Gold CEF premium/discount tracking

[foglifter]

I always hated having to go to the gold fund's website to check the current NAV premium/discount. So I spent some time playing with XPath and Google spreadsheets and figured out a formula to get the current premium/discount into a cell in the Google spreadsheet. Hopefully it'll be useful for those of you who use Google docs. For now I have formulas for GTU and PHYS:

GTU

Code: Select all

=importXml("http://www.gold-trust.com/asset_value.htm"; "//table/tr[9]/td[4]")

PHYS

Code: Select all

=importXml("http://www.sprottphysicalgoldtrust.com/Net-Asset-Value/default.aspx"; "//div[@class='DiscountCalculationDiv']/span")

I haven't used Morningstar data because they show day-old numbers for both NAV and premium/discount.

[steve]

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key ... iOsH#gid=1

[foglifter]

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key ... iOsH#gid=1

Thanks for sharing, steve! Now I won't fall into reinventing the wheel. 

[brajalle]

GTU has issues on that sheet.

[steve]

GTU has issues on that sheet.

That happens from time to time just check it later.
I made my own excel sheet that will give me up to the minute premium and discount but I have to manually get spot price of gold etc and I also have to get real time prices manually. It doesn't depend on importing data from the web where a site could be having problems updating. When I do it manually if one site is down I can get info from another. I can also check level two real time stock quotes. I also have to update it manually every so often if GTU etc has an offering and new shares are created and also the cash needs updating etc.
With all that being said, I just rebalance when necessary, I only did this this for my own education.

[fnord123]

When I do it manually if one site is down I can get info from another.

Note that it is possible to automate this, that is, have a spreadsheet automatically check several websites and pick the one that is working as a data source.  For instance, in my PP tracking spreadsheet, I like to keep track of the current price I could get for my Gold Eagles.  I get buy prices from several places, including ApMex (using the ImportHtml() spreadsheet command) and BullionDirect (same command).  Let's assume I have the ApMex buy price in cell G1, and the BullionDirect buy price in cell G2.  I can then pick whichever is working currently by doing the following:

=iferror(G1,G2)

This can be extended with multiple sources to try for data - e.g. imagine I started using Tulving as a third source of buy prices (does he have them?) and put the resulting buy price in cell G3, then I could do:

=iferror(G1,iferror(G2,G3))