About

The Project

Reality Gap (RG) is an independent research project developing a heuristic indicator for fundamental coverage. The project is not affiliated with any financial institution, investment fund, or commercial data provider.

The indicator is designed as an analytical tool for researchers and investors who wish to place market valuations in the context of fundamental data. It is not intended as a basis for investment decisions.

All data published on this website in the initial release is illustrative and approximate. It is provided to demonstrate the indicator's structure and properties, not as reliable financial data.

Author

The Reality Gap indicator was developed by Hanns-Steffen Rentschler. The accompanying working paper presents the full methodological framework.

Contact

For questions, feedback, or research inquiries, please get in touch via email.

rentschler@lbsmail.de

Project on GitHub

Website Approximation Note

The paper defines G as the smoothed long-run earnings measure. This website uses a fixed operational approximation: G_approx = mean of the last 8 available quarterly net income figures, annualised (×4). The same G_approx is used identically for RG8, RG10, and RG12 — only the capitalization factor N changes.

This approximation is consistent with the paper's structural logic (single G, varying N) but differs from a full paper implementation in two respects: (1) the smoothing window is fixed at 8 quarters rather than potentially calibrated per company; (2) when fewer than 8 real quarterly observations are available, the series is extended with annual figures divided by 4 as a fallback.

Wherever real quarterly data is insufficient, the observation is labeled with dataType = "annual" and excluded from the historical chart. The smoothedEarnings field and teIsApprox flag are stored explicitly in each observation so the approximation is always traceable.

Data Sources

All financial data displayed on this website — including market capitalisation, net income, and tangible equity — is retrieved via yfinance, an open-source Python library that accesses publicly available data from Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo Finance aggregates financial data from stock exchanges and company filings. The data may contain errors, delays, or gaps. No independent verification is performed.

Historical market capitalisation values are approximations: closing prices at fiscal year-end multiplied by current shares outstanding. Share count changes over time are not reflected.

The RG values shown are computed approximations, not audited financial figures. They are provided for research and illustrative purposes only.