DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN        SM3.02        PAGE 1 OF 10

To see the Stock Select screen, type S from the Master Menu.  This will
take you directly to the Stock Select screen.  The Stock Select screen
(and the View screen) display the contents of the system catalog file
CATALOG.POR, which contains a list of all securities known to the
program.

The Stock Select screen can display the names of up to 13 securities at
a time.  Securities are always shown in order by type and ticker symbol.

A security can be selected for historical analysis (data entry or graph-
ics), or to make a change or to delete.  A security is "selected" when
its ticker symbol is highlighted by the selector block.  The selector
block can be moved through the list of securities by means of the up-
and down-arrow keys and the PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys on the right
side of your keyboard.  The best way to see how this works is to try
using those keys yourself and to observe the effects.  The computer will
not let you harm anything.




DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 2 OF 10

To make a CHANGE or to VIEW additional information (Beta, earnings, div-
idends, price goals and buy/sell targets) about the selected security,
press C from the Stock Select screen.

Near the lower right corner of the screen you should see the word DAILY
or WEEKLY inside a reverse video block.  This determines whether you
will see DAILY information or WEEKLY information when you go to the His-
torical Data Entry screen or when you display a graph.  To switch from
DAILY to WEEKLY or vice versa, press the Tab key.  The Tab key is a
"toggle" - pressing it alternately selects daily or weekly.  This selec-
tion will remain in effect until you change it again.

Note: invoking the GRAPH, ENTER or EXIT functions will immediately make
the Stock Select screen go away, as they cause different program sec-
tions to be loaded automatically.  Any data you have typed in will auto-
matically be saved on disk.  The system will also "remember" what part
of the data was visible on the screen and where the selector bar was.




DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 3 OF 10

Following are descriptions of the different menu functions available
from the Stock Select screen.  They are described in alphabetical order.

A = ADD a new security to the list, in type and ticker symbol order.
    This will take you to the View Screen for Individual Securities and
    prompt you to enter data.  The View screen has its own HELP function
    (see Chapter 11) for more information.

    In general, all data items are OPTIONAL except the type, symbol and
    name.  Just press the Enter key by itself if you want to bypass
    entry of an individual data item.  You can always enter more data
    items later on, from the View screen.  The Esc key is always active
    and can be used to cancel the ADD function.

    The program first asks you to select the security type from a list.
    Use the left- or right-arrow key to select the security type, then
    press Enter.  See Chapter 12 for information about security types.

    WARNING:  Once you have specified the security type, you cannot
    change it except by deleting the record and starting over again!

DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 4 OF 10

    The type and symbol are the way in which the computer identifies
    each individual security.  Therefore you must make up a symbol even
    if no official one exists.  A particular ticker symbol cannot exist
    more than once in a catalog file.  But you can have both DAILY and
    WEEKLY history files for the same security.

    It is recommended that you use the standard ticker symbols, such as
    CPQ for Compaq Computer.  If you obtain current prices from a data-
    base service such as Dow Jones Information Services, you MUST use
    the standard ticker symbols in order to "import" that data into the
    Stock Charting System.  Those symbols can be found in Barron's, Wall
    Street Journal, Standard & Poors Stock Guide or Value Line Invest-
    ment Survey.

    You may use the hyphen (-) or underline (_) characters in a ticker
    symbol.  The ticker for an option starts with the hyphen, such as
    -IBMLD for an IBM Dec. 120 call.  Don't use the underline if you
    download prices from a database service; it's not recognized as a
    valid character.


DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 5 OF 10

    IMPORTANT:  When you enter the name of a security, the spelling may
    be significant if you obtain current volume and prices from a news-
    paper.  The Current Data Update screen arranges securities by type,
    exchange and name to make this easier.  However you may want to
    consider spelling security names in such a way that they will be
    arranged the same as in your local paper.  See Chapter 13 for more
    information.

    For a common stock or mutual fund, the program will ask for a cate-
    gory.  This can be either an industry category such as COMPUTERS or
    a fund category such as INCOME or GROWTH.  When applicable, the
    program will ask for a maturity date.  These data items are included
    for compatibility with companion software (see Appendix A).








DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 6 OF 10

    The program will ask separately for the total number of days and the
    total number of weeks of data you wish to keep.  You can track his-
    torical volume and prices daily, weekly, or both.  Enter a non-zero
    value for either or both data items as appropriate.  These values
    represent MAXIMUM capacities.  However you can change them later.

    When you ADD a security to the catalog, and you specify daily or
    weekly updating, the program will look in the DATA directory to see
    if a price history file already exists.  If one does, you will be
    asked if you want to keep it.  This feature allows you to copy price
    history files among different diskettes or different directories;
    you do that from DOS with the COPY command.

    If a price history file does not exist or you do not wish to keep an
    existing one, the program will create a new file for you, with the
    number of date entries you specified.  The latest date on that file
    will be the previous weekday for a daily file, or the previous Fri-
    day for a weekly file.  All dates are computed by the program auto-
    matically, based on the DOS system date.  Later dates are added
    automatically as required; you need not ever type in a date!

DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 7 OF 10

    WARNING: The dates used for entry of volume and prices are computed
    by the program and depend on proper entry of the current date when
    you start up or re-set your computer.  If the correct date is not
    entered at startup, some IBM-PC or XT-compatible computers may set
    the current date to Jan. 1, 1980!  This may not be a problem if your
    computer has a real-time clock.  But you should check it anyway, in
    case the clock battery runs down.














DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 8 OF 10

C = CHANGE/VIEW - This will display the View Screen for Individual
    Securities, which shows all of the available information for just
    the selected security.  Its purpose is to allow changes, additions
    and corrections to individual data items (except the security type).
    See Chapter 11 for more information.

D = DELETE the security identified by the selector block, and all of the
    corresponding volume and price data.  You can delete everything, or
    just delete one of the history files.  A deleted catalog entry can-
    not be restored (you will have to re-enter it).  Deleted history
    files cannot be restored (unless you have an "un-erase" program).

E = data ENTRY - this will display the Historical Data Entry screen and
    price history information for the selected security.  It can also be
    used to process stock splits and fund distributions, and to set mov-
    ing average periods.  See Chapters 16 and 17 for more information.





DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                      PAGE 9 OF 10

G = GRAPHICS - this will draw a graph for the selected security.  When
    the graph appears, you can press the alphabetic "O" key to select
    graphics options.  See Chapters 18 and 19.

H = HELP - this displays the user manual chapter you are reading now.

T = TAG the selected security for use as a reference for relative
    strength analysis.  Only one security can be "tagged" - when you
    tag the selected security any previous tag is automatically removed.
    This key is a "toggle" - pressing T alternately turns the TAG func-
    tion on and off.  The currently "tagged" security (if any) is iden-
    tified at the bottom of the screen, and will remain so until it is
    changed again with the TAG function.

    Normally the "tagged" security would be a composite index, such as
    the S & P 500 or the Dow Jones 30 Industrials.  You would then want
    to compare the performance of your stock or fund (the selected
    security) with that of the index.



DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCK SELECT SCREEN                     PAGE 10 OF 10

    To plot Relative Strength for the selected security (which should
    not be the same as the "tagged" security), press G.  If a bar graph
    appears, press the alphabetic "O" key, type R, and press G again.

    HELPFUL HINT:  If you are NOT using the Relative Strength feature,
    turn OFF the TAG feature by pressing the Tab key once or twice.
    This will speed up graphics display, because the program won't have
    to load data for the tagged security.

X or Esc = EXIT to the Master Menu.  Any data you may have typed in is
    saved to disk automatically.
