Investors hit by FTSE share price confusion.
Investors checking up on their share prices could find themselves reading incorrect information, according to research by Financial Director, sister magazine to Accountancy Age.
The research uncovered wide variations in the twelve month share price high-lows of ten major companies in 16 different information sources, including The Financial Times Group, Bloomberg, and Reuters.
It used Datastream, a financial information site with a money-back guarantee on its information, as a benchmark. The magazine gathered its information on 25 February, comparing share prices of the FTSE-100 stocks, which included Lloyds TSB, 3i, Powergen, ICI and Cadbury Schweppes.
It found that 27% of the data gathered differed from the benchmark by more than 5%, while 17% varies by over 10%.
This excludes minor fluctuations explained by the manner in which prices are displayed, such as rounding a share price of 502.5p to its nearest full number, providing a one-penny variation.
The websites were also ranked according to their variance with Datastream, with the closest to the benchmark being Hemscott.net, which displays a difference of 0.3%. The worst-ranking, StockPoint.com, varies 28.8% with the benchmark.
Financial Director’s website is at www.financialdirector.co.uk.