Feature: Editors' Top Picks in Investing Products
by CI Staff
Once a year we present our top picks for the most common areas of investment analysis and management. This annual review allows us to present our personal favorites with the typical member in mind. We rate and compare a wide range of programs and Web sites on an ongoing basis in Computerized Investing, and we draw upon these comparisons to highlight the top picks in portfolio management, mutual fund screening and analysis, stock screening and analysis, and technical analysis and charting. These categories cover the needs of most of our members. We present our top picks by highlighting selections for both Macintosh and Windows systems, as well as top Web offerings.
We have not limited our selections to the boundaries of software that needs to be purchased and installed on your computer (disk-based programs)—both traditional and Web-based tools were eligible for the top-pick slots in each area. This issue is of special importance for Mac users who often find that Web-based tools for screening and analysis exceed the usefulness and functionality found in the best Mac-based software programs.
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The Selection Process
The picks represent the top-rated software programs and Web sites that we use ourselves on a day-to-day basis and can recommend to our members without hesitation. We have rated all our choices using our standard scoring system and have tried to select products that meet the needs of the typical investor.
The software programs and services were judged in each of the following categories: performance, documentation, and ease of use. Performance rates how well the program or service accomplishes its stated objectives. Adjustments are made for specific areas such as fundamental screening, where the performance of the screening process is graded separately from the depth and quality of the data provided by the application. Documentation rates the quality of the printed materials, on-line help, and manufacturer support. Ease of use rates how simple the core application is to install, learn, and operate. Criteria are rated on a scale of one to five, with five denoting the best score possible. While all the factors are important, the greatest emphasis was placed on performance.
We have eliminated several software applications that are simply not geared toward the individual investor market. These products, which we consider professional software, go beyond the scope of the research and analysis conducted by the individual investor and, therefore, become quite expensive.
The top picks presented here are not simply the most expensive products, or those with the most complex set of features. Rather, they represent what we feel are the best products suited for the typical individual investor. Some of the programs are general purpose in nature, while others are more advanced applications. Most on-line tools pale in comparison to the sophistication and capabilities of software, but on-line selections here are quite sophisticated tools.
| Portfolio Management |
Portfolio management systems help investors by tracking the performance of individual investments, the interaction of the investments in your portfolio, the allocation and classification of your assets, and the performance of your overall portfolio. They also function as important accounting systems that track the income and gains or losses on your transactions to help calculate the tax liability of your portfolio activities. No matter what techniques you use to select your investments, you must have a system in place to track your holdings.
The ability to specify security lot assignments for any given transaction is an important feature found in the top programs. If you reinvest dividends from your mutual funds and stocks, you will find yourself tracking numerous lots (units traded) over a long period of time. Top packages automatically match buy and sell lots for different accounting strategies for the purpose of reducing tax exposure.
Portfolio return reports paint the clearest picture of how well your investment holdings have performed. The top programs should help you analyze the performance of individual securities, asset groups, and your portfolio as a whole.
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Captool Individual Investor By Captools Co. $249 (20% discount for AAII members); $60 for annual support license after first 12 months www.captools.com (800) 826-8082 |
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If you are looking to analyze the performance of your securities and portfolio groups while maintaining accurate tax records, then Captool should fit the bill. Captools offers a number of versions of the program ranging from the Individual Investor version priced at $249 to a Professional release that sells for $5,000. Captool Individual Investor comes with 12 months of support and program updates. Support and updates cost $60 annually after the first year.
Captool features just about everything an individual investor could ever want or need when tracking and evaluating a portfolio or group of portfolios. The coverage of securities handled is complete: stocks, mutual funds, annuities, bonds (fixed, zero-coupon, variable, Treasuries, munis), cash, GNMAs, CMOs, real estate, partnerships, options, and user-defined securities.
Transactions handled by the program are extensive. A partial list includes buy/sell, short/cover, margin purchase, return of capital, cash and stock dividends, interest, phantom interest, capital gains distributions, reinvestments, splits, reverse splits, premium and discount bond amortizations, fees, commissions, spin-offs and mergers. Captool provides complete tracking and computation of cost basis. Users can assign the lots manually or have the program automate the process to minimize taxes or maximize gains. Taxes are estimated based upon customizable tax rate tables. Securities can be marked as tax-exempt on federal or local levels.
Report capabilities are extensive and flexible. Captool ships with over 60 report templates that draw from a wide range of data fields and portfolio statistics. Captool reports also provide you with the option to incorporate pie charts and valuation growth charts.
The program can examine the performance of individual securities, security groups, and the overall portfolio for user-designated time periods. The performance report can present the internal rate of return, time-weighted rate of return, or simple profit on an annualized or total return basis. Users have the option of examining returns on both an aftertax and pretax basis and even specifying the fees or commissions paid over the reporting period.
Captool provides integrated Internet data downloads from many popular Web sites, but does not offer the ability to download transactions from brokers. The program is optimized for quick data entry, so it is not as prompt-driven as some of its competitors. It takes some time to get acquainted with a powerful program such as Captool. The program ships with a thick manual, but novice investors may still be overwhelmed by the programs many features.
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Quicken 2005 for Mac By Intuit, Inc. $69.95 www.quicken.com (800) 952-2558 |
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Quicken is the classic personal finance program that handles all aspects of financial planning and tracking from checkbook management to portfolio management. Quicken is the only true portfolio management software option on the Mac platform, as it has been for some time now. Quicken software is also available for Windows.
Intuit updates the program on an annual basis, and the Mac updates over the last few years have focused on deeper analysis of investments, support for a wider range of security assets and transaction types, and automated data downloads from banks, credit card companies and brokerage firms.
When the program is first installed, Quicken prompts the user to answer a series of personal questions. The first questions deal with how you intend to use Quicken—to save more money, get out of debt, manage your checkbook and bills, track investments, see where your money is going, or to ease tax preparation. After completing these questions, Quicken asks for financial information. For instance, if you choose to use Quicken to manage your checkbook and bills, the program will ask which institution you bank with and what your current account balance is.
Quicken also provides advice on how to achieve any goals you establish, including long-term goals such as building a house, taking a vacation, or buying a car.
Quicken will automatically update investments such as mutual funds and 401(k) plans, as well as taxes. Quicken does this in the same way that it monitors bills and checking accounts—by continually downloading investment information from brokerages.
Quickens investment management module enables you to compare your performance versus market benchmarks. Morningstar ratings are incorporated into the program. News alerts keep you up-to-date on stories regarding your holdings. A capital gains estimator shows you the potential tax impact of selling your stocks and mutual funds before you make a trade.
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Morningstar.com By Morningstar, Inc. Free with any PC with Internet access Premium Service: $12.95/mo. or $115/yr. www.morningstar.com (800) 735-0700 |
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Morningstar.com is a full-featured investment Web site providing portfolio tracking, market monitoring, stock and fund screening and research, educational articles, and message boards. Much of the site is free, with additional portfolio analysis, research and screening available through the premium service for $12.95 per month.
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Morningstar.com has the capability to track 50 portfolios—each holding 50 stocks or mutual funds, 10 bonds, and 10 cash securities. The on-line manager can also keep a cash balance. Portfolios are updated by Morningstar on a delayed basis. After each market close, free daily E-mail updates are available that present the market value of each of your portfolio holdings as well as links to relevant news stories. Users can also elect to receive E-mail notification of stock and fund news as complex as a heavy volume price movement or as simple as the change of a ticker symbol or fund manager. Premium subscribers can also receive notification of changes to the allocation or makeup of a given portfolio.
Morningstars on-line portfolio manager works in conjunction with both eligible portfolio management software programs—Microsoft Money and Quicken. It also allows users to import portfolio data entered on AOL, CNBC on MSN Money, Quicken.com and Yahoo! sites.
Morningstar.com offers a solid list of report capabilities. Performance numbers can be compared among individual securities, as well as by asset class and investment style. Performance reports can also be generated for single and multiple portfolios. Other portfolio interface views include intraday, fundamental, and gain/loss—which employs the specific-lot method for handling cost basis.
Morningstar.com also features a unique function for examining your portfolios called an X-Ray. X-Rays are slightly different from standard tracking views in that they can break down your portfolio and present your holdings in different formats. Ten different premium service X-Rays can be displayed, including Asset Allocation, Style Box Diversification, Stock Sector, Stock Type, World Regions, and Fees & Expenses. Another premium X-Ray is the unique Stock Overlap X-Ray, which analyzes the diversification of your portfolios across mutual funds and among individual security holdings.
Morningstar.coms portfolio tools offer useful alerts and helpful portfolio views.
| Fund Screening & Analysis |
With over 15,000 mutual funds to pick from, many investors turn to mutual fund screening systems to help select their funds and track the performance of their holdings. Screening involves setting up a list of parameters, or criteria, that you can use to find a group of funds that have similar characteristics. While you could use a financial newspaper, magazine, or newsletter to perform basic screens, the screening process is most easily accomplished using a computer. Software packages offer some form of data service with the screening capability built into the software. Subscribers receive periodic data updates; a software program is worthless without these data updates. Likewise, the data is only as useful as the flexibility and power of the programs screening function. Mutual fund screening systems enable an investor to quickly locate a few funds that meet personal risk, return, and management style needs. For example, if you determine that your portfolio is lacking international emerging stock diversification, a screening program can quickly come up with a list of no-load mutual funds that have consistent performance above the average for emerging nation funds and that have acceptable risk and below-average expenses.
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Steele Mutual Fund Expert By Steele Systems, Inc. www.mutualfundexpert.com (800) 315-9002
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Mutual Fund Expert from Steele Systems comes in three versions: a Personal version, a Professional version, and a Pro Plus version. The three programs include an impressive database of over 17,500 mutual funds (including money market mutual funds and multiple class funds) and are available in monthly and quarterly updates. The main difference between the three is in the detail of information supplied for each fund.
The Personal version features a roster of 92 data fields and performance returns for the last 12 months, last four quarters, and the last 10 years, as well as three-, five- and 10-year annualized returns.
The Professional program includes the same set of performance returns as Personal and 227 data fields for screening and ranking. Professional and Pro Plus versions feature greater risk-return related coverage—including both the Sharpe and Treynor ratios. The Professional version has expanded its portfolio information, providing additional data beyond asset allocation and sector breakdown including a list of the top 10 holdings, average portfolio price-earnings ratio, average bond quality rating and maturity.
Pro Plus offers a more robust 700 data fields and has complete performance returns from 1962 to the present. Pro Plus portfolio details include information on the fund manager, the funds portfolio composition, the largest holding of the fund, and the percentage of the fund that is invested internationally.
Screening and reporting capabilities are strong for each of the respective Steele programs, with Pro Plus allowing the most sophisticated mutual fund investors to perform any and all necessary filters in order to select funds. The programs are easy to work with and all have the same interface. Not only is the Mutual Fund Expert software powerful, but it is also generally easy to use. The program features a multiple-tab worksheet-like interface. If you are comfortable working with spreadsheets, you will find it easy to examine the mounds of data provided by this program. The unique quick-reference toolbar on the main database page is a nice feature that makes for easy navigation. The step-by-step process of the screening module can be a little confusing at first, but once users get the hang of it, creating screens should be simple.
Overall, the Mutual Fund Expert programs are top-notch fund screening applications and perform the necessary tasks for effective fund analysis.
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Morningstar.com By Morningstar, Inc. Free with any PC with Internet access Premium Service: $12.95/mo. or $115/yr. www.morningstar.com (800) 735-0700 |
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With no screening software currently available for the platform, the top pick for the Mac user looking to screen and research mutual funds is the Morningstar Web site. Much of the site is free, but Morningstar.com also offers a premium service subscription that includes an expanded screening module for fund searching. A 14-day free trial of premium service is currently available.
Screening is performed via the Fund Selector module and research is best conducted via the popular Morningstar Quicktake reports. Reports provide returns for several years, along with a comparison of performance to a market index and against funds with the same investment objective. Risk measures and Morningstar ratings are included for various time periods. The portfolio section of the report details items such as the fund style, top holdings, asset and industry breakdowns, and percentage of foreign holdings. Morningstar analysis rounds out the report.
The free Fund Selector screening tool is a simple-to-use application that features a 17,500-plus fund database. The 19 fields available for screening are more of a standard offering. The free Quicktake report features over 250 pieces of data on each mutual fund in the database. The Premium service also provides access to proprietary analyst reports that extend the discussions on individual fund prospects.
Additional mutual fund screening and comparison tools available for free at Morningstar.com include a quick-and-easy Fund Quickrank screener and a Fund Compare utility, which allow you to evaluate funds against one another, testing for better returns, higher ratings, and more.
For the individual investor looking to conduct basic mutual fund screening, the free services at the Morningstar Web site should work just fine. However, if you are looking for a multi-dimensional fund screening experience, check out the premium service.
| Stock Screening & Analysis |
Screening programs help you sort through thousands of stocks to find a few that warrant further study. The top packages examine a wide universe of stocks, supply a deep set of information for examination and screening, and provide a great deal of flexibility to match the screening parameters to your personal investment philosophy. The packages should also have a wide range of pre-programmed filters to illustrate the screening process and help users get started more quickly.
Many investors use fundamental screening systems as a framework for investigating investment tips in an organized, consistent fashion. Company and industry data within a stock screening system can provide an initial impression of a company and its prospects.
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Stock Investor Pro By the American Association of Individual Investors $247/yr. ($198/yr. for AAII members) www.aaii.com (800) 428-2244 |
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[Note: Stock Investor Pro is published by the American Association of Individual Investors.]
Stock Investor Pro is a Windows-based program that offers complete monthly CD updates as well as weekly on-line updates. The program provides the most powerful screening tools of the top three choices coupled with a deep set of data and a wide range of built-in screens.
Stock Investor Pro contains fundamental data on 8,000 companies and comparison information on 12 sectors and 100 industry groups. The program allows you to look up, analyze, and screen for companies meeting specific criteria on over 2,000 variables. Consensus earnings estimates are provided by I/B/E/S and fundamental data is provided by Reuters.
The program includes detailed income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements for seven years and eight quarters. Financial statements can be viewed as reported or on a per share basis, a period-by-period percent change basis, or a common size basis. Stock Investor Pro provides over 300 ratios and growth rates and allows the creation of 250 custom variables.
The screening function enables screening for companies meeting criteria using any data field in the program, along with comparisons to database or industry norms. The program includes over 55 predefined screens that follow the techniques of well-known investors. You can create portfolios and print out predefined or custom reports. Data can be exported into a number of text, spreadsheet, and database formats.
Stock Investor Pro also comes with SSG-formatted files that can be used in InvestWares Investors Toolkit analysis program.
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Morningstar.com By Morningstar, Inc. Free with any PC with Internet access Premium Service: $12.95/mo. or $115/yr. www.morningstar.com (800) 735-0700 |
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Mac users do not have any software options for fundamental stock screening and analysis, so investors must turn to the Web. The top-rated free Web site, CNBC on MSN Money, presents a more basic version for the Mac, making Morningstar.com the best choice for Mac users. Morningstar.com is a full-featured investment Web site providing portfolio tracking, market monitoring, stock and fund screening and research, educational articles, and message boards. Much of the site is free, with additional portfolio analysis, research and screening available through the premium service for $12.95 per month.
Research on the site consists of stock screening coupled with research reports. Morningstar provides ratings and analyst reports on 3,000 stocks. These reports are restricted to premium subscribers, but all users can screen for stocks with high grades. Free screening covers 19 basic elements, while the premium screening module covers 500 criteria. Free screening is limited to performing comparisons against pre-set constant values, and the screens cannot be saved for use at a later time. The premium screening tool is much more flexible, covering 500 data variables. Screening criteria can be compared against constants, over fields, or to benchmarks. Premium screens can be saved for use at a later time.
Comprehensive stock reports start with an overview snapshot and lead to a detailed company profile; financial statements and ratios; charting; stock price performance statistics; stock, industry and market multiples; earnings estimates and analyst opinions; industry snapshot; insider and institutional shareholder activity; SEC filings; and news. The financial statements provide 10 years of income statement, cash flow, and balance sheet data. The premium reports add details including Morningstar ratings and analyst research.
Articles with a focus on current market issues, interviews and detailed educational features are located throughout the site. Message boards provide a forum for discussion of the many issues brought up in the articles.
Morningstar.com is a well-organized Web site that provides a diverse and useful set of tools for the stock investor. Its premium screening module is very powerful and its company reports nicely detailed.
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CNBC on MSN Money By Microsoft, Inc. Free with any PC with Internet access moneycentral.msn.com/investor (800) 426-9400 |
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Microsoft and CNBC offer a complete personal finance and investing site through their free Web offering. The investing section offers portfolio tracking, charts, news, educational articles, stock and mutual fund research, and brokerage services. Access to articles, news, screens, company and mutual fund data, and portfolio tracking is free to all Internet users. Navigation between the various modules is easy and logical. The stock research and screening module on the site is top-notch. Eighteen predefined screens are available and users can construct their own screens. The screening module is a very flexible ActiveX program that we were able to run on Windows-based systems using either Internet Explorer or Netscape browser. On Mac systems, however, CNBC on MSN Money displays a more basic Web-based screening module.
The company coverage is both broad and deep. Over 200 well-chosen fields are available for screening. Users can compare company values against constants, other data fields, or even another company or industry benchmark. Screens can be saved for later use.
CNBC on MSN Money has pulled together the content of Camelback Research, Media General, Reuters, Thomson, and Zacks into a comprehensive company report. The research wizard walks an investor through the factors to consider when looking at a stock, including its fundamentals, price history, valuations, catalysts, and competition. StockScouter ratings provide risk/reward recommendations for stocks. Another unique feature is the Advisor FYI Alerts, which alert users to factors that may influence a stocks price—such as an earnings estimate revision, a price-earnings ratio in the bottom 25% of the industry, or increasing relative price strength. The Insight segment of the site provides a wide range of articles that discuss stock-picking techniques and current market events. News articles are posted daily, with historical articles archived by topic.
CNBC on MSN Money offers most investors a very good base to perform screening, company research, and portfolio management.
| Technical Analysis & Charting |
Investors looking for technical analysis software or services will not find themselves wanting for choices. There are literally hundreds of technical analysis programs on the market today, ranging from simple charting software to trading platforms that generate buy and sell signals based on technical indicators or even astrological cycles. We present the top software picks that excel in plotting charts and indicators, developing and testing a trading system, and screening on technical factors. In addition, we present a top charting Web site that offers a solid collection of charting choices and technical indicators as well as technical screening and in-depth technical analysis education.
These top programs plot a wide range of charts and indicators. The most common chart types are bar and line. Line charts normally plot the closing price over time, while bar charts typically show the open, high, low, and closing prices for a given period. Other chart types include candlestick, equivolume, and point & figure. A technical indicator, such as a moving average, is the mathematical manipulation of price and/or volume displayed in a graphical manner.
Ultimately, most investors will use technical analysis to aid in timing buy and sell decisions. Trading systems apply a set of buy and sell rules—usually based on technical indicators—and automatically indicate when these rules have been triggered. The trading rules can be a single indicator or groups of indicators matched to specific conditions. Backtesting a trading system involves applying it to a set of historical data in order to test its performance, measuring factors such as the rate of return and identifying each buy and sell. This allows you to see which transactions would have been made based upon the signals generated by the system as well as how successful and risky the strategy would have been over a given timeframe. Taking the process one step further, some of the higher-end technical analysis programs allow you to optimize trading systems, which generates the optimum (most profitable) parameters for a given trading system. However, backtesting only provides a glimpse of how the system would have performed over the specified testing period. There is no guarantee that the trading system can duplicate this performance going forward.
Technical screening involves locating securities that exhibit certain technical properties, such as price and volume behavior, moving average breakouts, chart patterns, or overbought/oversold conditions based on indicators. Users specify the universe of stocks to screen and the criteria they wish to include in the screen to obtain the list of securities. Coupled with screening is the ability to receive alerts when certain technical events occur.
As is generally the case when comparing the features and functionality of software versus Web-based services, technical analysis Web sites tend not to offer the same level of power and flexibility as their software-based cousins. While they usually offer adequate charting and technical analysis indicators, they typically do not offer features found in high-end technical analysis software—namely system development, testing and optimization, and technical screening. However, they serve as an excellent stepping-off point for someone new to the field of technical analysis.
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MetaStock By Equis International $499 (software only); software & Reuters DataLink: $59/mo. or $599/yr. www.metastock.com (800) 508-9180 |
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MetaStock stands as one of the industry leaders in technical analysis software. Its powerful mix of charting capabilities, technical indicators, system development and backtesting, market screening, and ease of use has made it a top choice among trade publications, seasoned technicians, and novices alike for many years.
The program offers over 150 technical indicators and studies as well as the capability to modify existing indicators or to create your own (the Equis Web site, www.equis.com, has an extensive library of custom indicators to add to the software). New to MetaStock 9.0 are 14 monetary indicators, including interest rate, metals, and currencies, and market index data that can be added to any chart to evaluate securities relative to market benchmarks and barometers. Also new is the ability to draw proprietary short- and long-term trendlines, a feature that was previously sold as a separate package. MetaStock offers a wide selection of charting styles and unparalleled charting capabilities, with nine different charting styles from which to choose. MetaStock 9.0 has improved its point and figure charting and analysis capabilities with eight new indicators, four explorations, two expert analyses, and two system tests. Users can easily manipulate and customize charts using the programs drag-and-drop features. Price plots, indicators, and chart windows can be moved within chart windows by simply clicking on the elements and dragging them into another chart or window. MetaStock offers 26 predefined trading systems and allows you to create and save your own systems. The enhanced system tester allows for wide-ranging backtesting and optimization of predefined and custom trading systems, and provides detailed system performance reports to analyze the effectiveness of a particular trading system.
If you are looking for securities that are exhibiting specific technical characteristics, the programs explorer function allows you to compare, filter, rank, search, and list multiple indicator values for multiple securities. Users can view a list of securities that are generating buy or sell signals or that have broken some predefined barrier in terms of price or technical indicator. The program can also run additional explorations on the results of a previous exploration, run explorations on a single security, or use separate security lists for each exploration. MetaStock contains 45 predefined explorations and offers the ability to generate custom explorations.
Beyond providing the tools needed to perform the analysis, Equis and MetaStock provide users with a wealth of educational materials to allow them to get the most out of technical analysis. The Equis Web site includes the complete text of Steve Achelis (founder of Equis) book Technical Analysis From A to Z, an excellent primer to the technical indicators found in MetaStock. The site also offers a collection of troubleshooting tips and technical support. In MetaStock, the expert advisor displays the trends of noted technicians that identify bullish, bearish, and neutral zones on a chart. Furthermore, the expert advisor can identify and label 31 candlestick patterns and users can create their own expert advisories and apply them to any chart they wish. With MetaStock 9.0, a chat room has been added to allow users to chat with other users, reach technical support, and participate in weekly symposiums with market experts.
Since data plays such a pivotal role in technical analysis, it is beneficial to be able to shop around for a data vendor that meets your needs in terms of both data coverage and cost. MetaStocks Downloader program can access data directly from Reuters DataLink, Dial/Data, and Telescan.
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ProTA Gold By BeeSoft $199 (ProTA Gold) www.beesoft.net (800) 840-3588 |
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While MetaStock has garnered numerous accolades over the years, ProTA Gold has seemingly gone unnoticed among technicians, although this Mac program is on par with the leaders in this area of investment analysis software. The program has quietly established itself as one of the most complete technical analysis packages available for Mac users, in addition to being the most reasonably priced for the features it provides.
For data handling, ProTA Gold allows for direct data downloading from Dial/Data. The program also comes with a universal text importer that can recognize and import data files in a number of different formats—including MetaStock, Excel, and ASCII text. With this utility, users simply drag a data file onto the ProTA icon and it will be converted for use with the program. The only major data issues to keep in mind are that neither ProTA Gold nor the text importer automatically handles stock splits, mutual fund distributions, or futures contract rollovers.
ProTA Gold offers all of the popular chart types—line, bar, candlestick, and point & figure. In addition, the program comes with over 50 fully customizable technical indicators and line studies. With its object-oriented interface, ProTA Gold allows users to click on an item and modify it to fit their needs.
With the portfolio tracker module, users can enter buy or sell trades and display, analyze, and rank them in a number of ways. The program generates such statistics as cost basis, return on investment, profit/loss, and more. Users can track technical information such as moving average values and volume activity, as well as post trade entries and exits and track overall portfolio performance.
ProTA Gold also offers advanced features that are usually exclusive to high-end technical analysis packages with much higher price tags. If you are not satisfied with the existing library of technical indicators, ProTA Gold gives you the added flexibility of creating an unlimited number of custom indicators. The BeeSoft Web site also provides a library of custom indicators for use with the software.
For those interested in creating trading systems, ProTA Gold offers that functionality as well. Users can specify trading rules for entering long and short transactions. Once a trading system has been developed, users can plot buy and sell points on a chart, generate trade lists and performance summary reports, and optimize the trading system.
ProTA Gold will scan for securities meeting specified criteria. Users may specify one or several technical or performance-based variables and the program scans the database or a portfolio to find those securities that fit the parameters. The securities that pass the scan are then placed in a portfolio sheet where the results can be viewed and ranked.
BeeSoft is currently working on a entirely redesigned version of the program that will be native in Mac OS X.
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StockCharts.com Basic Charting: $9.95/mo. Extra! Charting: $19.95/mo. www.stockcharts.com |
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Many individual investors who wish to make use of technical analysis, but are new to its concepts, are in need of a service that allows them to get their feet wet without being washed away by the costs of software-based applications and data. Furthermore, such investors need quality educational materials to learn the basics of charting and technical analysis. For this reason, we include StockCharts.com—an Internet-based technical analysis service—as our top Web pick in this area.
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For charting, StockCharts.com offers one of the best collections of charts available on the Internet. The site features line and candlestick charting, as well as three options for point and figure charting. For point and figure charts, pattern alerts are automatically displayed on all charts (both free and subscription). The site offers a collection of over 20 technical indicators and line studies; users of the free service can plot up to two price overlays and two technical indicators per chart, while subscribers can plot up to eight price overlays per chart and up to 24 technical indicators per chart. Users can create charts with up to three years of daily data for the free service, or from 1990 for the subscription-based service. Subscribers to the site can save charts to a favorites list for future analysis (one for Basic service and up to 100 for Extra!).
StockCharts.com offers a collection of stock scans that allows users to apply various technical formulas to a stock universe to produce a listing of stocks meeting those criteria. Non-subscribers can run predefined scans based upon technical indicators as well as candlestick and point and figure patterns. Subscribers can create custom scans, however, only Extra! subscribers may save these custom scans and view the results of custom scans in their entirety. All scans screen stocks traded on the NASDAQ, NYSE, Amex, and Canadian exchanges as well as mutual funds.
For those looking to learn more about technical analysis, the site hosts an extensive collection of educational content at the Chart School. Articles cover the basics of technical analysis, as well as trading strategies and technical indicators and how to use them. There is also a discussion of charts, the common patterns that appear, and how to interpret them. A recent addition to the site is John Murphys Market Message. Murphy, a well-known technical analyst, publishes his market observations at the site (a market message subscription runs $16.95/mo.).
