(For those new to the column, Forward Migration is our term for companies moving from Wintel machines to Macs — or at least adding or increasing the number of Macs they use. A forward migration kit is an overview of Mac OS products for a particular occupation, such as dentistry, accounting, etc.)
This week we’re concluding our two-part series on stock analysis software for the Mac.
Trendsoft
John Swyryn recommends the various products made by Trendsoft Software.
One such product is Personal Hotline, which includes a variety of charting and analysis tools. An Expert Trading Model makes recommendations on where to buy, sell and place stop-losses for all markets and automatically tracks its own performance. The Day Trader expert provides day trading recommendations based on a system used by commodity floor traders. Personal System Alerts let you build and test your own technical system then alerts you when new trading opportunities arise. Personal Trade Tracking will analyze your trades and keep track of your performance. Personal Hotline has a US$595 price tag.
Trendsoft also makes Personal Analyst, a collection of charting and analysis tools. Computer Generated Trendlines automatically track and chart significant highs and lows. This same intelligence automatically draws Fibonacci, Gann, Trident Linear Regression and Speed Lines.
Personal Analyst will identify significant candle patterns on chart with pop-up explanations. Its technical screening feature lets you screen dozens of rankings with virtually unlimited control of the criteria used and the order of preference. Computer Generated Ratings apply multiple technical studies to your list of securities en masse, producing numerical ratings that can be used to find trading opportunities. From Point and Figure to Semilog scaling, Japanese Candlestick to traditional bar, Personal Analyst can tackle a variety of classic charting.
What’s more, the Master analysis report summarizes the day from a technical perspective. The report shows how each of your securities performed that day, including the values of the most widely used technical tools, whether there were any new candle patterns and the results of Analyst’s rating systems. At the end of the report is a summary of the top ten gainers, losers and volume leaders, based on your portfolio. Personal Analyst costs $329.
Finally, there’s the $399 Pro Analyst, which offers such features as a quote monitor, personal ticker tape, headline news and graphics. Custom layouts “remember” every aspect of your personal design. Designed for traders, Pro Analyst lets users track their choice of symbols, stocks, futures and options, trade by trade, minute by minute as the action happens. Real-time data is $59 per month plus exchange fees (e.g. NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX are $1 each per month).
Miscellaneous
If you’re looking for stock analyst software for a large financial institution (bank, financial-service, etc.) then the folks at VVI say that’s their market.
“The OpenStep market was always good in that area, so we built up a lot of expertise which we’re bringing to bear on Mac OS X,” Ed VanVliet, VVI’s director of application development, told MacCentral. “We’re also considering a low-price retail application on Mac OS X but so far we’re too busy with the large-customer market.
If you’re interested in more info, or in discussing the matter, e-mail VanVliet.
Also, it’s not technically stock analyst software, but if you’re into stocks, you’ll probably be interested in PowerTicker, formerly by Aladdin Systems, but now back in the hands of its original developers, Galleon Software.
PowerTicker is a $49.95 program that queries financial Web sites, reformatting the information it receives into an animated stock ticker and a collection of reports. You can configure PowerTicker to report on stock quotes in your portfolio, calculate your current investment value and even convert international currencies at current exchange rates.
Also, as we reported on Sept. 19, Linn Software has just released a new version, 5.0, of Investor/RT, a real time trading platform that includes LVLII screens, charts, modeling and back-testing among others of all financial instruments, stocks, bonds, futures and options.
“It’s obviously a specialist product but no-one else does it on the Mac and having used quite a few I can tell you that no-one does it as well on Windows either,” Investor/RT fan, Leighton Johannesen, told MacCentral. “I have been using it for over two years and am still around to tell about it; that says something for it’s speed and reliability in this market.”
Linn Software is also working on a Mac OS X version of Investor/RT. A Carbonized version of the app will be released in a “few weeks,” Dr. William Linn, president, told MacCentral.
Linn Software has been a provider of market analysis software for the Mac platform for more than a decade. Linn said that, even though they also offer their software for Windows, they’ve made a “major effort” to keep the product “native” for their Mac clients.
Have a Forward Migration story? Send it my way.