of whatever data items are available
  • create custom filters, or table views by applying simple conditions like these:
    • if this field’s value is greater than this constant
    • and this other field’s value is less that this constant
  • create portfolios of selected stocks, although I fail to see how this aids in anything. It may be more useful after a few updates of the REFS data.

It’s strictly a filter program, with no ability to calculate or filter on fields compared to other fields. For example, if I wanted to restrict a view to contain companies with a market cap of >= £100 Million at the 52-week low price, REFS just can’t do it.

I’ve also heard that the fundamental data used is from the last annual report, so may be well out of date. The only evidence of the five year data that they advertise is a handful of data columns of five year averages. Showing a company’s full data only reveals current year figures.

Is it worth £304 a year, which was the price for quarterly updates offered to me in return for my direct debit details? I doubt it, unless you’re looking for simple filters against constant values and are investing sums large enough to justify the cost. Even then, I know that Stephen Bland gets his fundies from elsewhere. You’ll be the first to know if my opinion changes.