★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ STOCKMARKET ★ |
STOCKMARKET (Amstrad Action) | STOCKMARKET (8000Plus) |
There are four main types of business software. These are the word processor. the spreadsheet, the database and the accounts package. Now for something different: Stockmarket from Meridian Software, which is a cunning mixture of the last three breeds of software, plus a little extra. Stockmarket is a sophisticated program designed to record your own personal folio of stocks, shares, government bonds, unit trusts, and just about anything else. It can also plot the rise and fall of up to twelve share prices (titles) at once over a five year period. Admittedly in the light of the current financial chaos it may well be of purely academic use... it's not for me to comment further on this, though. Anyway, Stockmarket is split down the middle. Once you have loaded in a data file - which must be on a separate disk, except to start with - you can select either the accounts program or the the price recorder. A word about the style of the program. It's menu driven, but roughly 95 percent of your entry can be selected using the cursor keys alone. This makes for quick, error free input Three levels of menu are provided; these are main, option and question Generally, to go through a particular process takes more steps, but the steps are still simple. There's also a panic button - hit the close square bracket to return to a former menu. From the main menu you can access the following:
City slicker Right, now for some raw info. Accounts can handle up to 50 share blocks per folio, and can take scrips, rights and part paid shares into account. It is one smart cookie. The prices program is designed to be able to make a study of various companies'share prices Up to twelve different titles can be compared. and up to 260 dates can be stored, giving you five years storage at one week intervals
All the on-screen presentation is in 80 column mode and has a straightforward, no-nonsense look about it The program has a professional feel about it. Unfortunately it is let down by a few fairly minor problems. The program appears to me to be written totally in Basic. The fact is almost invisible, except that if you try to print without having a printer, the program locks up - the sort of thing a jumpblock call could have gotten round. Also, the program has no in-built copy routine, you will have to resort either to Tas-copy or Utopia. The manual takes you through the steps of the program quite gently. but doesn't explain a lot You can spend a long time before you understand everything in it. Personally. I put this down to complexity of the program subject rather than the manual being badly written On the other hand, a complete novice at computing might have a lot of trouble getting Stockmarket to behave. I think that Stockmarket's real market is the small scale, long term investor; also the person who wants to learn more about investments. And finally, as an educational tool for letting people indulge in stocks and shares without the danger of losing or the success of gaining. I believe that's where Stockmarket's real potential lies - with the aid of a suitable textbook, of course. |
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