LAYOUT & SECURITY TYPES

Premium Data organises its ASX database into the folders comprising of the following security types. A description of each security type is below the table. Only those securities in your subscription packages will be updated.

Folder Layout

Every security type subfolder except the indices folder has a clean A-Z alphabetical folder structure to make location of stocks very easy. In addition to the A-Z folder structure, Premium Data users can elect to use the Custom Folder to create their own folders which are updated and maintained at the same time as the A-Z folders.

ASX Security Descriptions

Equities

Ordinary Shares - equivalent to "Common Stock" in the U.S. - the most common form of share ownership. Ordinary shareholders are part-owners of a company. They have voting rights and are entitled to dividends out of company profits, although preference share-holders are always paid first. Ordinary shareholders also rank behind preference shareholders and secured creditors in claims to a company's remaining capital in the event of liquidation.

Preference Shares - shares that rank before ordinary shares in entitlement to dividends and capital (see above). Preference shares are often assigned a fixed rate of dividend return.

Partly-paid Shares - also known as Contributing Shares - shares on which the holder owes an outstanding balance to the company, which may be called  at some later date. If the case of a No Liability Company, the holder has the option of forfeiting the shares rather than paying the balance.

Unit Trusts -  pooled investments, where the funds are held with a trustee company and a manager is employed to invest the funds on behalf of the unitholders.

Rights & Entitlements - new shares made available to existing shareholders for purchase, the number of shares  being  in proportion to the current holding. The new shares are often issued at a discount to the current price. A rights issue (renounceable) may be on-sold by an existing holder but an entitlement issue (non-renounceable) must be either taken up or allowed to lapse.

Company Options - securities issued by a company, which bind it to issue shares to the option-holder at a certain price (and at a certain time) if the holder chooses to take up those shares.

Exchange Traded Fund Units - hybrid securities that trade on the ASX equities market. An ETF is a managed index fund whose units trade like ordinary shares. ETFs offer direct and convenient exposure to the performance of an index like the S&P/ASX 200.

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Indices

The S&P/ASX Indices are those indices calculated and managed by Standard & Poors that are published daily by the ASX. 

In  April 2000, the ASX's Index business was contracted out to Standard & Poors. The exchange's hope was that a global index manager working to international standards would bring a higher international profile to the exchange. S&P immediately began to make changes to the indices, introducing the S&P/ASX 200 (amongst others) and modifying the existing All Ordinaries Index.

Further changes are planned. In particular, the existing method of classifying ASX industry sectors will be phased out and replaced by a new system based on the Global Indices Classification Standard (GICS). Before 2000, the ASX operated 24 sector indices. These were discontinued on 28 June 2002. Premium Data provides history for these discontinued indices.

Premium Data covers all of the ASX broad market indices, plus the S&P/ASX 200 Sector (Level 1) and Industry Group (Level 2) indices, and the S&P/ASX 300 Sector (Level 1) and Industry Group (Level 2) indices.

The GIC standard, as applied to the ASX, involves 12 core economic sectors. S&P began calculating prices for indices based on these sectors in April 2000. Springing from these core sectors are 23 industry groups, 59 industries and 123 sub-industries.

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Indicators

Total Market Advance Decline Line (code ASX_AD) - the number of advancing issues minus the number of declining issues, kept as a daily running total. Divergences between an Advance Decline Line and an underlying index are often interpreted as an imminent market trend change.

ASX 100 Advance Decline Line (code XTO_AD) - as above, but calculated on the ASX 100 rather than the total market.

Put/Call Ratio (code ASX_PC) - the number of Put Option contracts traded divided by the number of Call Option contracts traded.

Implied Volatilities - An implied volatility of a stock is created by taking a basket of Exchange Traded Options that trade against a given security, determining the implied volatility that is priced into each option and then averaging the volatilities to give a single Implied Volatility value.

By using true market forces to determine the volatility, rather than by sampling historical data, this provides an instantaneous volatility as determined by professional traders trading options against the underlying stock. Analysis of Implied Volatility can be useful to both share traders and options traders.

This method was popularised by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) and is often called the "Investor Fear Gauge". The methodology has been adapted by Norgate Investor Services to the underlying stocks and indices on the ASX for which Exchange Traded Options trade.

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Exchange Traded Options

Exchange traded options are options created and traded through a derivatives exchange rather than directly between counter-parties. 

Call Option - a security which gives the holder the right (but not the obligation) to buy a fixed number of shares from the grantor of the option at a certain price (the exercise price) by a certain time (the expiration date).

Put Option  - a security which gives the holder the right (but not the obligation) to sell a fixed number of shares to the grantor of the option at a certain price (the exercise price) by a certain time (the expiration date).;

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Interest Bearing Securities

Convertible Notes - fixed interest loan securities issued by a company which may be redeemed for cash or converted into shares in the company by a certain date according to the terms of the particular issue.

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Warrants

Option-like securities that are traded on the ASX's equities market. Warrants are issued by approved financial institutions rather than granted by individuals operating through a derivatives exchange mechanism. They may be issued over company shares, indices, currencies or commodities. Generally-speaking, warrants have a much longer life-span than options.

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