Implementation of RBICS in FactSet at 10 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday 6/11)

Announcements
1

At around 10 a.m. tomorrow we will be loading RBICS onto the FactSet server and simultaneously transforming all your Sector, Subsector, Industry, and Subindustry commands into GICS commands. These commands will then be mapped onto their RBICS equivalents.

After the switch is made, any NEW commands that use Sector, Subsector, Industry, or Subindustry will refer to RBICS codes.

For example, let’s say you have a ranking node that includes Sector != 40. That will be automatically transformed into !GICS(40). If you then create a NEW ranking mode with Sector != 40 it will refer not to the financial sector but to the industrials sector.

Similarly, the old command Sector = Financial will be transformed into GICS(40), which will then be mapped to RBICS(30) except that almost all the real estate companies and financial software companies will be excluded (because they’re excluded in GICS). If, on the other hand, you type in a NEW command Sector = Financial, it will be mapped to all of RBICS(30), including real estate companies and financial software companies.

After the switch, all stocks will be classified within their RBICS industries rather than their GICS industries. If you have a ranking node that compares stocks to other stocks in their industry or sector, it will be comparing them to different stocks than before the switch. For example, in Compustat, Visa is in the same industry as Accenture, IBM, and Shopify, while in FactSet, it’s in the same industry as American Express, Discover, and Capital One.

All of this is explained in this document and the associated Google spreadsheets: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1moiYxmCkHlqEhgLCcQoZwiWRb5rBiOvs/view?usp=sharing

But please feel free to ask me any questions.

The Sectors & Industries tool will still be GICS-based. Also, the industry and sector shown in the snapshot page will still be GICS, but the industry averages on the snapshot pages will be RBICS for FactSet and GICS for Compustat. We have a few things left to do.

2

Hi Yuval,

Will any of these changes have an affect on the legacy engine and database?

Thank you.

Hugh

3

Yuval,

What do you mean by “the sectors and industries tool,” and when will it transition to RBICS?

4

Small change. The RBICs in the Factset engine will be launched after market close.

5

Yuval,
If I understand correctly:
SecCount
IndCount
SecWeight
IndWeight
#Industry and #Sector, for example in PEExclXorTTM<FMedian(“PEExclXorTTM”,#Industry)

will be remapped to RBICS in existing models without an option to use your RBICS-GICS mapping.
Is this happening today or later like “Sectors & Industries tool” ? Can you be more specific about “The Sectors & Industries tool will still be GICS-based”?

6

No.

7

https://www.portfolio123.com/app/taxonomy and sometime soon. Sorry I can’t be more specific.

8

Yes, this is happening today. We simply haven’t gotten around to changing the Sectors & Industries tool (https://www.portfolio123.com/app/taxonomy).

9

Thank you, Yuval.

By the way, I think this was a very clever way of making the change. Congratulations to p123 for such ingenuity.

Hugh

10

Please switch to Legacy then to Current / FactSet to access FactSet with RBICS. Current / Compustat with GICS will be back later tonight. Sorry for the delays, but there was an issue that took some time to resolve before this release.

11

deleted after reading the transition document.

12

Yuval,
I understand from your transition document that there is no perfect RBICS-GICS mapping, but will the GICS() boolean function stay and be functional after the transition (using an approximate mapping table), or will this disappear?
If it is here to stay, can you also make GICSsector and GICSindustry functions returning GICS sector and industry codes using the same approximate mapping? It would help users willing to maintain some GICS-based rationales and metrics.

For example these 2 rules may help showing a variable @secmedPE for the median PE of GICS sectors:
Showvar(@Group,GICSsector)
Showvar(@secmedPE,FMedian(“PEExclXorTTM”,#GroupVar))

It may be refined to create custom GICS-based factors by playing with the group definition on the 1st line and the formula on the 2nd line.
Your thoughts?
Thx.

13

It looks like the RBICS transition has not taken effect. FRank #Industry is still being applied within GICS industries, for example. In addition, the RBICS codes (RBICS,RBICS.Industry, etc.) are now returning error messages.

When the transition does take effect, will SecCode and IndCode return the RBICS names?

14

Are you on the FactSet server? RBICS.Industry has been replaced by Industry, and so have the other RBICS-dot commands. But RBICS works on the FactSet server. And FRank #industry is being applied within RBICS industries.

15

Are we now able to screen stocks within a particular universe based on Factset Industry and Sector codes like we used to be able to do with S&P GICS codes? I want to be able to exclude certain sectors such as financials, utilities and REITs from my analysis. I also want to be able to exclude MLPs and ADRs. Cany we do this with the Factset database engine?

16

Yuval,

I am on the FactSet server. But RBICS(10), for example, generates the error message “Invalid command ‘RBICS’.”

Sector=10 pulls the Energy sector (its GICS assignment), not Business Services (its RBICS assignment).

And when I use ShowVar to display Industry and Sector, I see the GICS codes. These codes correspond to what I see under SectorCode and IndCode in my screen report. And when I sort on FRank(#Industry) and then Industry, it sure looks like the ranking is taking place within the GICS industries.

UPDATE: EVERYTHING IS WORKING NOW!

17

It may be I’m missing something obvious but with the RBICS enablement I’m seeing a situation where I have a system that’s trying to exclude energy stocks (now mapped to !GICS(energy)), but it’s now including VTNR - sector energy, subsector energy (1010).

I tried excluding with a few buy role combos but doesn’t seem to be working:

!(GICS(energy) | GICS(1010) | RBICS(25) | RBICS(energy) | RBICS(2510) | RBICS(2515) | RBICS(2520))

Any ideas?

18

Yes. You could set the following rules for your universe: RBICS(30,65) = 0 and universe($ADR) = 0 and universe(MasterLP) = 0.

19

FactSet classifies Vertex Energy as a waste management company. It’s not in the Energy sector but instead in the Business Services sector. You can check this by simply running a screen with one rule, Ticker(“VTNR”) and using the P123 default screen report.

According to FactSet, 92% of Vertex’s revenue comes from hazardous materials disposal and only 8% from refining petroleum. That’s one of the beauties of using RBICS–they base a company’s classification on what it actually does.

20

Thanks for the tip - that will help with troubleshooting.