Update: New Computer Investing Products
by CI Staff
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CoolTick
CoolTick is a scrolling stock market ticker for your computer. Its fully customizable and can show as many stocks as you want to watch.
After installing the program, a yellow bar will appear at the top of your computer screen. CoolTick automatically includes popular market indexes in the scroll bar.
To add symbols to the scroll bar, right-click anywhere in the yellow bar and choose Edit Symbols. First, choose Add then enter the ticker symbol, or choose Lookup to connect to Yahoo! Finances symbol lookup page. You can give the stock an alias, and you can enter the purchase price and number of shares owned if you want to track a stocks performance. In addition, you can set up blinking price alerts when a stock reaches a high or low price. You can also choose to be alerted by a pop-up message or a sound when a stock crosses the alert. Finally, you can group stocks and attach a Web site link to each company. You can also change the display order of stocks, edit information and delete unwanted stocks.
Note that the unregistered demo version only allows you to add two ticker symbols.
An interesting feature is the automatic portfolio creation. After you add the desired symbols to the ticker bar, you can right-click the bar and choose Cool Portfolio. This takes you to the CoolTick Web site and a basic portfolio tracker that shows the daily price changes and current values.
You can customize the ticker bar itself by choosing Options from the right-click menu. You can add a number of data points for each company including current price with time and date, percent change, dollar change, number of shares, last days close, opening price, the days high and low prices, and volume. You can also customize the font, color scheme and update frequency (as often as every two minutes for registered users).
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Volcone Analyzer Pro
Volcone Analyzer Pro tells you if an option is considered cheap or expensive in terms of its implied volatility, or IV, using a Volatility Cone (or Volcone). The Volcone compares an options current IV to its historical IV during similar time periods.
To start, you must add ticker symbols, or models. The program will download historical data from Yahoo! Finance for a user-specified time period. You can save a list of ticker symbols for future use.
Next, highlight the stock you want to analyze and choose Calculate Volatility Cone from the icon menu or the Edit menu on the top of the page. You have the option to select both the days to expiration and the current implied volatility to be graphed. There are three IV methods to choose from: close-to-close (historical), high/low, and adjusted close. You can learn more about each of these by reading the programs user manual.
A graph shows the current IV as a red dot along with the average volatility and the first and second standard deviations from the mean. A line showing the highest and lowest recorded historical volatility are also included for comparison.
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Essentially, if the red dot is too far above the mean, the option is considered expensive and if the red dot is below the mean, it can be surmised that the option is cheap. The users manual goes into much greater detail to help you understand how to interpret the data.
You can save the charts and data for later use as well. The users manual is a great resource for beginners. Video tutorials are also available.
Quicktakes
Quant IX Software
www.investmentaccountmanager.com
Investment Account Manager has been updated. This desktop portfolio management program tracks basic securities. New features include a Captools import function and the ability to download transaction activity from more leading financial institutions. The program also includes portfolio management tools to analyze allocation, diversification and performance; multiple portfolio management; detailed reporting and graphing tools; integration with AAIIs Stock Investor Pro software; and compatibility with subscriptions to StockCentral.com. The program costs $129 ($10 discount for AAII members).
FreeCashCharts.com
www.freecashcharts.com
FreeCashCharts.com analyzes and monitors 1,801 data points for over 15,000 public companies, 200 industries and 12 sectors of the economy. Based on the notion that earnings per share can be manipulated and, thus, is a potentially misleading indicator, the program computes the cash flow per share for corporations and compares this to the earnings per share. You can create a portfolio of stocks for analysis and search for companies by ticker symbol or name. A valid E-mail address is required for the free subscription.
eSignal
www.esignal.com
eSignals QLink allows you to bring market data such as last price, high and low price, trading volume and more into Microsoft Excel for creating technical charts. You can use the data to track your own technical indicators as well. More than 45 data fields are available for import. QLink imports historical bar and tick data through a DDE interface and allows users to create direct formula entries for use with Excels Visual Basic for Applications programming language. eSignal users can try QLink for free for 30 days. For more information, go to Products, eSignal and choose Features from the left-hand menu bar.
MarketTechnician
www.markettechnician.com
The developer of Bollinger Bands, John Bollinger, has introduced MarketTechnician, a technical charting and stock analysis Web site. The site provides historical price data and a variety of analysis tools. Some historical data goes back as far as 1928. Indicators and data include daily, weekly and monthly timeframes. Charts are fully customizable as well. A subscription to MarketTechnician costs $100 per month; a free 30-day trial is available.
Barchart.com
www.barchart.com
Barchart.com has launched a new real-time market data application called WebStation. The program supplies users with real-time quotes, charts, news and analysis. Data on futures, equity and foreign exchange securities is included. WebStation costs $79 a month plus exchange fees. A free two-week trial is available.
DividendInvestor.com
www.dividendinvestor.com
DividendInvestor.com provides investors with dividend data on a wide array of companies. For each company, you can see basic stock and company information in addition to numerous dividend statistics. Statistics include: dividend yield, dividend growth rate, dividend payout ratio, and upcoming dividend information. The site also includes top-100 lists for dividend yields, growth rates and more, plus you can use an ex-dividend calendar, a dividend scorecard and even a dividend screener. Access to some of the sites information is free. A subscription costs $24.99 per month.
