NetProphet Help
NetProphet is comprised of two windows; the
quote minder window, and the
main window.
The quote minder window monitors the stocks in your
portfolio, displaying their current information and warning you
if a stock's price strays out of its alarm limits.
If a stock's price exceeds the upper alarm limit, that stock is displayed in blue and yellow.
If a stock's price is below the lower alarm limit, that stock is displayed in red and yellow.
If a stock is up for the day, that stock is displayed with green text.
If a stock is down for the day, that stock is displayed with pink text.
Any stock in the Quote Minder window can be plotted, simply by double-clicking on the stock symbol.
The Portfolio Card allows you to
change the contents of your portfolio, and modify the alarm
limits for a given stock.
The Preferences Card allows you to
specify what pieces of information are displayed in the quote
minder window.
The main window is where you view the day's
information, examine charts, modify your stock portfolio, adjust program settings,
and so on.
The components of main window consist of the
card stack, the
pulldown menu, the
status bar, the
stocks rated to achieve the best/worst price performance, the
logo, and the current
advertisement.
Note: If you close the Main Window, the Quote Minder window will remain active. To recall
the Main Window, simply click on the current time or Price labels on the top line of the Quote Minder
window. The Main Window will also be recalled when new plots are requested, or when a new day's
stock ratings are received. To close all windows and exit NetProphet, press File, then
Exit from the pulldown menu, or close both the Main Window and the Quote Minder window.
The majority of the
main window is taken up by the card
stack. The stack consists of four green tab cards which
lie atop one another. Each of these is accessible by clicking on
its tab, which protrudes from the bottom of the card and is
labeled with that card's topic.
The fours cards are the Report card,
which displays important market and historical performance information
that is updated daily,
the Charts card, which displays charts
of stock market data, the Portfolio card,
which allows you to modify the stocks in your portfolio, and
the Preferences card, which allows you
to alter various program settings.
This card summarizes yesterday's market performance, and reports price performance
for stocks highlighted one month ago. The Report Card is updated daily after the market closes
(on trading days).
Here you can chart the progress of any available stock, mutual fund, or index
using a number of graphing methods. Information for the current security is
displayed in the lower left corner of this card.
Two grey sub-cards labeled
Price and
Indicator allow the user to control how stock
data is formatted in the chart.
- To create a chart of a stock in your portfolio:
- Double-click on the desired stock in the
Quote Minder. This will cause
the charts card to move to the top
of the card stack, and display
the selected stock. Or double-click on the stock symbol on the
Portfolio Card.
- To create a chart of one of the stocks rated to achieve the best/worst price performance:
- Click on the desired stock in the
stocks rated to achieve the best/worst price performance button group.
This will cause the charts card to move to the top
of the card stack, and display
the selected stock.
- To Zoom a chart, enlarging some point on the chart so that it fills the entire chart panel
- Double-click on the chart panel near the desired date.
The chart will show an enlarged view of all charted data centered
on that date.
- To Select data on a chart, enlarging some range of the chart so that it fills the entire chart panel
- Click on the chart panel starting near the desired start date,
then drag until the displayed range bar extends near the desired end date.
The chart will show an enlarged view of all charted data over that range.
The number of days selected will appear in a box on the top line of the chart.
- To Unzoom a chart,
- Click on the UNZOOM button that appeared on the top line of the chart when a Zoom or Select operation was performed.
- Volume
- Select this toggle to display the selected stock's volume as red (price falling) or green (price rising) bars.
- Stochastics
- Select this toggle to display the selected stock's stochastics, calculated using a 10-day period.
- Moving Average of Convergence/Divergence
- Select this toggle to display the MACD chart of this stock, calculated using 10-day versus 30-day moving averages.
- Money Flow
- Select this toggle to display the stock's money flow.
- On Balanced Volume
- Select this toggle to display the on balanced volume for the given stock.
- Price Rate of Change
- Select this toggle to display the rate of change of the price of the given stock, calculated using a 20-day period.
- Std dev Price Rate of Change
- Select this toggle to display standard deviation of the rate of change of the price of the given stock, calculated using a 15-day period.
- Relative Strength
- Select this toggle to chart the relative strength of the currently selected stock, versus Standard & Poors 500 index.
- Index text box
- Not yet implemented. Enter an index symbol to plot over the stock plot.
- Bollinger band
- Select this toggle to display Bollinger bands.
These bands mark one standard deviation above and below the 30-day price average.
- Candlestick
- Not yet implemented. Select this toggle to display a candlestick chart.
- Average 5-day
- Select this toggle to display a line over the price, indicating the 5-day moving average of the price.
- Average 10-day
- Select this toggle to display a line over the price, indicating the 10-day moving average of the price.
- Average 30-day
- Select this toggle to display a line over the price, indicating the 30-day moving average of the price.
This card displays your current portfolio of stocks in a
spreadsheet-like form. The column labeled current lists
the current prices of each stock in the portfolio. The columns
labeled Alarm low and Alarm high denote the minimum and maximum
price each stock may reach before an alarm is set off.
- To add a stock to your portfolio:
- Click on the Add/Change Symbol button. Enter the desired ticker
symbol and press tab. Enter a low price alarm and press tab.
Enter a high price alarm and press enter.
- To remove a stock from your portfolio:
- Click on the desired stock in the spreadsheet. It should
become dark to inform you it has been selected. Click on the
Delete Selected Symbol button.
- To alter a high or low price alarm setting:
- Click on the desired stock in the spreadsheet.
Then click on the Add/Change Symbol button and enter the new alarm limits.
The toggle buttons on this card allow you to customize the behavior
of NetProphet.
- Display prices as fractions/decimals
- These toggles determine how all prices in NetProphet will be
displayed.
- Enable Network Access
- To prevent NetProphet from dialling your modem and attempting
to connect to the Internet, deselect this toggle.
- Show only Quote Minder on Startup
- Select this toggle to suppress the main window display when NetProphet starts. This is
useful when NetProphet is put in your Startup folder, so each time you turn on your computer
NetProphet starts and displays the QuoteMinder just as you left it. To get the main window back,
just click on the time or Price fields at the top of the Quote Minder.
- Quote interval, minutes
- Select how frequently price quotes are obtained from the Internet quote servers.
Updates can be made every 1, 2, 5, 15, or 30 minutes.
- Current Price
- If enabled, displays current price of stock in the
quote minder window.
- Today's Change
- If enabled, displays the change in price of the stock since
it opened today in the
quote minder window.
- Today's Range
- If enabled, displays the range of the stock since today's
open in the
quote minder window.
- Today's Open
- If enabled, displays today's opening price of the stock in the
quote minder window.
- Volume
- If enabled, displays the current volume for the stock in the
quote minder window.
- P/E Ratio
- If enabled, displays the current price to earnings ratio
of the stock in the
quote minder window.
- Indices to monitor
- Select all or some of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard and Poors 500,
and the Nasdaq Composite Average to be displayed in the quote minder window.
The pulldown menus consist of File, Symbol, View and
Help.
The File menu contains Update NetProphet, which
updates NetProphet with a new version taken from Neural Applications Corporation's Servers,
Clear cache which frees leftover stock history files from your local cache directory,
Setup which brings up a special configuration form,
and Exit, which exits the program.
Note: NetProphet is designed to automatically recognize that an updated version
of the program is available. Do not manually activate Update NetProphet unless so
directed by Technical Support.
The Setup form is used to modify information entered when NetProphet was first
installed, such as user name, mail name and browser. It can also be used to give internet proxy information.
If your computer is connected to the Internet through your modem, leave these fields blank.
If your computer is connected to a corporate network which is connected to the Internet
through an HTTP proxy server, then enter that server name and its HTTP port number
in these fields. If an incorrect entry is made into these fields, the status bar
will display the message "Proxy server XXX:80 unavailable" periodically, and
no stock information will be available.
The Symbol menu contains Update Now,
which will begin an immediate update of all price quotes, and Look up,
which allows you to search for a ticker symbol by entering a company's name.
The View menu contains Report, Portfolio, Charts and Preferences
which switch the card stack to the appropriate card,
Show Minder, which will recall the Quote Minder Window if it
was previously closed or hidden, and UnZoom, which will return the
chart card to its widest view.
The Help menu contains New features, which displays a text window
containing the current installation Readme.txt file,
Documentation,
which launches your browser to read this help file,
Send Feedback, which allows you to send us
ideas on how to improve NetProphet, Tech Support,
which you can use to ask for help with technical problems, and
About, which displays information about NetProphet.
Note: NetProphet Technical Support by Telephone is not available in the
Beta or Free releases of NetProphet. Neural Applications Corporation strives to answer
technical support requests submitted via NetProphet by email within one day.
The status bar is located just beneath the menu bar, near the top
of the main window. Various short, informational messages are
displayed in this area.
The right hand portion of the main window contains the "bulls"
and "bears" of the stock market, as determined each day by NetProphet.
The "bulls" are projected to most likely outperform the market,
and are displayed from top to bottom beneath the bull icon.
The "bears" are projected to most likely underperform the market,
and are displayed from top to bottom beneath the bear icon.
Each of the ticker symbols is a button, and clicking on one will
cause the charts card to move to the top
of the card stack, and display
the selected stock.
Each evening Neural's supercomputers process all NYSE, AMEX, and
NASDAQ stocks for a variety of proprietary indicators. Stocks
with active trading histories (excluding penny stocks) are rated by
neural networks onto a common stock scale. This scale denotes 0
as average with each 100 points in either direction representing a
statistical measurement of one standard deviation.
Approximately 68% of all ratings will fall between +100 and -100.
The Stocks Predicted to Achieve the Best/Worst Price Performance are
those stocks achieving the largest ratings over the entire market.
The logo animates while network transfers are taking place, and
is quiescent otherwise.
The advertisement displayed at the bottom of the Main Window is the
reason you may use NetProphet for free. You are encouraged to click
on any image displayed there that catches your interest. Your Web Browser
will be launched to display that company web page.
© 1996 Neural Applications Corporation
All rights reserved
2600 Crosspark Road
Coralville, IA 52241-3212
(319)626-5000