FastTrack Status Report

Note: You may try your update even if this blog does not indicate that the download is ready. Our notice posting is imperfect.

FastTrack System Status- February 3, 2012 7:17 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- February 2, 2012 7:21 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- February 1, 2012 7:20 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 31, 2012 7:21 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 30, 2012 7:21 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 27, 2012 7:20 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 26, 2012 7:20 PM Central

The data is now available and in fine shape.

11:45AM
Fixes to last night's dat is done as promised although the time on this blog entry was not originally posted correctly

10:56AM
We are still collecting 330+ fund prices by hand and will not post the morning update until about 11:45AM.

8:19AM
We did not attempt a missing price correction last night. Surfing the NASDAQ site last night revealed no changes to missing prices. These will likely have to be worked by hand this morning and posted about 10:30AM Central. However, we should be able to get a number of prices from our automated processes that scrape the mutual fund company websites and process daily their daily emails to us which contain the prices.

FastTrack System Status-January 25, 2012 7:27 PM Central

7:27 pm
We have put up the evening updates. Stocks, ETFs, Closed End funds appear to have correct prices. 343 open end funds were missing prices. We estimated prices for all but 12. DO NOT make trading decisions on an open end fund tonight without checking the closing price with the fund company. Market indexes are suspect. We were not able to get the Morningstar indexes tonight. We will return here in 3-hours and rebuild the databases if the late prices have come in. More postings here later.

6:50PM
Things are not going well tonight. the NYSE reports problems sending out its final prices for both stocks and bonds. See http://traderupdates.nyse.com/. While it is listed as resolved an hour ago, the 2-3 hour delay will have caused many open end mutual funds to miss their portfolio pricing deadlines.

We will come up a little late at about 7:30PM Central and will estimate prices which we do not received. We will come back at 10PM Central and rerun if necessary. Corrections will, as always be posed in the morning after we hand-correct missing prices. Missing prices are always a problem because we have to gather them by hand. 

FastTrack System Status- January 24, 2012 7:19 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 23, 2012 7:18 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 20, 2012 7:23 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 19, 2012 7:19 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 18, 2012 7:17 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 17, 2012 7:15 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 13, 2012 7:20 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 12, 2012 7:19 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 11, 2012 7:17 PM Central

The data is now available.
 

FastTrack System Status- January 10, 2012 7:19 PM Central

The data is available.

3:00PM Had a call from FastTracker Michael Messinger about the total return of SPY for 2011. Since this is the largest of all ETFs and held widely by millions of investors, we thought it was important to resolve the issue.

He noted that other sources had different total return. FastTrack has it as 1.89%. Yahoo lists it as 1.18%. SPDR.COM lists it at 1.99% and 1.86% on two different pages. Morningstar lists it as 1.18 and 1.98 in the same table.

FT Computes return from 12/31/10's last trade price to 12/30/11's last trade. Yahoo's, SPDR.COM, and Morningstar calculations are undisclosed. SPDR.COM and Morningstar lists calculations based on Market Value and NAV.

SO . . . Who is right

FastTrack used the same closing prices as in the WSJ, and we applied the distributions using 6 digits of precision on the published X-Dates. Should Yahoo, Morningstar, or SPDR.COM post an explanation of their calculation, perhaps we can figure out what they did wrong.

SPY is not a small unimportant fund. The widespread careless calculation of returns is shameful. While FastTrack is not yet perfect, we care about our data quality. We will research any discrepancy you report to us, report back to you within 24-hours, and send resulting data fixes to all FastTrackers.

We appreciate the confidence that FastTrackers have placed in us since 1990. Providing quality products,  service and correct data is our mission.

Graphics were edited for clarity and size. All came from their websites as of 3:30PM Central today.

FastTrack System Status- January 9, 2012 7:18 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 6, 2012 7:15 PM Central

The data is now available.

FastTrack System Status- January 5, 2012 7:42 PM Central

The data is now available. Alarms went off as a number of leveraged Bull and Bear ETFs BOTH made it into the top and bottom rankings for the day. We verified a sampling of these funds. This usually never happens. Bull and Bear funds are not supposed to move in the same direction even if they are in different sectors. Commodities took it on the chin today. Must have been some strange  emotions going through the markets today. Will check the news  at home tonight.

7:26 PM We held the start of the process until 7:30PM tonight entering more late arriving distributions . . . data should be released about 7:45 PM

12:45 AM The late funds have reported, and are now available using FTComm Online Integrity Check.

FastTrack System Status- January 4, 2012 7:25 PM Central

 The data is available. The following comment added about 10PM. Many funds are missing again. We will run a late night update and post new results when available. We are unsure of the causes of the price delays tonight and last night.

FastTrack System Status- January 3, 2012 8:00 PM Central

The data is now released. More than 200 open end funds are missing prices. Notably in the Profunds family. but including a substantial number of other families. Yahoo  and NASDAQ.com do not have prices for the sampling of 10 which we looked up. We will post corrections in the morning. We have posted estimate prices for these funds. Please check the closing price with your broker before making a trading decision on these funds.

For a complete list click here.

Today was stressful. A boat load of folks got new computers, the market was up strongly . . . so . . . the tech support phone rang off the hook. Nothing systematic, or unusual for this time of year. At the same time, all hands were on deck working end of year dividends . . .and to top it off . . .many funds did not report prices tonight. Tomorrow will be a better day.

7:14 PM: More than 100 open end funds were missing their prices tonight. We have delayed the data download.

Several former HLDRS ETFs have been taken over and changed their internal price identifies. BBH, BSCB,PPH,RKH,RTH,SMH,TYW prices have been estimated tonight. Please check the closing price with your broker before making a trading decision on these funds. Corrections will be posted in the morning at about 10:00 AM Central time.

The data is available.

Status postings for 2011