As Portfolio Charts has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year, so has my sense of responsibility for being a good citizen in the data-sharing community. In an effort to respect the underlying data that drives the site and to support the sources that provide it, I’ve made a handful of changes to the calculators to hide the detailed annual returns for individual assets:
Heat Map
The mouse-over functionality has been disabled. If you’re interested in returns more specific than the colors indicate, try the Long Term Returns and Rolling Returns calculators. I’ve also removed a few data points that were made redundant by the latest Drawdowns calculator.
Rolling Returns
The minimum timeframe is set to three years.
Benchmark
The bottom bar chart that showed the annual difference between portfolios has been removed, making more room for the growth chart. If direct comparisons over different years interest you, I personally like looking at different Heat Maps side-by-side.
My ultimate goal in making these changes is not to restrict information but to establish trust. I believe a professional approach that respects the rights of the groups that make this information public will make it easier to add more data in the future. And in the meantime, it’s simply the right thing to do. For industrious investors looking to build your own spreadsheets, all of the data is publicly available for your own personal use and I encourage you to seek it out directly from the various primary sources.
As always, if you have any suggestions for improvement please feel free to contact me. With your help, both the individual calculators and the site as a whole will continue to get even better.
UPDATE: The above changes are now obsolete. Read this for an explanation.