Getting started: the basics

>>> ...I double-click Investment Studio's entry in the Windows Start > Program menu, or I double-click the Investment Studio icon on my desktop. I wouldn't be reading this if I didn't know as much! <<<

>>> Yes. I see a title screen with a bunch of ones and zeros going down the right edge, and the hard drive light is flashing. What's going on here? <<<

Investment Studio is checking that all necessary files are present. This may take a little while, especially if your PC is a few years old. When it's done, one of four things will happen:

ERROR #1: If the file InvestmentStudio.INI is not found in the start directory, you will be presented with an error message saying so. This is a fatal error; program execution will terminate when you close the message window.

To fix the problem, right-click the shortcut which you used to launch Investment Studio. This opens the shortcut's Properties dialog. In this dialog, make sure that the "Start in" field contains the full path to the directory containing InvestmentStudio.INI. Also check that the file really is in place (e.g. using Windows explorer). If it's missing, create an empty text file and name it InvestmentStudio.INI.

ERROR #2: If one or more of the data directories listed in InvestmentStudio.INI can't be accessed, the Directories dialog will open. Use the dialog to specify the correct directory paths, or click

in its upper right corner to terminate program execution.

ERROR #3: If your PIN and/or subscription certificate is missing or invalid, the Subscription dialog will open. Use the dialog to enter your PIN and subscription certificate, or click

in its upper right corner to terminate program execution.

NORMAL. If all goes well, the Loaded portfolios dialog will appear:

The dialog lists all available portfolios. Click the list header to sort the portfolios by name, symbol or currency; click again to reverse the sort order.

Check all portfolios which you want to load. Click OK to confirm your selection and continue. Click or press Esc to let Investment Studio start with the same portfolios which were loaded at the end of the previous session.

If you do not touch the dialog at all, it will close after about ten seconds and program execution will continue as if you had pressed Esc.

Portfolios can be loaded and unloaded throughout the session, so don't worry about picking the "wrong" ones. This dialog is displayed at startup mainly to give you a chance to unselect portfolios which you are not interested in and which may take a long time to load.

>>> OK, I'm past the portfolio selection dialog. Now I see a gray window scrolling down some text. Is this normal? <<<

Yes. Portfolios and quotes are being loaded. The text is a step-by-step report of what's being loaded and of how it's going. If you ever run into some kind of problem at this stage, make a note of what was being loaded at the time. That will tell you where in the data to look for the cause, and you will be able to exclude that particular item the next time you launch Investment Studio.

The more portfolios, transactions and quotes you load, the longer it takes. In particular, quotes are loaded from plain, comma-separated text files. Since the text has to be parsed, this makes loading a bit slower than if a binary format was used, especially on systems with slow processors. The advantage of using text files is that it ensures maximum compatibility with other software and makes it easy to edit quotes with anything from a spreadsheet to a text editor (e.g. NotePad).

Don't worry, we're getting there. If a portfolio includes a trading system, the system is automatically executed when the portfolio is loaded. This ensures that portfolio composition will reflect the effects of the latest quote update. The window which you're seeing now (Executing system...) shows system execution progress. You can click Stop to abort the system currently being executed, or Skip all to abort the current system and skip execution of all remaining systems, too.

Keep in mind that if you abort the execution of a portfolio's system, the portfolio will probably not have the same final composition and performance as if you had allowed the system to run its course.

You are now looking a the Portfolios view. This would be a good time to read about views if you haven't already done so (it would be a good time to re-read about them, too).

Anyway, the Portfolios view's layout is thoroughly customizable and so depends on your particular settings. Generally speaking, you should be looking at a collection of several objects: Charts, Graphs, Browsers and a Notes editor may all be visible. There is always exactly one Grid object (that's the spreadsheet-like object) listing all loaded portfolios. All objects are hosted by tiles which you can resize and move around freely within the view.

To emphasize that they are not just "some grid", "some chart" and so on, but rather well-defined objects in the computing sense of the word. They are largely autonomous entities, programs within the program if you will, and they are all instances of their respective object class - realizations of the same ideal Grid, Chart, Graph and so on...

>>> Never mind. Let's get back to the Portfolios view. There's really a lot of stuff in here. What should I look at first? <<<

Definitely the Grid. That's the spreadsheet-like object where all loaded portfolios are listed. There is only one such object in the Portfolios view, and it's always visible, so you shouldn't have any problem locating it. As with all Grid objects in Investment Studio, its contents are highly customizable, so it's not really possible to tell what you should see in your particular setup. But it's fairly safe to assume that portfolio names, symbols, currencies and NAVs should be displayed.

That too should be displayed in the Grid, alongside with the NAVs. The Grid, and all objects in the Portfolios view, get the desired date range from a group of date controls in the view's toolbar:

At startup, the end date (to the right) is automatically set to the current date (determined by your computer's internal clock). But quotes may not be available all the way to the current date for all portfolios, in which case the latest available date will be used in the Grid and in the other objects. So make a habit of always looking at the NAV date info for each portfolio in the Grid.

That's set manually, and automatically saved between sessions. If you have a preferred reference date, like 1/1/2000, you probably won't change this setting a lot.

Well, if you are anything like me, you have a bunch of portfolios which you like to check on and compare regularly. Some may simply be lists of assets which you are tracking but not currently holding, some may implement trading systems which you are evaluating or actively following, some will be real portfolios containing assets which you are currently holding. When you start up Investment Studio, you will want a quick overview of all these portfolios, their current NAVs and latest moves. You should be able to read off all that from the Grid, and perhaps you have set up a Chart to show the relative performance of all your portfolios. That would be the next thing to look at.

Patience. We'll get into all that later. Right now we're just being entry level users, looking at objects but not modifying their setup or creating new ones.

>>> All right. I've looked at everything in the Portfolios view now. I think I'll click the Assets tab... <<<

>>> Hey! I clicked the Assets tab, at the top of the window. That should get me to the Assets view, right? But all I got was a gray window saying "No portfolio selected"! <<<

>>> ...click the Portfolios tab at the top of the window. I get that. But why is the Assets view not working? <<<

It is working. It just doesn't know which assets to show. You see, the Portfolios view is a bit of a master view, or the root of a tree structure if you prefer. When you select a portfolio in the Portfolios view, the Assets, Quotes, Transactions and System views all reflect different aspects of the selected portfolio. So you can really think of them as "subviews" of the Portfolios view. When no portfolio is selected in the Portfolios view, the "subviews" are empty.

>>> So I need to select a portfolio in the Portfolios view. How do I do that? <<<

Any cell belonging the portfolio which you want to select. If Grid display is columnwise (one portfolio per column), click a cell in the portfolio's column. If Grid display is rowwise (one portfolio per row), click a cell in the portfolio's row. You can also navigate through the Grid using the keyboard (arrow keys etcetera - here's a list of keystrokes). Just select a cell in the desired portfolio.

>>> Are you saying that you don't even know if Grid display is columnwise or rowwise?!? <<<

It's customizable, like most things in Investment Studio. So display orientation is up to you.

>>> Got it. I've selected a portfolio now. Hey, all the other objects in the Portfolios view blanked out! <<<

They are being redrawn to reflect your portfolio selection. Grid objects are master objects. When you select a new record in a Grid, all other objects in its view are updated accordingly. In the Portfolios view, comparison Charts and Graphs may change to highlight the selected portfolio's performance, while other Charts and Graphs may display only the selected portfolio; the view's Notes object will show remarks specific to the selected portfolio; and Browser objects will load whatever URLs they have been set up to load when that particular portfolio is selected. So there's a lot going on right after you select a new portfolio, and it may take a while for all objects to finish updating.

No. If you're not interested in seeing the results right now, just switch to some other view. The updates in the Portfolios view will be aborted and then restarted from scratch when you come back.

>>> Yes. Let's try again: I click the Assets tab at the top of the window and... wait again... <<<

Now that you have selected a portfolio, the Assets view for that particular portfolio needs to be loaded. Same goes for Quotes, Transactions and System. All these views are portfolio-specific, so whenever you select a different portfolio and switch to one of these views, the view must be reloaded. If it contains plenty of objects, or if some of the objects need to perform heavy number crunching, this can take a little while.

No. Views need only be reloaded when you select a new portfolio. Recomputation (but not reloading) may be needed if you have edited quotes, assets or transactions. If you don't make any changes, switching between loaded views should be almost instantaneous.

>>> Well, the Assets view seems to be done loading now. Guess what? It looks suspiciously like the Portfolios view! <<<

It's supposed to. It contains the same kind of objects: there is a master Grid, a Notes object (which may hidden) and optional Charts, Graphs and Browsers. The main difference is that while the Grid in the Portfolios view lists all loaded portfolios, the Grid in the Assets view lists all assets in the selected portfolio. Or at least all currently held assets in the selected portfolio.

>>> Will you please make up your mind? Does it show all assets or only assets which are currently held? <<<

Actually, that's a user option... you can read more about it (among other things) in the overview of the Assets view.

>>> All right, I'm getting the hang of this. The Grid in the Assets view shows lots of data about each asset, and if I select an asset by clicking a cell in the Grid, the other objects in the view (Charts and so on) update to reflect the selected asset. I suppose you want me to go on to the Quotes view now? <<<

Sure, why not? But before you do, let me call your attention to the date controls in the view's toolbar.

Indeed. Note in particular the leftmost button,

. This is the Synchronize dates button. When it's depressed, the view's date settings become "sticky": switch to the Portfolios or Quotes view, and the selected view will inherit the date range of the "sticky" view which you're coming from. This can be very convient when studying a particular date range and switching across views. The date range controls in the Portfolios and Quotes views have "sticky" buttons, too.

Yes, as far as the controls are concerned it's very similar to the Assets view (BTW, here's the overview of the Quotes view). The main differences are that you can't add new assets to the portfolio from the Quotes view, that the Quotes view contains a dedicated quote editor, and that constant price assets are never listed in the Quotes view's Grid.

Investment Studio makes a distinction between assets with variable prices, which need to be read from quote files, and assets with a constant price. The constant price is always 1.

1 unit of the asset's currency. Assets need not be quoted in their portfolio's currency, or in the same currency as other assets in the portfolio. Currency conversion is taken care of transparently.

>>> Isn't a fixed price of 1 a bit limiting? What if I want the constant price to be 1.5? <<<

I can't imagine why you'd want that. In practice, constant price assets are cash positions. Only 1 unit of cash is guaranteed to remain worth 1 unit of cash. If your cash position is worth 1.5, it's because you have 1.5 units of cash. So you wouldn't change the asset's price, you would change the number of asset units.

>>> Fine, fine. Back to the Assets and Quotes views. If they are so similar, why are both needed? <<<

They have different uses. The Assets view is about asset values and their contribution to overall portfolio performance; the Quotes view is about individual asset prices. Classical technical analysis belongs in the Quotes view; trading system evaluation in the Assets view. The Assets view is also the only place where assets can be added to (and removed from) the portfolio, while the Quotes view is the only place where quotes can be edited.

To a certain extent it is. You can certainly study prices and do technical analysis in the Assets view, and vice versa. But there are some advantages to doing things as suggested. At some point, you may want to exchange portfolios with other users (typically as a way to exchange trading systems), and following a common convention makes this easier. There are also real differences between the views, like the fact that constant prices are not listed in the Quotes view and that the Assets view doesn't have a quote editor.

Actually, I think we can skip that for now. The Transactions view is of interest primarily in two cases: when you want to record trades in the selected portfolio and when you want to analyze the behaviour of the portfolio's trading system (if any). These are not the first things you'd do in an average session.

Same goes for the System view. That's where you define and optimize the selected portfolio's trading system. This is a fairly advanced topic, so we'll skip that too for now. And we definitely won't jump into defining new functions in the Macros view at this stage, either.

Two things: first we'll update your quotes, then we'll check on our favorite financial web sites.

Once you start using Investment Studio regularly, you will probably set up scheduled updates. But until you do that, you will have to tell Investment Studio when it's time to update its database.

Yes, we've left the realm of portfolio "subviews" now. The Downloads view is not tied to any particular portfolio, and since it's not about portfolios or portfolio components, it's quite different from the views which we've seen so far (same goes for the Macros and Web views, BTW).

The Downloads view is about download lists and download items. Download lists are collections of download items. Download items specify how to retrieve raw data from external sources (either local or online), how to parse the data and where to save the results. In general, one download item is responsible for maintaining one data file (typically, but not necessarily, containing quotes).

Both individual download items and whole download lists can be submitted for processing. In practice, it's convenient to collect related download items in one list and submit the whole list for processing.

>>> Not so fast! Where are the download lists and items in the view? Where do I look? <<<

>>> OK, so the download lists are in the list box to the left. If I select one of them, all download items in that list are displayed in the panel to the right. Was that so hard to say? Let's run that update now. <<<

>>> Of course it's working properly! How do you think I downloaded this software in the first place? <<<

With Internet Explorer, presumably. I'm sure it's set up properly, but that's not what I have in mind. Investment Studio's downloader has its own, separate Internet setup. You should verify that it's working properly before running your first download.

Click

in the Downloads view's toolbar. This launches the downloader and opens its Internet setup dialog. Click the Help button in the dialog for instructions. Return here when you're done.

>>> I'm back! Everything's working fine, except... hmmm... there's a new window on my screen now. It just sits there, doing nothing. <<<

Sure, you can click the close button

in its upper right corner. But it will open again when you start the next download operation, and we are just about to do that. A better idea is to reduce the window's size and move it somewhere out of the way. Personally, I like to keep it in the lower right corner of the screen, displaying a single line of text. After a few minutes of inactivity it actually closes itself.

Yes. You can now update a single item, a group of items, a single list, or all active lists.

All download lists that are checked in the list box to the left. If you have several lists which you want to update regularly, the most convenient way is to mark them all as active, then regularly update your active lists.

For now, in the Downloads view, make sure that the list box to the left has input focus (just click somewhere in it), then click the Update button

in the toolbar. This causes all active lists to be queued for updating.

When you start using scheduled updates, you will be able to update all active lists by sending a single command line switch to the downloader. But we won't get into that now.

>>> All right, I clicked the Update button. The downloader window seems to be doing something, but I don't see any sign of network activity. <<<

Patience. The downloader is building a list of all unique URLs which it needs to visit, weeding out any duplicates. Once it's done, it will go online and download data from each URL in the list. This way, connection time and data transfer are minimized. This is particularly important if your online charges are traffic- or time-based.

>>> I think the downloader just went online. The "clock" window from the Internet setup test is back... <<<

That's right. The "clock" shows connection time. You can abort an excessively lengthy connection by clicking the stop button to the right of the "clock".

As far as Investment Studio is concerned, you can just keep working as usual. Quotes which have already been loaded in memory are not affected by the downloader updating the quote files. And the downloader runs as a separate process, so it wouldn't mind even if you were to close the main Investment Studio window at this point.

>>> Quotes which have already been loaded in memory are not affected by the update? Does that mean that I have to reload all portfolios or restart Investment Studio for the new quotes to be loaded? <<<

No. Just click the Reload quotes button in the upper right corner of Investment Studio's main window:

This button is enabled only if at least one download item has been updated by the downloader since Investment Studio was launched.

That's because the downloader isn't done yet. The button isn't enabled until the downloader finishes updating all files.

BTW, you should expect reloading to take roughly as long as it took to load the quotes the first time over, at startup. That's another good reason to use scheduled updates. If the latest quotes have already been downloaded when you launch Investment Studio, there's no need to wait for anything to reload.

>>> I think you said something about checking our favorite financial web sites? <<<

Yes, we might as well do that now, while the downloader is running and we are online anyway. Please select the Web view.

>>> All right, I click the Web tab at the top of the main window and see... hm, something suspiciously similar to the Downloads view... <<<

The similarity is quite superficial, I assure you. The Web view is used to create, save and reload tiled collections of Browser objects ("mosaics"). Multiple Browser objects displaying different sites, or different parts of the same document, can be used to take in large amounts of related information much faster than with a normal web browser.

In a way, you can think of the list box in this view as of a favorites list on steroids, controlling not just the contents of one browser window, but rather the layout, contents and scroll position of multiple browsers.

For a first session, this should be enough. We've checked our portfolios, had a closer look at some specific portfolio components, downloaded updated quotes and browsed the latest financial news. Basically, this session was a "quickie", something a user might do in a few spare minutes. In particular, we didn't modify any settings, we just used things as we found them. The next time, we'll start customizing Investment Studio to suit our needs.