Business Assistant/Business Assistant.iso/stock/ibmdisk5/smfmain3.hlp

Text File | 1992-02-08 | 12KB | 244 lines

TUTORIAL GUIDE PART 2: FILE MAINTENANCE        SM3.02       PAGE 1 OF 11

This tutorial assumes you have already installed the Stock Charting
System on your hard disk, or have made working copy diskettes to use.
It also assumes you are familiar with Part 1, which takes you through a
step-by-step procedure to acquaint you with some of its features.

In Part 2, we will perform "file maintenance" - the process of adding,
deleting and changing data in a file.  A "file" is a contiguous set of
homogeneous data, such as the catalog (list of securities) or a price
history (stock chart).  It is also a named unit of data storage on disk,
for example the catalog file which has the name CATALOG.POR.  See Appen-
dix B for a glossary of computer terminology.

Whenever the program asks you to enter information such as the name of a
security or a current price, the data is typed into a solid video block
near the bottom of the screen.  It is not necessary to fill that block.
Lowercase letters are automatically changed to uppercase (CAPITAL) let-
ters.  The backspace key (not the smaller left-arrow key) can be used to
make corrections.



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1.  Let's start by adding a new security to the list.  From the Master
    Menu, type S to go to the Stock Select screen.  You should see the
    list of securities with another menu at the bottom.  Note this
    screen actually has a dual purpose - to select a security to graph,
    or to add, delete or change information pertaining to securities.

2.  Type A to ADD a new security to the list.  You will see a list of
    security types at the bottom of the screen.  Use the left-arrow or
    right-arrow key to move the selector bar over the type of security
    you want.  For a description of the available security types, press
    H for HELP or see Chapter 12.  For now select COMMON STOCK, then
    press the Enter key to register your selection to the program.

3.  Enter the ticker symbol.  If there is no official ticker symbol,
    you must make one up, for example DJIND for Dow Jones Industrials.
    If you plan to "import" volume and prices from an external file,
    you must use the same ticker symbols as the source of your data.
    You can find ticker symbols in Barron's, The Wall Street Journal,
    Standard & Poor's Stock Guide or Value Line Investment Survey.
    Or, ask your broker.  For this demonstration, type TEST <Enter>.

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4.  Next, enter the security name.  If you plan to enter current volume
    and prices from a newspaper, use a spelling similar to what is in
    that paper, including any blank spaces.  For example, use S C E CORP
    instead of SCECORP.  Blank spaces sort lower than any other charac-
    ters; therefore S C E CORP will come before SAN DIEGO GAS in the
    Current Data Update screen.  You may have to re-arrange certain
    names, for example BLOCK, H R instead of H&R BLOCK, or LILLY, ELI
    instead of ELI LILLY.  The security name can always be changed at a
    later time.

    In the Current Data Update screen (discussed later in this chapter),
    securities are arranged by type, exchange and name (to facilitate
    entry of data from a newspaper).  In the Stock Select screen,
    securities are always arranged in order by type and symbol.

5.  The next item is the exchange.  Enter a 2-letter code such as NY for
    New York or OC for Over-the-Counter.




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6.  The program will then ask for a category.  This is for a stock or
    fund category such as UTILITIES or TECHNOLGY or GROWTH.  Entry of
    this data item is optional, and is retained for compatibility with
    companion portfolio management features not included in this version
    of the Stock Charting System.

7.  You can have a DAILY-updated stock chart, or a WEEKLY-updated stock
    chart, or both.  When you add a security to the system, the program
    will ask how many days and/or weeks of volume/price data you want to
    keep.  The number you enter tells the computer how much disk space
    to set aside for this stock.  If you enter 0 (zero), no space is set
    aside.

7a. For this example, enter 0 (zero) for the number of days and 52 (or
    any number you want, from 31 to 319) for the number of weeks.

7b. All other data items are optional, and are discussed in Chapter 11.
    Any data item can be entered or corrected later.  Press Esc to ter-
    minate data entry.  The program will ask if you want to keep the
    data - reply Y for YES.

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8.  Now you should be back in the Stock Select screen with the selector
    bar on the security you just added.  Let's change one of the data
    items.  Type C and this will take you to the View Screen for Indi-
    vidual Securities (the same screen used before while adding a new
    security).

8a. Use the left- or right-arrow key to select the security name.  Press
    C to change it; then try a slightly different spelling.  Using this
    method you can change any data item.  If you change a ticker symbol,
    its corresponding price history file(s) will automatically be re-
    named.

8b. Press H (for HELP) or see Chapter 11 for further explanation of each
    individual data item.  Then press Esc to return back to the Stock
    Select screen.






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9.  About 1/4 of the way up from the lower right corner of the screen
    you will see the word Daily or Weekly inside a solid block.  Press
    the TAB key a couple of times and observe how that word alternates
    with each keypress.

9a. This tells the program whether you want to work with DAILY or WEEKLY
    historical data.  Press the TAB key once more if necessary to see
    the word WEEKLY, as we will be working with weekly-updated data.

10. Press E and in a moment you should see the Historical Data Entry
    screen.  The leftmost column consists of dates one week apart and
    falling on Fridays.  The program computes all of these dates, and
    the latest one should be the Friday previous to today's date.
    WARNING: The computer obtains the system date from DOS to use as
    today's date.

10a. The main purpose of this screen is to "fill in" historical volume
    and price data for a security that has just been added to the sys-
    tem.  This process is optional.


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11. Try out the up-arrow, down-arrow, PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys.
    They are used to select a particular date for the purpose of
    entering or correcting volume and price data.  Press End to put the
    selector bar on the latest date at the bottom of the screen.

12. Press E and enter the volume and high, low and closing prices.  For
    now you can make them up, for example 1411 <Enter> 50 <Enter> 46.5
    <Enter> 49 1/2 <Enter>.  Note the program will accept fractional
    entries.  Move the selector bar up one line, press E and enter an-
    other set of values.  Enter three or four contiguous sets of values;
    this will give you a more presentable graph later on.

    For a mutual fund you can press E, press the Enter key twice, and
    then just enter the NAV (net asset value).  For example type
    E <Enter> <Enter> 8.245.

13. Press U and observe that a new contiguous date value gets added to
    the bottom of the display.  You can enter another set of values, or
    press the Esc key to cancel.  Note E is to enter or correct data for
    EXISTING dates; U adds a NEW date after the last date on the screen.

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13a. See Chapter 16 for information on how to process stock splits and
    mutual fund distributions and how to set the moving average periods.

    We will be