I’m starting a fresh thread regarding the impending GICS code changes, which I believe will be effective after close of trading on September 28th.
P123 subscribers who incorporate these codes in their screens and trading protocol may be in for a rude surprise if they are unable to make parallel adjustments. The GICS changes are not obvious and will be difficult to handle casually.
Has P123 contacted its data providers in this regard? Does P123 have a plan for the transition and implementation, including a draft of its new GICS Code / GICS Description / P123 Code mapping?
Along the lines of Hugh’s post above is Alphabet, Facebook and Netflix — are moving to a new communications sector that replaces telecom in a reshuffling of market capitalization near-$3 trillion. These changes can make a large difference in the makeup of some of the specialty ETFs. Some of the ETFs will sell these stocks and others will be buying them. New ETFs will be created to take advantage of the new communication sector. There are many other stocks that are effected, but these are the big ones.
What is P123 doing, if anything, to anticipate the effects on member’s Ports & Sims?
There is a new Cap weighted S&P 500 Communications Services ETF (XLC) that was started on June 19th that contains these stocks:
Facebook, Alphabet class A & C shares, Comcast, Charter, Activision, Verizon, Disney, AT&T, Netflix, (which account for 76% of the ETF’s holdings) among others. As of today, the open price of the ETF is $49.02, which is down 1.4% since the ETF opened on June 19.
Some of the stocks that moved to the new sector come from the Tech & Utilities sectors. Since many of them had good dividends & gains, the Utilities sector may be hurt from their removable.
I think subscribers who have previously been using code such as “industry!=media” may find that the “!gics” function as in “!gics(254010,502010)” helps to maintain the integrity of their simulations.
254010 is the former gics code for Media and 502010 is the new code. Please note that security mapping will NOT be 100% compatible between the old Media and new Media and other adjustments would be required too.
IMPORTANT: Please note I’m speculating that the !GICS function should be helpful because it’s not possible to run on post-9/28/18 data…yet.
Denny makes some very good points about ETF’s in his messages above.
Meanwhile subscribers who rely on sector, subsector, industry or subindustry distinctions in their trading should definitely be thinking about these changes before they go into effect.