We made a chart of the FTSE’s biggest companies and nearly lost our minds
Get access to the Editor's Digest without any charge.
Every week, Roula Khalaf - the FT's editor - chooses the stories she likes best and shares them in her newsletter.
We were very eager to create a visually pleasing bar graph that demonstrates the fluctuating market capitalization of the top companies listed in the FTSE 100. As such, we approached LSEG with what we believed was a reasonable request.
We came across some issues (recommended background music):
The LSEG did not have data from before 1996, and they couldn't provide data that reflected when new members joined or left the FTSE 100. We noticed that the data was incorrect as it never showed Shell as the most valuable company on the FTSE 100, even though it was. LSEG couldn't explain why this was the case, but we soon realized that they hadn't combined the share classes. Sadly, we couldn't fix this issue easily while working from home at 7 pm on a Wednesday. LSEG gave us data that reset every five years, but this made our chart reset every five years as well, which didn't look good. We also noticed that stocks that were no longer listed were labeled as "DEAD" in their titles, and they remained on the chart until they either left the top 10 or a five-year reset occurred. Each bar was colored differently, but after each five-year reset, the color changed, which made it hard to read. Overall, the data was inaccurate, and we didn't have much time to correct it before the FTSE 100's 40th birthday.
Dear reader, we have decided to quit.
Okay, after three days of struggling, five sessions with Bloomberg support chat, and going through a rollercoaster of emotions, we managed to achieve our goal (although there are some important points to consider):
The reason why you're only looking at a limited portion of a dynamic graphic is probably due to one of two things. Either you're not connected to the internet right now or you've disabled JavaScript on your web browser.
Basically, we have combined two different sets of data. The first set covers the years from 1996 to 2005 and comes from LSEG. We added some additional information to this set to make it more comprehensive. The second set covers everything from July 2005 onwards and comes directly from Bloomberg. This set is completely unaltered and untouched, giving us the purest data possible.
To begin with, we would like to express our gratitude to the LSEG and Bloomberg support team who provided us with help to varying degrees of effectiveness.
Next, we'd like to express with immense sentiment:
It's almost impossible to imagine how much simpler everything could have been if Shell had been organized like a regular company.
It appears that in the olden days (before 2005), people used to figure out how much Shell was worth by adding the market values of Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport & Trading together. Can you imagine? Nowadays, Bloomberg has information about the previous market value of ST&T, but there's no data available before the year 2000 for the Royal Dutch side.
So, what action did we take? We made a gigantic error, of course. In the past, the Royal Dutch/Shell corporation had a 40% ownership by Shell and a 60% ownership by Royal Dutch. As a result, we chose to simply take the ST&T figure, increase it by 1.5 times, and combine the resulting numbers. Please accept it as is.
BP is quite unusual. When we analyzed the historical market cap and share price information of the company on Bloomberg, we noticed a strange decline back in the late 1990s. We suspect that the data is unreliable.
Without any reliable information to be found for Shell or BP, one may start to wonder if any of the data presented is accurate. Unfortunately, we cannot provide an affirmation either way. Despite this, we sincerely hope that you found enjoyment in reading through this, although we did not.
Additional resources to explore include the indications of an anxious breakdown according to WebMD.
