Wall Street Quest combines all the features you need to keep track of your investments with only a minimum of effort on your part, and provides an attractive and easy-to-understand interface for displaying charts, data, and information about your securities.
Data File Organization
Quest stores your charts and data together in one file, called a data file. Each data file has three layers, the Chart, Data, and Info layer. By clicking on a tab button you switch between the various layers.
The Chart layer displays one or two charts of your data with trend lines and moving averages overlaid on the data. Price data may be displayed in high-low-close symbols or candlesticks with vertical bars for volume.
The Data layer displays the price and volume history in a scrolling table using either decimal or fractional displays.
The Info layer is a simple text editor where you can type notes about the data or paste in company reports and news articles.
Charting
Charting in Quest is "dynamic" and as easy to comprehend and work with as any Macintosh graphics program. In Quest's charts you are able to navigate freely, zooming-in on specific periods of price history or zooming-out for the big picture. You can also scroll horizontally (through time) while the display automatically scales itself to keep the data points visible in the window.
But simply viewing your data is not enough, you need to have a way to study your data using trendlines, formulas, and moving averages. Quest provides these features with a convenient floating tool palette that lets you choose from a rich variety of tools including free and orthoganal lines, best-fit, and standard deviation ranges. The tool palette also features a magnify tool for the zoom function, and a note tool for attaching sticky notes to significant data points.
Once you have added a trend line (by simply drawing it on the chart) you can simply click-and-drag to resize it or move it to a different location. All trend lines (and groups of trend lines) can be moved this way whereupon they will "snap" to fit their new underlying data.
Technical Analysis
Quest provides easy access to moving averages. Up to two different averages may be displayed at a time, and you have your choice between simple, exponential, weighted, and Bollinger bands.
Quest can perform virtually any type of technical analysis because it uses its own symbolic formula language: QES™ (Quest Equation Syntax). QES has many built-in functions and formulas for the most popular technical analysis equations, but if you can't find a formula you want in Quest's menus, you can construct it yourself using the versatile set of subroutines at your disposal. You may then save your formulas to use again whenever you like. Up to two formula curves may be displayed at once in addition to the main data chart.
Another powerful feature of QES is the ability to link two data files together, creating relative comparisons between one file and another - even between files of different time periods such as daily/monthly!
Triggers and System Testing
Trading systems are mechanical buy and sell decisions followed over time. In Quest you may set separate entry and exit criteria for both long and short positions. You can then test your system against historical data to determine the amount of profit or loss which would have resulted from using it.
Portfolio Management & Automated Downloading
The Portfolio window displays all of your securities in an convenient list. With an option-click of the mouse you can edit information about the security, or with a double-click open the data file itself. The portfolio automatically calculates totals and subtotals of your investments and displays the current status of each file. When you need to update your files with the latest prices a click of the “Get Updates” button takes you online and gathers the latest quotes for you automatically.
Quest can automatically dial and retrieve data from three online services: Dow Jones Market Monitor, Dial/Data, and CompuServe. The portfolio window checks each file for the number of days of quotes required, calls the service, manages the online session, and updates the data files. Use of the Macintosh Communications Toolbox makes Quest compatible with a wide variety of modems, including GeoPort and PowerBook internal modems.
Importing
It is always important for a program to be able to import data from any conceivable source. Quest provides a powerful import capability with its Import Format dialog. Using this dialog you can import tabbed, comma-separated, or fixed width data in any column order. Most numeric and date formats are recognized automatically by Quest.
Please see the How to Import file in the Import Examples folder for more infomation.
New Technologies
Quest incorporates the latest in Macintosh technologies to make your investment tracking easy, including drag & drop editing, balloon help and Apple Guide. Quest is a fat binary and is optimized for the highest speed on both the original Macintosh and the new PowerMac architectures.
One very exciting feature of Quest is its support of AppleScript. Quest is both scriptable and recordable. The program comes with a number of scripts which demonstrate the many things that can be done using scripting such as customized importing and exporting of data formats, batch processing, and links to other scriptable programs such as Microsoft Excel. Quest also maintains a Scripts folder which gives you instant access to your scripts from the convenient Scripts menu.
