Investment Guide Help Contents
Investment Guide version 2.0 Help

Table Of Contents

Using Investment Guide

What is the Investment Guide?

Investment Guide Tracking Capabilities

Using Portfolios

Using Positions

All About Transactions


What is the invement guide
What is the Investment Guide?

The Investment Guide educates users on the major investment elements used by everyday stockbrokers.  Investment elements covered by the Investment Guide are:

-	Call Options

-	Put Options

-	Stocks

-	Mutual Funds

-	Short Stock

For more details about the above investment elements read the Information Feature available in the strategy menu item.


Call Option
Call Options

A call option gives the invester the right to buy stock at a particular price for a preset amount of time, regardless of the current market value of the stock.  In a call option transaction there are two major parties.  One is the purchaser and the other is the writer.  The writer guarantees the stock at a price to the purchaser.  In return the purchaser gives the writer a preset amount of cash.  The guaranteed price is called the strike price or the exercise price.  The preset amount of cash is called the premium.


Put Option
Put Options

A put option gives the invester the right to sell stock at a particular price for a preset amount of time, regardless of the current market value of the stock.  In a put option transaction there are two major parties.  One is the purchaser and the other is the writer.  The writer guarantees to buy the stock at the price from the purchaser.  In return the purchaser gives the writer a preset amount of cash.


Stocks

An investor may own a portion of a company by purchasing shares of stock.  The investor purchases the shares through a stockbroker.  The stockbroker purchases the stock at a preset amount of money per share in a stock market.  There are many stock markets in the United States.  The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is an example of a stock market.


Mutual Funds

Sometimes investors may not have the expertise to invest in seperate stocks.  As a result, investors may give their money to a Mutual Fund Manager.  The manager will invest the money for the investor.  The investor purchases shares of a mutual fund much like stock in a company.  Every Mutual Fund has a prospectus which contains the mutual fund's investment principles and concentration.  Different managers like to invest differently.  It's important for every investor to study a mutual fund before they invest in them.  The risk involved varies from mutual fund to mutual fund.


Short Stock

An investor may think a company will decline over the next couple of years.  As a result, the investor doesn't want to own a piece of the company.  Instead, an investor may want to bet that the stock price will decline over the next couple of years.  An investor can do this by selling the stock short.  An investor borrows the stock from another investor, and immediately sells the stock at the current stock price.  Eventually, the investor will have to return the stock back to the original owner.  Usually there is a 1% fee for the right to borrow the stock.  Furthermore, the original owner may close the stock position at any time.  Investors should look into purchasing put options instead of shortting a stock.  See the  Information Feature of the tool for more information.


Information Feature

The Investment Guide's information feature educates the user about investments through four screens.  The four screens are the Description, Example, Risk Breakdown, and Advantages & Disadvantages.  The Description screen will give general definitions and information about an investment.  The Example screen will give acouple examples on how to use an investment tool.  The Risk Breakdown screen lists the profit potential, loss potential, margin requirements, and the stock price breakeven point.  Lastly, the Advantages & Disadvantages screen lists the pros and cons of the investment tool.  Use these screens to get an understandng of the major investments used in everyday life.

Hit the Strategies Menu item.  The list of strategies available appear.

Press the desired strategy you wish to learn about.  The Information and Template menu items appear.

Select the Information menu item.  The Information Dialog appears.

The information dialog contains three buttons. The first two buttons switch between the four screens described above.  The third button kills the information dialog box.


Tracking Capabilities
Investment Guide Tracking Capabilities

The Investment Guide is capable of keeping track of call options, put options, stocks, mutual funds, and short stock investment elements.   The investor keeps track of investments through portfolios.  Every portfolio has a list of positions.  Each position has many investments, or transactions.

The tracking feature:

-	provides a learning tool to understand the different types of investments.

-	allows investors to speculate about stocks without putting up any money.

-	allows the investor to have their investments filled away to review at a later

date.  Furthermore, the investment profitability, and return may be calculated.


Using Portfolios

A portfolio contains the investment history of a single investor.  The history is defined by a series of transactions, which are stored in positions.  A The entire portfolio is stored in a single file.  Furthermore, only one portfolio may be active at anytime.  Lastly, the Investment Guide is capable of supporting as many portfolios as your hard drive can support.

Below are a set of directions to operate on portfolios:

Hit the File-New menu item to create a new portfolio.

Hit the File-Open menu item to open an existing portfolio.

Hit the File-Save menu item to save the current portfolio.

Hit the File-SaveAs menu item to save the current portfolio to a different filename.

Hit the File-Delete menu item to delete a portfolio.

Hit the View-Portfolio menu item to view the positions in a portfolio.

Hit the View-Position menu item to view a specific position in a portfolio.


Using Positions

A position contains a list of transactions related to a logical stance.

A logical stance may be:

- a single company or mutual fund like company ABC.

- a collection of related companies like Technology Stocks, or Health Stocks.

For instance, I ama very bullish on company ABC.  I create a position called ABC and purchase 100 shares of common stock.  The stock purchase transaction is stored under the ABC position.  After 2 years I decide the company is about to go downhill.  Therefore, I sell the 100 shares of common stock in position ABC.  As you can see, the position contains my investment history for stock ABC.  By keeping positions localized to a single company or mutual fund, it will be easier to follow your overall stance on a company.

Below are a set of directions to operate on positions:

Directions to add a position:

Hit the View-Report Position menu item.  A list of the available positions appears.

Hit the "New Position" button, and enter the position name into the dialog box.

Directions to delete a position:

Hit the View-Report Portfolio menu item.  A multi-column table appears

containing the positions, and the current overall profit/loss status.

Select the position to delete and press the "Delete Position" button.

Directions to view a position:

Hit the View-Report Porfolio menu item.

Select the position to view and press the "View Position" button.

  	...or ...

Hit the View-Report Position menu item.

Select the position to view and press the OK  button.


All About Transactions

Transactions are the smallest investment element.  For instance, an option purchase, an option written, a stock purchase, a mutual fund purchase, and a short stock purchase are all transactions.  Also, the Investment Guide allows investors to sell these transactions.  As a result, other transactions are options sold, option written sold, stock sold, mutual fund sold, and short stock sold.  Lastly, the investor may receive a cash dividend or receive reinvested dividends from owning stocks or mutual funds.  The cash dividend and reinvested shares are transactions.

A transaction may be entered in through two methods:

-	Strategy Templates

-	Acted Transactions Templates


Templates
Strategy Templates

Strategy Templates are easy to enter forms for transactions.  The user enters in the appropriate data for a transaction in the template.  The data required depends upon the transaction.  The necessary data is highlighted in green on every template.

Call option purchasing, call option writing, put option purchasing, put option writing, stock purchase, mutual fund purchase, and short stock purchasing may be done through Strategy Templates.

First, hit the Strategies menu item.  The available strategies appear in a menu.

Second,  hit the desired transaction.  Another menu appears with the Information and Template items.

Lastly, select the Template item.  The template will pop up in a dialog.

After entering in the data, the maximum profit, maximum loss, breakeven point, and the required capital are automatically calculated.  Use this information to get an understanding of the risk and reward of the transaction.

Every template allows the investor to add the entered transaction to a position, or display a breakdown of the investment through buttons on the template.  The breakdown feature displays a table of the profit or loss, and percente return for share prices up to $200.  Hit the "Breakdown" button to display the table.

Hit the "Add to Position" button to save the transaction.  The position dialog box will appear.  Select the desired position the transaction is to be stored under, and hit the OK button.  You may enter in a new position at this point by clicking the "New Position" button.


Acted Transactions
Acted Transaction Templates

The difference between Strategy Templates and Acted Transaction Templates is that the acted transactions are a result of an event occuring from a transaction created through the strategy templates.  For instance, an investor owns 5 shares of stock in a company ABC.  At some point in time, the investor will sell the 5 shares.  The stock sold transaction occurs because of the original strategy template transaction.

Stock shares sold, mutual fund shares sold, short stock shares sold, reinvested dividend shares, dividend payout, option sold, and written option acted are all entered thru Acted Transaction Templates.

First, hit the View menu item.  The Report Portfolio and Report Position

appear in a pop up menu.

Second, select the Report Position menu item.  A position list appears.

Select the desired position.  The transaction list dialog pos up for that position

Highlight the Strategy Transaction you wish to act on.

Hit the "Act On Transaction" Button in the dialog box.  Another dialog will

appear.  This dialog box contains the available Action Transactions.

Click on the desired Action Transaction and hit the OK button.

The template for that transaction will appear.

All Action Templates require data to be entered into the green highlighted fields.  The data to be entered depends upon the type of transaction.  Press the OK button when you have completed entering in the transaction information.