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-
- Stock Utilities
-
- written by
-
- Terry Blount
-
-
- The following utilities were written to help track, analyze and spot
- trends in the stock marked based on using stock market quotes provided
- by Planet Connect (and maybe other services using the same format).
- These utilities are provided for entertainment purposes. Don't invest
- your hard earned money on any stock because of trends these utilities
- may seem to suggest! The information fields in the quotes provided by
- Planet Connect are formatted as follows: Symbol, Last Sale Volume, Last
- sale price, Open price, Highest price today, Lowest price today, current
- bid, current offer, Total volume today.
-
-
- COMPARE.EXE
-
- This is the main (and most powerful) utility. It can check all 30,000
- listings from any two quote files and compare the changes in each stock
- and calculate the percentage of loss or gain from one quote to another.
- It was written to run as fast as possible so there can be a problem when
- there are more than two stocks in succession missing from the base file.
- While the program is running it will be flashing the names of the stocks
- it is working on. If it stops flashing those names and starts printing
- several asterisks(*) on the screen then has encountered a problem. Press
- ctrl-break and then remove the stock listed on your screen (that came
- from the first (base) file) when the problem occurred. A utility named
- "TakeOut.exe" is included to make this easy. This doesn't happen often
- but if there is a sharp decline in the market there could be a lot of
- stocks disappearing.As long as you are checking the prices of a group of
- stocks that have extracted by "StokPick.exe" you'll probably never run
- into this problem.
-
- When you run Compare.exe you need the name of the oldest stock quote on
- the command line as the first parameter... and the name of the newer
- stock quote file on the command line as the second parameter. If you
- include a minus (-) as the third parameter the stocks that declined in
- value will also be included... otherwise only the stocks that showed a
- increase in price will be listed in the outfile. The name of the
- outfile is determined by the name of the two quotes. For example, if the
- first quote file is named "Quote11" and the second file is named
- "Quote22" the name of the outfile will be "11-22" It may be a little
- extra work, but when you extract the Quotes.asc files from the archives
- it helps you keep them organized and makes these utilities work better
- if you rename the "Quotes.asc" to QUOTExx ....where the "xx" is the
- day the PCSTOKxx archive was created.
-
- This is the format that Compare.exe saves the information to:
- Stock Symbol - Percentage Change - Base quote Price - Last Quote Price
-
- When the base quote price and last quote price are written the decimal
- is intentionally left out in order to make it easier for some programs
- to add a column of numbers. A price such as 1075 is actually 10 3/4.
-
- * Remember this: When a stock has lost value the percentage of change
- that is calculated by "Compare.exe" is NOT the actual percentage the
- stock dropped... rather it calculates the percentage the stock will
- have to recover in order to regain the original value. For example:
- If a stock is selling for $10 and it drops to $5 that is an actual loss
- of %50 ...however, this same stock will have to increase by %100 in
- order to break even. Compare.exe reports the stock as 100- in the
- percentage column.
-
- Note: Stocks that aren't listed in fraction format AND stocks that have
- an asterisk in the price quote are ignored.
-
-
- MYSTOCKS.EXE
-
- This utility converts a list of stocks (in a column format) into a
- format that is used by "StokPick.exe" You can easily track several
- portfolios simply by listing the stock symbols in a column and placing
- them in double quotes is separate ascii files. For example, one of your
- list may look like this:
-
- "CHEV"
- "GE"
- "GM"
- "MMM"
- "XON"
-
- Mystocks will reformat the list and save it to a file name Mystocks.lst
- If you don't list the name of your ascii file on the command line
- Mystock.exe will default to look for the list saved under the name
- Mystocks. This step will allow you to track a portfolio that can include
- up to a thousand stocks and it makes the extraction process very fast.
-
- Attention: Mystocks.exe has been updated to allow three new features:
- 1. The quotes (") are now optional in your list.
- 2. Comments after column 8 are ignored.
- 2. If there is a space in column #1 that line will also be ignored.
-
- "GE" General Electric, Bought at $72 1/2 Jan. 95
- These are automotive stocks
- CHEV
- GM
- These stocks were suggested by uncle Bob
- "MMM"
- "XON"
-
-
- STOKPICK.EXE
-
- This utility exacts the list of stocks you want to track from the 30
- thousand (give or take a few) that are listed in the reports. It
- saves the selected stock quotes to a file named !Picked. You can then
- compare the "!Picked" list to a more current quote and quickly find out
- how well the portfolio is doing.
-
-
- GREATER.EXE
-
- If you combine several stock quote files... say the closing quote file
- every Wednesday... all into a single file... you can then run
- "StokPick.exe" and extract the stocks you want to track from that giant
- file... and then use the utility "FRA2DEC.EXE" to convert the stock
- prices to decimal format... you'll then be ready to run "GREATER.EXE" to
- show you which stocks are showing an increase in price each week.
-
- ADDup.exe
-
- After you run Compare.exe you'll have a list of stocks, their percentage
- change and the base price and the price from the more current quote. The
- purpose of ADDup.exe is to ADD UP these price columns and calculate the
- total loss/gain and percentage of change of the entire portfolio. Just
- run ADDup.exe with the name of the file built by Compare.exe on the
- command line. Example: Addup 10-20
-
- TRIM.exe
-
- This utility removes the stock quotes from the daily quote files that do
- not include the Last Sales Price. This will reduce the disk space
- required to store the quotes by %75 ...and it makes all the other
- utilities run much faster. If you run "Trim.exe" on a quote file that
- has already been "trimmed" it won't make any changes. To use Trim.exe
- just run it with the name of the quote file on the command line.
- Example: Trim Quotes.asc
-
- The new Quote.asc file will be modified and the old one will be deleted.
- Also note that Trim.exe changes the format. The new format will replace
- the Last Sales Volume field with the Total Volume Today field. This
- change in format does not have an influence on any of the other
- utilities mentioned in this doc. It simply helps them run about 4 times
- faster. Example of the new format:
-
- Symbol Tot.Vol Last Sale Price
- "GE","89900","76 1/4"
-
-
-
- Terry Blount
- P.O. Box 36
- Bayou La Batre
- Alabama 36509
- BBS # 334-824-2552
-