Focus
on your portfolio(s)
Investment software almost
universally focuses on individual assets (usually shares of
stock). At best, portfolio management is added as an
afterthought. This forces you into a myopic frame of mind
where overall portfolio growth takes second seat to the
performance of individual portfolio components. Some software
authors will go so far as to recommend that you concentrate
on and trade a single stock exclusively. That certainly makes
their job easier, but it runs counter to all existing
knowledge about successful investing and risk management.
In Investment Studio, portfolios
are not an afterthought; they are the starting point.
Conceptually, all your investments are part of a tree
structure with portfolios at the root. Each portfolio
contains assets; each asset contains transactions and is
linked to a quote history. Investment Studio's user interface is
organized in views which reflect this natural structure.
At startup, the Portfolios
view is automatically selected and lists all loaded
portfolios:
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| A Portfolios view |
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This is where
you load, unload, create, delete - and, most importantly,
compare - your portfolios; and this is where you single out
portfolios which you want to zoom in on using the Assets,
Quotes, Transactions and System views. The latter are all
portfolio-specific and customizable: the Assets view of
portfolio A need not be anything like the Assets view of
portfolio B.
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| An Assets view |
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Customize
everything!
Most investment software
provides you with a fixed set of tools (indicators, chart
styles, data sources) to choose from. Investment Studio takes the
opposite approach: just about everything in it is
customizable and extendable. From screen content and layout
to chart and indicator definitions to quote sources, you are
in control.
For instance, creating a new
chart can be as easy as picking it from Investment Studio's object
gallery:
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| Browsing the object
gallery |
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But you can
also rewrite the chart's definition to completely alter which
data it displays and how, and then add the new chart to the
object gallery for future reuse.
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| Editing a chart
definition |
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Customization is generally
possible at several levels, from basic to advanced. A chart
can be moved around and resized with the mouse; its display
properties (colors, fonts, axes etc.) can be modified
extensively using its pop-up menu; its definition may allow
one or more numerical parameters to be modified on the fly
using sliders;
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| Chart parameter
sliders |
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new entries
may be added to its definition using the pop-up menu's
Favorites section;
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| Chart favorites menu |
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and the
definition may be edited explicitly.
Charts are not all there is,
of course. Investment Studio has several customizable object classes (grids, charts, graphs, browsers)
which you can use to create your own screens.
Freely
mix different currencies and markets
Investment Studio fully supports
multi-currency portfolios. Managing a portfolio containing
assets quoted in 10 or 20 different currencies and countries
is no harder than managing a portfolio made up entirely of
NYSE-listed blue chips. You can analyze each asset in terms
of any currency, not just its own or its portfolio's.
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| An international
portfolio (Assets view) |
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Download
quotes from any source, in any format
You may recognize the
following statement; it's taken straight from the FAQ (Frequently
Asked Question) list of a well-known stock charting package:
"New sites cannot
be added by the user. They must be configured by us."
The same can be said of most
Internet-aware investment software. The reasons vary from bad
programming to thinly veiled attempts to lock you into
proprietary data formats and quote feeds. When one of the
supported quote servers changes its format (as they regularly
do) you then get something along the following lines:
"The downloader is
not working due to recent changes in the server's quote
format. Please check back soon for an updated version."
In contrast, you can set up
Investment Studio to parse just about any quote format and download data from just about any FTP or web source.
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| Downloads view |
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URLs can be
static or dynamically generated (e.g. to reflect the current
date or to crawl dynamically generated pages); the data can
be parsed using simple text format strings or scripts written
in any ActiveX scripting language (e.g. JScript). You have
full control; if a quote server changes its format, you can
adapt your download definitions immediately instead of having
to wait for somebody else to fix things.
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| A download definition |
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Create
unique indicators, charts and trading systems
(without having to learn
YAPPL)
Most investment software is
not programmable. To date, the few exceptions which have
allowed you to define your own indicators, charts and/or
trading systems have invariably required that you learn some
variation on the all-pervasive YAPPL (Yet Another Proprietary
Programming Language). In other words, a language which isn't
used in any other context.
Investment Studio lets you
leverage your existing knowledge. If you can use a
spreadsheet like Excel or Lotus 1-2-3, you can program
Investment Studio data grids, charts, graphs and trading systems,
drawing from almost 400
powerful built-in functions which range from matrix algebra to technical
indicators to digital filters and advanced spectral methods.
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| Editing a data grid
definition |
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If that still
isn't enough for you, you can define your own functions using the ActiveX Scripting language
of your choice. If you've ever written an Excel macro, you'll
feel right at home creating custom Investment Studio functions:
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| Macros view |
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Back-test
and optimize complex investment strategies
There is an old saying about
investing: Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get
slaughtered. A "pig" being anyone who plunges
head first into the market without a well-defined set of
rules stating when to buy and when to sell.
In Investment Studio, every portfolio can have its own, tailor-made
rules, written in
the same familiar, spreadsheet-like syntax used to define
charts and data grids.
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| Editing a trading
system |
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Testing new
ideas on historical data is easy: enter your rules, specify
the date range and see how your portfolio would have fared.
Study individual transactions in the Transactions view;
analyze trading activity in each asset in the Assets view;
compare overall system performance in the Portfolios view.
Where other investment software only gives you a fixed-format
performance report (typically limited to a single asset),
Investment Studio lets you dissect every aspect of your multi-asset
trading system's behaviour using your choice of diagnostic
tools.
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| Viewing transactions |
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When you've
identified a promising approach, it's time to let
Investment Studio's multivariate
optimizer find the
best parameter settings. Of course, the measure of what's
"best" is a formula which you can edit any way you
like.
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| Optimizing a trading
system |
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Download the free trial version now!
