Bringing you up to date with Eureka Report improvements

Welcome to the Easter Edition of Eureka Report – I thought I'd use this break to tell you about some changes in our publication and draw attention to new features you might have missed.

As you know Eureka Report is constantly evolving and our Monday edition is now focussed on stock recommendations while Wednesday is devoted to wider issues of wealth management.

With our team of in-house analysts we now have built up a history of very good recommendations and a track record that speaks for itself. To enhance and simplify this aspect of the publication we recently made some important changes to our share recommendations presentation including the arrival of international share data to the service.

If you go to the share recommendations tab on the home page at any time you can now see how we are faring with our wide spectrum of market calls and value observations.

Each share market category has slightly different dynamics and I'll deal with each separately.

* In ASX recommendations you will see we show you each ASX share we have recommended: we show the call, the price at call (that is, the price it was at when we recommended it), date of recommendation, the projected price we expect the stock to move, the latest price, what that projected price – if achieved – would represent in terms of percentage increase from our call date and the 'risk' category in which we place this stock.

* In international share recommendations we show you the stocks from around the world we have recommended. We show the call, we show the price at call (that is, the price it was at when we recommended it), date of recommendation, the projected price we expect the stock to move, what that projected price – if achieved – would represent in terms of percentage increase from our call date and the 'risk' category in which we place this stock. Just now we are not able to bring you the price at which these stocks are currently trading due to the technical complexity of dealing with different overseas exchanges but you can find these prices quite easily on the internet by going to the web address of the relevant exchange.

* Our other category is ASX large cap shares – in this category we are not publishing recommendations. Our joint venture with Clime – Stocks In Value – does not make explicit stock recommendations, rather this service shows you whether the stocks listed are 'in value' or not 'in value'. We show value rating, price at valuation, date of valuation, valuation, latest price and most importantly the ‘variance to value'. The variance to value table shows you if the stock is more in value or more out of value than when we first published the Stocks In Value observation. If the figure is an up arrow then the stock is even more in value than when we first published, if it is a down arrow it is more out of value than when we first published. (Don't confuse value and price, a stock price may be going up – so you may get a down arrow – as the higher stock price moves the stock further away from the fair value number that has been computed by the Stocks In Value team.)

Separately, we also hope you have been enjoying the fund manager interviews from the brightday team which are published every second Wednesday. The most recent contribution was with Andrew Hokin of the Smallco Broadcap Fund by Daniella D'Ambrosio. Brightday is the Eureka Report spin off which is offering a range of low cost high quality superannuation and fund management services to retail investors. If you have not yet taken a look at brightday check it out at www.brightday.com.au.

Now, to our special Easter Edition. First, today we are running some longer form pieces that you may not have time to read during a normal week. You'll find a very thorough examination of 'smart beta' by Tony Rumble. If you don't know what smart beta means let's put it this way: If index funds were one of the biggest changes to investment markets in recent times then this has the potential to be the biggest change we've seen at index funds (or ETFs) so make sure you read this piece. 

Also Robert Gottliebsen covers the key issues relating to potential tax reform and superannuation changes that may arise from this week's tax white paper. For the global investor Byron Wein from our US partner Barron's takes a world view of markets and challenges some of the key consensus thoughts that are framing current equity trading patterns. There's also some great reading from Adam Carr, Tim Treadgold and the rest of the Eureka Report team.

One last thing – we now have a break of six full days so there will be no Alan Kohler weekend briefing email on Saturday morning and no edition of Eureka Report on Easter Monday April 6 – we'll be back Wednesday April 8.

Have a great Easter.