FactSet Research Platform Quick Start Guide: Comprehensive Overview for Financial Analysis, Schemes and Mind Maps of Finance

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FactSet Quick Start Guide

Table of Contents

• FactSet Quick Start Guide
• FactSet Quick Start Guide
• Getting Started
• Inserting Components in Your Workspace
• Searching with FactSet
• Market Watch
• Identifier Lookup
• Charting
• Retrieving Time & Sales data
• Excel Add-in

 Industry View overviews, financials and reports on sectors, industries and regions.  Company/Security Access all the available information, estimates and valuations of public and private companies, private equity and venture capital funds  Filings Search for corporate filings and transcripts including all regulatory filings  Screening Screen for equities and ideas (potential investment opportunities, find potential buyers, track trends, and identify precedent transactions)  Portfolio Create, track and evaluate portfolios and/or custom composites in real time.  Ownership Research ownership details, recent activity and key ownership statistics about a company, officers and directors affiliated with public and private companies and private equity firms

Inserting Components in Your Workspace

1. Click the plus button next to the tab where you want to create a new tab
2. Then, launch a desired component from the FactSet Insert menu.

If you’re using a predefined workspace, you can also click a shortcut icon in the toolbar to launch the corresponding component (please refer to the following screenshot).

 – Company Guide  – BookBuilder  – Quick Portfolio  – Alert Manager  – Wireless Configuration

If you have already searched and selected a ticker using the FactSet search box, you will be able to access the specific information of the ticker as you click these icons. Of course, you don’t need to do so. You can always open the tool first and then type in the ticker(s).

Searching with FactSet

Enter keywords into the FactSet Search box. As you type, the FactSearch drop-down menu will populate with results related to the search keywords. The drop-down menu is separated into the following sections:

 Entities - Includes security types such as equities, indices, people, mutual funds, and private companies  Components - Includes all the components found in the FactSet Insert menu  Series & Reports - Includes economic charts and series that are available in Economic Analysis Charting  Search Online Assistant - Opens an Online Assistant search page with a list of help pages that include your keyword

Some Useful Keyboard Shortcuts  To activate the FactSet Insert menu, press ALT + F.  To display a component outside FactSet, press ALT + O.  To activate FactSearch or the Master Identifier box, press CTRL + T.  To navigate to the lowest tab layer, press ALT + [1-9].  To toggle up/down through the tab layers, press CTRL + Up Arrow or Down Arrow.  To move the cursor left in a tab layer, press CTRL + Left Arrow or Page Up.  To move the cursor right in a tab layer, press CTRL + Right Arrow or Page Down.

Market Watch

Market Watch is one of the most used components in FactSet. It allows you to create a list of real- time quotes on equities, bonds, commodities, currencies and indices. To open it, follow: FactSet insert menu > Quotes / Prices > Market Watch

For illustration purposes, we will use IBM , BMO bond (1.95% 30-JAN-2017) and S&P 500 index in the following demonstrations.

1. Type and select the in the identifiers in the search box.

3. If you would like to monitor some other fields, right click on the market watch window > select Options > and you can browse through available columns and add new column.

Identifier Lookup

If you are uncertain of the identifier of any securities, click the magnifying glass button and select Identifier Lookup , and this will bring out the following window.

You can search by name and narrow down the results with the categories on the left and the region on the right, and after you finish selecting the name of the security you are looking for, you can narrow down even further by choosing the region and exchange. After that, you can double click the identifier in the right most box or click Add Selected to add the identifier into your selection box. When you are done, click OK and your selections should be added to the tools you have opened (ie. Chart, Market Watch, etc.).

2. Under the “Charts” box on the left hand side click the Blue X (shown below) to remove Plot 2
3. Under Plot 1, series 1, click the price button to change the graph
4. Select “Fixed Income”  “Yields”  “YTM” to graph the Yield to Maturity of the 30 Day US Commercial Pape
5. To change the date range, click the gear button on the top right side and a pop up “Chart Options” should appear

6. Choose the desired date range by clicking the calendar button to the right of the “From” and “To” label. Hit Enter.
7. Click the D(A) button and change it from “Auto” to “Daily”
8. Click the “Show Report” Button to show the table of values and find the desired date and the corresponding value.

Retrieving Time & Sales data

Retrieving the Data

To calculate a market Volume-Weighted-Average-Price (VWAP) for a certain security using FactSet,

click the search icon on the top left of the screen (or press CTRL+SHIFT+F) and type: @T&S

A new “Time and Sales (@T&S)” window will pop up. Within the new window fill out the Date/Time

Range and filters side bar to your desired settings. For daily values, remember to set the time from

9:30:00 to 16:00:00 and the beginning and end date to the same date. In this case we will use

September 1, 2015 as our date and will uncheck all filters. Next, within the search bar at the top

type your security ticker, we will use General Electric (GE-USA) as an example.

Excel Add-in

1. To launch the Factset add-in search “ Factset Excel” in the start menu and select the “FactSet Excel Add-In” shown below. This will have to be done even if Excel is already open.

2. If Factset isn’t working in Excel please contact the Financial Research & Trading Lab assistants.

3. When FactSet Add-In is enabled and opened properly, you will be able to see FactSet on the toolbar.

To insert a simple table of a data item versus date, you can click Sidebar > Insert , select the identifier(s), the data item and input details, and then hit Insert at the bottom.

Note: You can only retrieve one type of series at once using this method.

Formula Lookup (FQL) To look up a formula, go to the Insert Formula Dropdown Menu > Insert Formula, and the FactSet sidebar will pop up.

Then include your desired data through the “Data item” field, to request data search for a metric, the example uses EBIT, and press enter. The sidebar will show items that match with your search terms. Select a metric and press insert to input the data to a cell.

To change the template, you would simply change the FDS formula. As for refreshing your data, you can go to the FactSet Ribbon > Refresh Dropdown Menu > select All =FDS Codes

=FDS Code Syntax

The general syntax for using =FDS codes in Excel is as follows:

=FDS("[symbol]","[item(date)]")

Items in square brackets signify inputs of the formula.

An example of retrieving Ford Motor Co price data is: =FDS("F-US","FG_PRICE(0)")

Unlike Data Downloading codes, there is no caret (^) at the beginning of an =FDS code. Instead, the formula begins with =FDS. The symbol and item are enclosed in quotation marks.

Using FDS Codes for Time Series Data

Use the Factset Sidebar to generate FDS codes for time series data. Much like the earlier function specify the identifier and data item that you wish to pull. After searching for a data item, such as price, select which formula you would like to use. In the example below we selected Price, which then shows three additional tools: Inputs, Definition and Formula Workspace.

The inputs tab allows you to specify certain characterisitcs for each data item. For Price you can select the Date range you want to look at, the frequency of data, currency displayed and adjustement items. The parameters below show daily price data from one month ago to the last

This will open a new window where you can search for different assets or data available on Factset. You can use either the search bar or left side menu as shown below.

When you have selected an identifier click “Add Selected” to indicate which identifiers you would like information on, then click ok. This will bring you back to the series lookup screen. In the Series Lookup Screen you will then select which data item you want to retrieve for each identifier.

The red boxes on the screen below show the two ways to search for items: either directly in the search bar or through the suggested items in the left side menu and center display items. The green box shows how to specify characteristics of the data being retrieved such as date. The blue box shows how the data will be displayed on a new sheet. When you have requested everything click ok.

This will load various formulas with a “^” in front of them, as shown below. This is Factset syntax which will then be used to pull the data.

To retrieve the data in the Factset tab, select “Data Downloading” under the refresh dropdown menu as shown below.