An overview and index of help topics with links to the detailed help chapters

The pictures have a small standard set of features that will grow to be your friends in no time at all. As they are visually oriented, the preferred way to get to know these friends is by looking at the pictures. But if you are in a hurry for their acquaintance, and already initiated into Financial Language, these notes might help get you there slightly faster.

Be warned, however. Since they are not intended to be more than brief cross-referential overviews that are used in conjunction with picture printouts, these notes are both rather terse in places and quite technically unspecific. For more information regarding the technical specifications of any item, you should refer instead to the appropriate section of the FAQ. For example, if you would like to know why the data underlying the pictures, although robust, is not exactly guaranteed, see FAQ Q-1.

It is also important to be aware that the mappings in a picture relate precisely to only the period actually mapped and not to any other period or part of a period. For mappings to other periods, slices are required. Slices are themselves explained in a section below.

What is it?

"(income-adjusted)/Normalised":

When mentioned in the name-heading of a picture it indicates that relational flattening was performed to reflect historical company equity configuration changes. All historical configurations are mapped to the configuration that pertained when the snapshot was taken -- thus also the name-tag "map".

date-range (X-axis):

The final closing date displayed on the right-hand side of the X-axis is the date of a recent quotation (usually within 1 month of the current date and as close to the current date as the data spread permits for integrated time averaging). The opening date on the left-hand side bears a randomised element. It will fall close to the later of listing on the exchange of that ticker-code, or a maximum 4 to 5 year range, or as may be nominated for a slice. (Slices are explained below). More on this in FAQ Q-8.

supply formats:

The pictures can be supplied in both XLS and GIF formats. The XLS format will usually open in Microsoft Excel, to display as an excel-chart. The standard format, however, is GIF, which opens in a wide range of image viewers and web browsers, and is much smaller in size and thus faster in transfer. All pictures supplied free of charge are GIF. Also see FAQ Q-10.

nominal-line: <lines>

growth-line: <lines>

X-returns ... (APPROX DIVIDENDS RETURNS DATES): <lines>

IC-RR line: <lines>

paRETURN-RATE-%: <numbers>

Opening-PE-Ratio and Closing-PE-Ratio: <numbers>

slices: <slices>