Is there a way to backtest blank check companies, in particular SPACs?
I’ve always been curious what the success rate is for those types of businesses.
Thanks
Tony
Only using InList if you can find a list of SPACs.
Yuval,
Does this actually work? I have what I believe is a good SPAC list but I’m not getting the screener to recognize these tickers. I have tried using a List and using a defined Universe, but the Screener doesn’t recognize either method. If I just use one ticker… BFT… as an example, it shows up as a valid ticker Snapshot when I search for it. But when using either method, List or Universe, it’s not recognized when I run the screener.
I did notice that when I pulled this one up on the Snapshot, I get a message “BFT is not currently the primary issue of Foley Trasimene Acquisition Corp II. Take a look at BFT.U instead”. When I pull up BFT.U in the Snapshot, I get the reverse message… “BFT.U is not currently the primary issue of Foley Trasimene Acquisition Corp II. Take a look at BFT instead”. Not sure if this is related to the problem I’m having or not. Edit: btw, it seems all the SPAC tickers I pull up off my list have similar messages.
David
Yes, this looks like a bug in our system. Thanks for pointing it out. We’ll investigate. Stay tuned.
OK, I’ve found out what’s going on. We only list companies that have industry classifications. If a company can’t be classified, we don’t include it in the All Stocks database. Since SPACs are empty shells, they can’t be classified, so they’re not there. And there’s a bug in the “Timeline” for these companies that incorrectly points to the warrants as primary issues. We’ll fix that bug, but I’m sorry that currently we can’t offer SPACs for backtesting or screening.
SPACs I’m looking at (SBE, IPOB) have the Industry classification of INVESTSVCE.
is it possible to put this fix as high priority since there are many more SPACs are coming this year. I think it’s okay to group them as another type universe with limited fundamental. I just need some basic screen/backtest capability for SPACs.
-gs3
I second the need for this. SPACs probably in or approaching bubble territory, but I love trading bubbles until they pop… 
Be careful out there my friends