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TradeTrakker 2.51 - User Guide and FAQ

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Using TradeTrakker

General Information
TradeTrakker is an intelligently designed software application to help you track your stock and mutual fund investments. All you need to do is add the stocks or mutual funds you have purchased to a portfolio, set some sort of update schedule or choose the "manual update" option and TradeTrakker will accurately and instantaneously recompute all your positions with the latest data available from Internet Sources. The information retrieved by TradeTrakker is 20-minute delayed, which is typical of almost all free online portfolio tracking services. Real-time quote information is also available at certain websites for free, but normally on a single quote basis. Real-time tracking of stock portfolios is normally only available with more expensive monthly services. At the time of TradeTrakker's release it is not possible to set up a web based portfolio of stocks and mutual funds and have it updated in real time.

Real-time quotes
TradeTrakker will allow you to retrieve real time quotes for your favorite stocks. Simply click on the "Q" button on the toolbar to select "Real Time Quotes" (F11) from the main Web Links menu. This feature will retrieve real time quotes for one stock at a time, using your default your browser. Real time quotes are provided courtesy of FreeRealTime.com, and are contingent upon their continued cooperation. To use their free real time quotes service, you will need to complete your free registration at FreeRealTime.com first. Then, anytime you like, you can simply use TradeTrakker's interface to request a real time quote on any stock. You should only need to enter your password once with Internet Explorer and once per session with Netscape.

HINT: Do not close your web browser after opening it for real time quotes and TradeTrakker will allow you to pull up as many real time quotes as you wish with only one logon.

This feature also permits you to access other information available from FreeRealTime.com, including charting services, as well as alternate sources of Stock news, History, Company Profiles, plus analyses from Zacks, Market Guide and StockTalk services.

TradeTrakker portfolios
Unlike most web based portfolio tracking options, TradeTrakker offers many more column options, organization of portfolios into internal groups, automatic updating accomplished in just seconds, the ability to easily factor in stock splits, dividends, broker fees, and more. Plus you can set alerts to warn you when stocks reach certain price levels. You can track an unlimited number of stocks and mutual funds in multiple portfolios, save all your portfolios in snapshot form for record keeping purposes, export all the data to comma-delimited text files, save your data file to remote locations such as on a network, and open files from different locations.

How to get started?
To get started, the simplest option is to use the Wizard. TradeTrakker is designed to run the Wizard on default when opening the program. You can easily disable this feature by checking the box on the first Wizard screen "Do not run the Wizard on startup." You can easily restore than function by re-enabling it in User preferences. You can also run the Wizard at any time by clicking on the handy Wizard toolbar button.

When TradeTrakker is run the first time, you are given the option to add stocks to the preconfigured "Sample Portfolio". We have configured several stocks and mutual fund positions just to show you the data available that TradeTrakker can show you. These are a number of popular common stocks like Microsoft (MSFT), IBM and General Motors (GM). In a second group are Yahoo (YHOO), QCOM (Qualcomm) and Alcoa (AA). And in the third group are a couple mutual funds, the Putnam International Growth Fund (POVBX) and the Mundernet Net Fund (MNNBX). We have included 15 of the most common column options for monitoring stock positions. You can add columns and change their order by choosing "Portfolio Properties" from the right-click menu, the toolbar button or the main Portfolio menu. You can also change the width of columns by placing the mouse cursor over the little divider between columns. This becomes a double arrow allowing you to resize the column width to suit your needs.

Let's take a quick look at using the Wizard and then we'll look at the manual option to add stocks to a portfolio. First the Wizard will give you the option to either "Add stock to the portfolio", or "Mark currently selected stock as sold." The second option will walk you through a few simple steps to mark a stock you are watching as sold by assigning the price paid, the number of shares purchased and the date you purchased it. You can do this whether you actually purchased the stock, or whether you simply want to track it as of a certain price and date. But here let's follow the simple process to "Add stock to the portfolio".

Each Wizard screen is quite self-explanatory. Enter the data required and click the "Next" button at the bottom to continue. First, you will enter the symbol for the stock. If you don't know the stock's symbol, you can use the "Lookup" button to look it up using the company name. This will report the stock's symbol in your default web browser program. On the next screen enter the number of shares purchased. Fractional numbers may be specified for mutual funds. Next, enter the actual price per share you purchased the stock for. If you don't recall exactly, you can use an approximate figure and edit it later using the "Edit Stock" option later on. In the next screen type in the date you purchased the stock or click on the little number box to select the date from a calendar screen. Here again, if you don't recall the exact date you can use an approximate date or leave this blank and edit it later. Clicking "Next" one more time will take you to the final screen where you can close the Wizard or go back and add another stock or mutual fund position.

If you close the Wizard, you will see that the stock you just added has not been assigned to any group. You can include it in one of the existing groups using the "Edit Stock" command. You can also create new groups of your own choosing, by clicking on the edit button next to the "group" field in the Stock Properties dialog box.

TradeTrakker will instantly compute all the values for any newly added stock position including your gain/loss and other relevant data. It will also add the value and changes in this stock position to the "Performance summary" shown above the main stocks window. If you delete all other stock positions except your own from this sample portfolio, the "Performance summary" will report the exact totals for your own stock positions only. Note that the Sample Portfolio is set for an automatic update schedule of 15 minutes which can be edited in "Portfolio Properties". Thus, when you add a stock to TradeTrakker, it will not be updated right away unless you click the manual update button.

If any of this seems confusing, don't worry. Experiment with it. You can add and delete stock positions at will as you learn how to use this marvelous tool. You can't hurt anything. Just play with the Wizard and the various editing options to create custom portfolios to suit your own personal investment needs. With just a little practice you will be able to effortlessly add new stock positions to your portfolio, or configure watch lists to watch stocks you are interested in tracking.

Note that buying or selling a stock with the Wizard will not update your Cash Reserve account if you have one configured. You will need to modify this manually using the "Cash Reserve" item on the main Portfolio Menu. Buying or selling stocks using the manual "Add New Stock" (Alt+N) feature will automatically add or subtract the amount of the purchase or sale from the balance in your cash reserve account if you leave that option checked.

Let's take a closer look at the "Add New Stock" option which brings up the "New Stock Item" dialog box. Once you become familiar with TradeTrakker, you may prefer to add your stock positions manually rather than stepping through the Wizard. To bring up the "New Stock Item" dialog box, simply click on the "+" button on the toolbar or select "Add" from the main Stock menu (Alt+N). In this dialog box, you add the stock symbol, add the company name if you wish, select the group you want to put the stock in, enter the price per share, number of shares and date purchased, plus any brokerage fees paid. You can also add comments about this stock on the Comments tab, and set alerts to warn you when the stock reaches a certain price on the Alerts tab. You can also enter the Sold data here when you sell a stock position. Or you can use the "Sell" option from the main Stock menu (Alt+L).

Note that the "New Stock Item" dialog box is virtually identical to the Stock Properties dialog box which is accessed using the "Edit Stock" toolbar button or the "edit" option from the main Stock menu (F9) with a particular stock position highlighted in green.

Frequently Asked Questions - TradeTrakker

I'm using dial-up Internet connection. Automatic dialing is started each time I execute TradeTrakker. How I can prevent it?
Enable "Start in off-line mode" option in TradeTrakker Preferences dialog box. TradeTrakker will then no longer try to connect to the Internet when you run it, until you click on the offline button to return to online mode.
What is "Log of Updates" and how is this useful for me?
"Log of updates" records all attempts by TradeTrakker to connect to the Internet and collect stock quotes data. It records the time of the attempt and its success or failure. This log is very useful for diagnosing connectivity or update scheduling problems. Otherwise, it is not particularly useful for average user. Please not be alarmed if it records failed update attempts while you are online. And since old entries are deleted from this log automatically, this log will not grow inordinately large in size.

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