Notation

Warnings about data quality normally sit in a paragraph above the table. That works until the figure travels — and these figures travel, as screenshots forwarded on WhatsApp, cropped to the one row that mattered. The caveat does not go with them. A mark on the number does.

None of the five marks is carried by colour. They are brackets, dots, dashes, hatching and a strike, so each one survives greyscale, a recompressed screenshot, a cheap screen in daylight and any form of colour-vision deficiency.

The figures below are worked examples, fixed in place so this page keeps its meaning. They are not live quotes. Where the numbers themselves come from is set out in the methodology.

Square brackets mean Djeli worked the figure out itself, by a method a reader could reasonably dispute. Nobody published this number; we chose how to build it.

They go on the trailing yield, the currency-adjusted return, position within the 52-week range and change from the open — figures where the method is a judgement. They never go on a plain unit conversion, or the whole site would end up in brackets and the mark would stop meaning anything.

A dotted underline means a source supplied the figure and we have not reconciled it against anything else. It is their number, not ours, and we have not checked it.

It is used where a figure is a single source's word alone and nothing on the page corroborates it — traded volumes, market caps, index levels. The mark is not an accusation. It says only that agreement between two sources has not been established, so a reader who needs certainty knows to go to the exchange.

A dashed underline means the figure is forward-looking and inferred from a pattern in what has already happened. No company, exchange or regulator has stated it.

It is used on dates extrapolated from a payer's own rhythm, and it is always a range — a single projected date would claim a precision the method cannot support, and readers plan around dates. Announced dates carry no mark at all and appear on the calendar.

Hatching means two sources we hold disagree materially, or the figure itself is contested. Both readings exist; we are not able to say which one is right.

Malawi is the live case. The official rate is the only one that can be sourced every day, so it is what the conversion uses — but at the reported parallel rates the same kwacha holding is worth around half what this site shows. The mark is reserved for a divergence that is documented, material and persistent. An ordinary retail spread does not earn it.

A strike means the figure is real and must not be summed into the total beside it. It is not an error and it has not been deleted.

It is used where folding a figure in would hide the very thing the reader needs to see — converting the kwacha line at the official rate would roughly double the apparent dollar worth of the portfolio, in the one market where the currency is the whole story. The struck line stays where it was so that the reader can see what is missing from the total and how much of it there is.

An absence is written in words, in the number's own slot, at the number's size. It is never smaller, never greyer and never tucked into a footnote — the reason replaces the value, and the slot itself does not disappear.

There are exactly four things an absence is allowed to say.

not published by NGX

The source never supplied this field. It names the silent source where we know it, so a reader knows who to ask.

withheld

We held figures and judged them wrong. This one outranks everything else here: if a figure would be wrong, there is no figure, marked or otherwise.

not applicable

The field does not apply to this instrument — a payout ratio on a company that has never paid a dividend is not missing data, it is a question that does not arise.

not entered

You have not supplied it. This appears only in the portfolio, and it is the only absence on the site a reader can do anything about.

A bare em dash is never used for any of them. A dash states that something is missing without saying why, so a reader cannot tell an honest gap from a broken page — and the mark meant to convey candour ends up reading as a fault. Four words cost a few more pixels and answer the question the dash raises.

Five marks and four words. The set will not grow, and that is the point of it: a reader learns it once, on this page, and then reads it everywhere on the site without coming back. A sixth mark would cost every reader the meaning of the other five.

Each mark also carries exactly one meaning. A single badge covering projected and unverified and disputed at the same time tells a reader only that something is wrong somewhere, which is why this replaces it.

If a figure does not fit the vocabulary, that is not a reason to extend the vocabulary. Either the figure is sound and is shown plainly, or it is not and it is withheld.