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FUNDAMENTALS / INSIDER AND INSTITUTIONAL
InstitutionalPctChg(period_offset)
Full Description

Institutional ownership is defined by Standard & Poors as “ownership by an entity investing in a company’s securities for its own account or exercising investment discretion over another account.” These entities include, but are not limited to, mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, venture capital firms, family trusts, and investment banks. Institutional ownership includes shares owned by an entity investing in a company’s securities for its own account or exercising investment discretion over another account.

S&P gathers the data primarily from three sources: Portfolio reports, notifications or announcements, and company annual reports.


Coverage

Note that complete ownership data starts around December 2004. Some data exists prior to that time in the database, but it has more holes and is not as consistently available across companies.


Timeliness

Ownership data is very fluid. A transaction can occur at any time, as can a formal portfolio or ownership report. Since we only expose aggregate data, an arbitrary period is used to snapshot the data.

We use S&P quarterly snapshots for institutional data. These quarters do not correspond to the company quarters. Instead, they are calendar year quarters ending on March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 31. The data for each quarter is lagged 45 days as per S&P suggestion to avoid look-ahead biases as much as possible.


Percentage Ownership Note

It is possible for institutional ownership factors and functions that refer to total ownership to go above 100%. Among the factors that can cause this are timing factors, including recognition of transactions or shares counts in the underlying data; a large amount of short interest, restricted shares, or treasury shares; or, inconsistency in underlying reports, as with one number being expressed in diluted terms and another in basic terms.


Factors

Factors are used directly in rules or ranking nodes and do not require further modifications. See the first example for a rule in factor form.


Inst#ShsOwn: Total number of shares owned by institutions in the most recent three-month period, in millions of shares.

Inst#ShsOwnPQ: Total number of shares owned by institutions in the prior three-month period before the most recent three-month period, in millions of shares.

Inst#ShsPurch: Total number of shares purchased by institutions in the most recent three-month period, in millions of shares.

Inst#ShsPurchPQ: Total number of shares purchased by institutions one three-month period before the most recent three-month period, in millions of shares.

Inst#ShsSold: Total number of shares sold by institutions in the most recent three-month period, in millions of shares.

Inst#ShsSoldPQ: Total number of shares sold by institutions one three-month period prior to the most recent three-month period, in millions of shares.

InstNetPurch: Net number of shares bought or sold by institutions in the most recent three-month period. Calculated as Inst#ShsPurch less Inst#ShsSold. Positive if there are more shares purchased and negative if there are more shares sold. In millions of shares.

InstNetPurchPQ: Net number of shares bought or sold by institutions in the three-month period prior to the most recent three-month period. Calculated as Inst#ShsPurch less Inst#ShsSold. Positive if there are more shares purchased and negative if there are more shares sold. In millions of shares.


Inst%Own: Percentage of the outstanding shares owned by institutions at the end of the most recent three-month period.

Inst%OwnPQ: Percentage of the outstanding shares owned by institutions at the end of the three-month period prior to the most recent three-month period.

#Institution: Total number of institutions that owned shares of the company at the end of the most recent three-month period.


Functions

Functions require parameters, contained in attached parentheses. Each of these functions has an offset, in three-month periods. See the second example for a rule using the function form.


InstitutionalBuyers(offset): The number of institutions who bought shares in the three-month period.

InstitutionalNewBuyers(offset): The number of institutions that initiated new positions in the three-month period.

InstitutionalSellers(offset): The number of institutions who sold shares in the three-month period.

InstitutionalClosed(offset): The number institutions who sold all of their shares by the end of the three-month period.

InstitutionalHolders(offset): The number of institutions who owned shares at the end of the three-month period.


InstitutionalPctChg(offset): The change in the amount of institutional shares held as a percentage of the total shares outstanding at the end of the three-month period, in percentage points.

InstitutionalPctOwn(offset): The percentage of total outstanding shares owned by institutions at the end of the three-month period, in percentage points.


InstitutionalShsBought(offset): The number of shares purchased by institutions in the three-month period, in millions of shares.

InstitutionalShsSold(offset): The number of shares sold by institutions in the three-month period, in millions of shares.

InstitutionalShsNet(offset): The net number of shares bought or sold by institutions in the three-month period, in millions of shares. It is calculated as InstitutionalShsBought less InstitutionalShsSold. It is positive if there were more shares bought and negative if there were more shares sold.

InstitutionalShsHeld(offset): The number of shares held by institutions as of the end of the three-month period, in millions of shares.


Examples


To see companies with less institutional sales in the most recent three-month period compared to the one prior, use:

Inst#ShsSold<Inst#ShsSoldPQ


To see companies with a level of institutional ownership above that of the most recent 12-month average, use:

InstitutionalPctOwn(0)>LoopAvg("InstitutionalPctOwn(CTR)",4)