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STOCKMINDER / STOCK MASTER GUIDE by Ron Lashley Copyright (c) 1984,1987 1997 N. Marco Dr. Camarillo, CA 93010 Welcome to STOCK MASTER the stock market tracking program. STOCKMIMDER was originally published in PC Disk magazine in 1984 and was submitted by the author who maintains all rights to the program. STOCK MASTER is for registered users only and is not allow for public distribution while STOCKMINDER is for public distribution and you are encouraged to distribute it. The number in the name indicates the latest revision level i.e. SM48.EXE would be the 4th version of 1988. Any versions with lessor numbers should be replaced with a higher numbered version. This manual is now being used for both the public and registered versions. Though all of the functions are not available in the public (STOCKMINDER) version the manual will give the user an idea of how the function works. PLEASE SEE THE REGISTRATION FOR TO REGISTER FOR STOCK MASTER STOCK MASTER was designed to have weekly closing prices of stocks entered and will GRAPH, EDIT, DISPLAY and ANALYZE up to 30 stocks at a time. It is capable of handling 90 stocks per disk and tracks 52 prices per stock. When the 53 rd entry is made the first entry (oldest) will be automatically deleted. This is a menu driven program with all the options available on the main menu. STOCK MASTER works with color or monochrome systems on IBM PC & PC/XT and compatibles. It has not been tested on ATs or 386 machines but should work. Below is a description of the functions that STOCK MASTER provides. ********************************************************************** Policy: The purchaser of this program accepts the program as is and no warranty is given or implied. While we endevor to produce a top quality program it is possible that a bug (software error) may show up from time to time. If you have a problem with a program version or a disk you may get a corrected version or new disk by describing the problem and sending $2.00 to cover costs. A new disk will be sent as soon as the problem is corrected. Customers will be notified of a new version containing additional features. A new version of this type may be purchased at $15.00 for registered customers. ********************************************************************** THE STOCK MASTER PROGRAM The STOCK MASTER program may be started by typing STKMST48 from the DOS prompt. When it runs you will be asked Which Stock List Do You Want? This is asking for a 1,2 or 3 answer. Each stock list holds up to 30 stocks. You should place the disk containing the DATA1.LIS, DATA2.LIS AND DATA3.LIS files in the default drive (usually drive A or the hard drive). Then enter a 1 ,2 or 3. You should see a flashing message LOADING DATA. If you are just starting and do not have any data files, just enter 1 and the program will try to read, then present the menu with no stocks present. When it does not find a data file, an empty file will be displayed. A data file will be created automatically once names and price data is entered. After a data file is loaded you will be given a menu to select from. It will read as follows: 0 - UPDATE MARKET INDICATORS 1 - ADD,DELETE-EDIT MENU 2 - UPDATE STOCK PRICES 3 - GRAPH STOCK PERFORMANCE 4 - HIGH - LOW - LAST 5 - BUY/SELL ANALYSIS 6 - SORT STOCKS 7 - PRINT PRICE HISTORY 8 - SWITCH/PRINT STOCK LIST 9 - ENTER/UPDATE EPS & TIMELINESS Here is a description of each of the menu items. ********************************************************************** UPDATE MARKET INDICATORS: This section allows information to be entered that is available from financial newspapers such as Investor's Daily. This information such as the prime rate, Dow Jones P/E ratio, Put/Call price ratio and others form a model that gives a bullish or bearish indication of market direction. Below is an example of this graph. RANGE IS -5 (EXTREME BEARISH) TO +5 (EXTREME BULLISH) 5 4 3 2 *** ** * * 1 * * * * * 0--------------------*-*--------------------------------- -1 *** *** **** * -2 ** * * -3 * -4 -5 PRESS ENTER TO RETURN TO MENU INDICATORS ARE NEUTRAL------USE SELECTIVE INVESTMENT This is an actual graph with the last weekly plot on 2-05-88. It can be seen that a -3 reading was obtained on 10-16-87, the Friday before the October 19 market crash. Several of the interest rate inputs, Tax Exempt Bond rate, 3 month Treasury bill rate, and Fed Discount rate can be obtained from interest rate graphs available in Investor's Daily (see Credit Market section). You can now send a Form Feed to the printer by pressing function Key F1. This is shown in several of the sections where it is appropriate. It saves a lot of time getting up and down when printing info off of the screen. ********************************************************************** ADD,DELETE-EDIT MENU: At it says you may add a new stock that you want to start tracking and / or delete any stock on the list. When a stock is deleted the hole left by it is filled so that all the blanks occur at the end of the list. You will see this when the stock list is re displayed. If a stock is to be added it is best to do it in the following format. You are allowed up to 17 characters max. and it is best to use an abbreviation that is used in the newspapers so it can easily be found. The stock name should be in capitals and lower case then followed by its ticker symbol (if known) and the market in parenthesis. Use N for New York, A for Amex and O for OTC. For example: Southwest Gas Corp. on the NYSE would be entered as SwstGas-SWX(N) If the ticker symbol is not known use: SwstGas(N) It is important to NOTE that a ticker symbol must be used to read downloaded stock price data. The reason for the market symbol in parenthesis is mainly for sorting and information. When sorted, all stocks on the same market will be grouped together. New stocks may be added at anytime but is is best to do so when closing prices are available for entry. Be sure to keep your data disk in the default drive because many functions automatically save data when completed. Now you can edit any stock name. This comes in handy when the name you are using doesn't match the financial paper or if the company changes markets. With this version you may now edit dates in the data base. This allows you to correct for errors that occur in manual entry or in downloaded data. ********************************************************************** UPDATE STOCK PRICES: When choosing this selection you will be asked for a date. Just enter the date of the friday you are taking the closing prices from in the format MM/DD/YY as shown in the program. if the date is one that has not been used before STOCK MASTER will allow entry of new closing prices. These should be entered in decimal form and rounded off to one or two decimals. For example enter 12 3/4 as 12.7 or 12.75 ; 5 1/8 would be entered as 5.1 . The slight error introduced makes no difference to the program if done in a consistent manner (ie always round down) and commissions will exceed the slight price difference anyway. 1/8=.12 1/2=.5 7/8=.87 1/4=.25 5/8=.62 3/8=.37 3/4=.75 If a date is entered that has already been used, you will be presented with a list of stocks and the prices for that date. You may edit the price of any stock at this time. STOCK MASTER now has the ability to read downloaded Issue price information from the GEnie Network (1-800-638-9636 for more information) and other databases that have one of the following formats: (These are examples showing a Date, Volume, High, Low, Last) 2/21/88 15000 14.50 13.50 14.00 [format #1] 2/21/88, 15000, 14.50, 13.50, 14.00 [format #2] 880221 15000 14.50 13.50 14.00 [format #3] GEnie download 880121, 15000, 14.50, 13.50, 14.00 [format #4] 19880121 15000 14.50 13.50 14.00 [format #5] Compuserve CAPTURE Note that there are three date formats with two types using commas and the others using only spaces. All numbers are whole or decimal type. The program will automatically determine which format is used and adjust itself when reading the prices. Of course the download will be only one of these and will contain up to 52 lines of prices (52 dates). The weekly price data for all desired issues are downloaded to disk using a communication program. Later when running STOCK MASTER the data can be transferred into the stock data file. (NOTE: The stock names must include the ticker symbol as shown in the ADD AND DELETE STOCK section). If an error message about a missing date is given it could be because of this or there may be a date in the existing stock data base (all the dates for your stock list) that is missing while that date is present in the downloaded information. Print the price history of a stock in that list and check tha dates for a missing one. If an INVALID FORMAT error is given this could be because the data contains characters before the dates. These characters may be control codes and may not be seen by word processors. You may edit these codes out by making sure that the dates start at the far left column and removing any blank lines at the top of the data file. This need be done only if you get an INVALID FORMAT warning. When downloading the price history of a stock you must name the file with the ticker symbol followed by .DAT (i.e. for Bush Industries the file name on your disk that contains the price history must be called BSH.DAT). STOCK MASTER takes the ticker symbol from the stock name and trys to find a match on the disk containing the price history. A sample price history that was downloaded from GEnie is included with this program. To learn how to download from the GEnie network (or any other with the above format) refer to the network manual. For GEnie users here is a brief description of how to get price histories downloaded. Using a good communications program (I prefer PROCOMM) log onto GEnie (you must be a member) and type the keyword QUOTE$ to get to the financial services section. This is an extra charge service. There will be a series of menu options from which to choose. Choose the following options: * SPECIFIC ISSUE QUERY * PRICE HISTORY * WEEKLY PRICES * DOWNLOAD FORMAT [CAPTURE for Compuserve] When choosing the download format you will again get a prompt for an entry just press ENTER without specifing a number the second time. GEnie will then ask if you are ready for download, enter a Y but do not press return until after you set your Comm program for ASCII download and give the file a name. This way the Y answer does not get into the data file. This may take a little practice to get right. For COMPUSERVE, use the MICROQUOTES service and choose similiar options as shown above. When asked for ISSUE: enter /CAPTURE then press RETURN. This will put the system into the proper download mode. ********************************************************************** STOCK MASTER is equipped to send its data files by Electronic Mail. You may send an ASCII letter to anyone with the data file attached and when the letter is downloaded the file name must be DATA1.LIS (or 2 or 3). Place this file in the directory when STOCK MASTER is located and it will read the data (if everything downloaded OK). The program starts reading at the ++ marks in the file. ********************************************************************* GRAPH STOCK PERFORMANCE: This routine will automatically scale itself to the stock prices. It is necessary to note that the scales will be different for each stock. Each stock is graphed individually after your selection. This allows you to see at a glance the variations in stock prices. It is very useful to graph a stock that has a buy or sell recommendation. The graphs can be printed by using the Shift & Prt Sc keys, your printer should be on first. The graphing routine has been improved in this version. The bottom horizontal scale represents weeks (entries) with the right most amount being the last entry. If you want a printout of these actual prices see PRINT PRICE HISTORY. ********************************************************************** HIGH - LOW - LAST: This useful function will search the data base and present the highest, lowest and last price for each stock. This is helpful in seeing where the present price is in relation to its highest and lowest prices. You may not want to purchase a stock when it is near its high price while it may be a bargain if it has approached its low. This information is more useful is there is a reasonable data base covering at least 12 weeks. This display may be printed with Shift & PrtSc. ********************************************************************** BUY / SELL ANALYSIS: This is the heart of the STOCK MASTER program. This routine is based on standard deviation, mean and slope of the price curve. These calculations are made for each stock and the information is put a decision making system that looks at the numbers and decides from a matrix what action should be taken. The user must provide the fundamental information to choose the good quality stocks with potential. This can be done by subscribing to a newsletter that does the research for you or by doing it your self at the library or other sources ( also see the Stock Selection document included). After the calculations are made and the action decisions made, the program will display each stock NAME , the ACTION to take, B/S PRICE PROJECTION, the AVERAGE PRICE, the LAST PRICE and the stocks BETA (fluctuations). Up to 15 stocks will be displayed on the screen. These can be printed with Shift & PrtSc before pressing the ENTER key to present the remaining stocks. If the data base is reasonably large to provide good information just follow the BUY and SELL signals the program gives you. Of course you may not be able to own all the stocks but usually there are only a few of these signals at any given time. It is also wise to get information on the general trend of the market from a newsletter and/or this program's Market Trend Analysis to aid you in the decision. If the trend is bearish you may want to hold off on a purchase even with a BUY signal or you may decide to sell a stock that has run up in price when the action says CONSIDER A SELL. The MEAN given is the average price over the past 52 weeks or whatever number of price entries are available. In a typical market the majority of the stocks will have a HOLD/WAIT action. This means don't buy or sell yet. If there is not enough information (less than 7 weeks) the action will always be HOLD/WAIT. The more price history available, the better the decision will be! A Buy or Sell Projection price is now given in this section. This routine will calculate a price the stock is heading for which would indicate a good buy or sell price. For example, if the last price of XYZ was $13.25 and the projection was B$ 13.50 and the average price was $16.00 this would be a good purchase price (assuming market indicators were OK). This feature, while it can't predict the future, will help your planning of purchases and selling of stock. The symbol B$ indicates a buy projection and S$ is a sell projection. When an all out Buy or Sell signal is given or STOCK MASTER can not determine where the stock is going there will be no projection. Now you can have a printout of the complete Buy/Sell analysis and Hi- Low-Last for each Data file (all three) with one command. Just make sure the printer is on line and set to the top of form (top of the page) then choose Buy/Sell from the main menu and enter the number 2 at the prompt. The computer will do the rest. ********************************************************************** SORT STOCKS: It is very handy to have the stocks in an order that aids the user in going through the newspaper to enter new closing prices. If the stock names are entered in a consistent manner the sorting routine will put them in Alphabetical order and also them by market. If there are a large number of stocks being tracked it is best to use each data list for a different market. For instance data list #1 could be for the NYSE , data list #2 for the AMEX and data list #3 for the OTC. This would prevent having to changes pages in the paper frequently. If this is not done, the sorting routine will place all of one market together in alphabetical order and all of another market next also in alphabetical order. It is a good idea to use sort whenever a new stock is added to a data list, do this before entering the prices so it will be stored in the correct order after the prices are entered. It is not necessary to sort the stocks when one is removed. There is a second option on the STOCK MASTER (registered version) called Sort All. This option will load all stock information contained in the three data lists (up to 90 stocks) and sort in both alpha and market order. It will the re-store the sorted list back into 3 data lists with all blanks appearing at the end. This makes it even easier to get information for manual input each week. Again, the stocks should all be in the format described in the Add/Delete section. The sort routine can sort 90 stocks twice and handle 5000 pieces of associated data (prices, EPS etc.) in less than one minute. The total time for loading, sorting and saving data will be less than 2 minutes on a turbo XT. ********************************************************************** PRINT PRICE HISTORY: This routine will print the names of 5 stocks at a time with the dates and prices entered for each stock. Five columns are printed then the next five stocks are printed until all the stocks in the data list are printed. The printing automatically adjusts itself for the number of price entries in order to save paper. If you have some graphs printed and want to know the actual prices this is the way to get them. The graph routine uses ASCII graphic characters and does not present perfectly accurate price levels due to the graphic character size being fixed. There are several options available when printing these price histories. When asked to enter the number of the stock to be printed you may enter a single number for one history, enter a range (i.e. 9- 14) to specify all stocks in that range, in this case 9,10,11,12,13 and 14 or enter the numbers of only the stocks you want, seperated by commas such as 10,13,15,22 . The other option is to print all stocks in the list by pressing ENTER without a specified number. Finally, you now have a choice with this version of printing to the screen. ********************************************************************** SWITCH STOCK LIST: This menu selection simply tell you which data list you are in at present and allows you to change to another one. If you accidently choose this and don't want to change just enter the same number you are presently in and it will return to the MENU. This section has been enhanced. You can now print all the stock names with columns for closing price, EPS and Timeliness ratings. The EPS (Earnings per share rank 1-99) is available from Investor's Daily and is given for each stock. It is a rating of a companies earnings verses all other companies on the market. A rating of 99 places the company in the top 1% of all companies in earnings per share. The Timeliness rating can be obtained from Long Term Values, Daily Graphs or Value Line. These ratings are very useful but the EPS and Timeliness ratings do not have to be entered for the program to work. However, it will work much better with them. ********************************************************************** ENTER/UPDATE EPS & TIMELINESS: This is where the EPS and Timeliness ratings mentioned above are entered. For each stock the present rating will be displayed. If there is no change, just press RETURN, otherwise enter the new rating. For TIMELINESS the ratings are A,B,C,D,E with "A" being the best and "E" being the worst. These ratings come from Long Term Values and you may have to adjust another rating system to this one. If no ratings are entered for EPS and TIMELINESS the program will assume neutral ratings of EPS=70 and TIMELINESS=C. ********************************************************************** The following restrictions to copying apply: This program is made available on the Shareware concept. Please do not give copies of the registered version STOCK MASTER to anyone. You are encouraged to give a copy of the Public version STOCKMINDER to anyone who asks and to upload to Bulletin Boards in you area. Thanks, Ron Lashley