Messages: What Members Are Asking On-Line

Customized Tracking of Stock Returns

I have been an AAII Life Member for many, many years—almost since the beginning of AAII. I now need some advice.

For several years, I have used a personally self-programmed dBaseIII program to produce a report of how my stock portfolio is doing. But entering the data is too much work at my age. So I am looking to purchase a program to do the same thing.

I purchased Quicken 2005 Premier, hoping it would be a good replacement, but it isn’t. I don’t want my IRR on each stock holding, which depends on the luck and timing of my purchases and sales. I just want the results for the named company itself.

That is, I want to enter a list of stocks, and, for example, obtain a table of the one-year, two-year, three-year, four-year, and five-year annual returns based only on the price of that stock. Quicken does it for the “industry” but needs transactions to calculate the returns for the stock price. I only want to see, in tabular form, the changes in the stock prices on a yearly basis. (Just like Value Line gives in graphic form.) And I want it for my list of 150 stocks.

Do you know of any program or service I can purchase that does this?

—G. G.
via E-Mail

CI Editors Respond:

The only software program and data service we are familiar with that displays stock performance in table form is Value Line Investment Survey Analyzer.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SIZE.

The Investment Survey Analyzer is a disc-based stock screening and analysis program that provides over 350 search fields on each stock, more than 60 charting and graphing variables for comparative research, and 10 years of historical financial data. It includes a portfolio management module that lets users create and track their own stock portfolios and update them intraday via the Internet. Users can even view and print actual full-page stock reports from the Value Line Investment Survey.

The program can also display data in a customizable table that includes stock total return data. You could set up a tracking list of stocks and custom table displaying items such as the year-to-date, one-year, three-year, five-year and 10-year performance for each stock in your watch list. The program does not provide two-year or four-year return figures. This Windows-based stock screening program and data from Value Line has two subscription options—$598 per year gives you access to the 1,700 companies tracked in the paper-based Value Line Investment Survey, while $995 per year provides you with an 8,000-company database. Both subscription options offer monthly CD-ROM updates by mail, coupled with the option to update data through the Internet. Ongoing subscribers to the print version of The Value Line Investment Survey receive a special discounted price of $195 per year for the Standard Edition (1,700 companies) and $495 per year for the Plus Edition (8,000 companies). You can get more information about the program at Value Line’s Web site: www.valueline.com or by calling (800) 654-0508.