David Frost looks at two packages to help Sid get the most from his British Gas shares In the stockmarket accurate records and'forecasts can make the difference between expensive failure and comfortable profits. Previously this was the preserve of the wealthy, but recent privatisation issues have brought share ownership to a much wider section of the community. The bulk of shares are still owned by the big institutions, but there are five million more shareholders now than ten years ago. Personal Equity Plans which started on 1st January are likely to spread share ownership still further. If you are a newcomer to share ownership or an experienced investor wishing to take a more active interest then one of the programs reviewed here may well be what you need. The package consists of a 3" disc and 50 page booklet of instructions. The text is clear and well illustrated with drawings of the various menu options - the print may be rather small, but if you can read the share prices in the daily papers you won't need new glasses for this. The main side of the disc contains the accounts program for recording details of purchases and sales of shares or other investments, as well as recording the balances in up to four cash accounts. Each file holds 50 entries which is plenty for the small investor. Once the basic details have been entered you can move on to recording dividends, yields and P/E (price/earnings) ratios. The last two are automatically updated each time you enter a revised price for the shareholdings. The menus for buying and selling contain user-defined default values for the costs involved ie stamp duty, commission and VAT. Total dealing costs, dividends and the portfolio value are shown when you list the account with provision to list dividends and cash transactions separately. The entire program is menu driven. The main menu itemises the principal functions and leads on to an option menu which is accessed using the cursor keys. Data entry is virtually the only stage at which information has to be typed in directly. In most cases there is either a default answer or a predefined set of choice answers, all of which makes the program easy to use. It is impossible to exit from any part of the program without going through a save routine, and most of the default options in the menus are fail-safe which makes for safety but is slow. Also on side 1 is a prices menu which enables the prices of up to twelve shares per file to be recorded for 260 dates. These shares need not be the same as those contained in the accounts menu for this part of Stockmarket is used to identify which shares to buy or sell and when. Side 2 of the disc contains the program for plotting the price movements of the selected shares. The most useful tool here is the ability to plot average prices over a period — you can choose the length of the period and decide whether to average at the middle or end. 8000PLUS | 
