Conference nyoss1::market_investing

    
    the IBMPC notes conference has an extended discussion of both Quicken
    and Managing Your Money.  There is a short note on WealthBuilder in the
    old INVESTING conference.
    
    I have not tried Quicken or MYM, but the consensus seems to be that
    Quicken is easier to use, particularly Quicken for Windows, but that
    MYM is in a different league...  if all you want to do is manage your
    checkbook, then Quicken is cheaper and easier to use.  If you want to
    manage your portfolio, the rumor-mill has it that MYM wins hands down. 
    (Obviously, not everyone agrees with this statement, and each tool has
    its passionate advocates.)
    
    I have tried WealthBuilder, and wound up returning it.  Not a bad tool,
    really, but kind of hokey in its use of graphics, and limited in
    strange ways.  For example, the only non-taxable portfolio is a
    retirement portfolio.  Huh?  Their asset allocation model is
    graphically pretty, but the information about allocating your funds can
    be derived less expensively by going to the library and getting the
    recommendations of any of a number of advisory services.  And most
    importantly, for me, is how often I planned to use the tool;  once
    you've set up your financial plan (if you haven't already), then
    there's not very much you can really do with it.  If you already have a
    sound financial plan, then its value, IMO, diminishes considerably.
    
    There's a deal on now at Egghead for MYM 8.0 for $89, which is very
    low.  Maybe they have a Windows version waiting in the wings... (?)
    
       /Jim
    
    
    btw, while we're on the subject, what features are you looking for for
    "managing investment portfolios"?  What information do you plan on
    putting in, and what information do you hope to get out?

    As in .1, I too bought Wealthbuilder and have been a bit disappointed. 
    It really looks great but once you get deeper into it, you find some
    limitations.  Reality, INC. tries to strong arm you in getting the
    subscription service at $150? for quarterly updates of 10,000
    securities.  I would rather have "timely" information of the few
    securities that are important to me.
    
    I understand there is a major release planned for Wealthbuilder in the
    next few months.  They are going to offer a dial-up service as well
    as subscription services to get securities information.  I will take a
    good look at it when it becomes available but not holding my breath.
    
    To continue with rumors, Investors Business Daily (competitor of WSJ
    and Barons) is coming out with investment planning and management
    software.  Not sure when.  I think it is ties closely to the way the
    paper is organized.  I will give this one a look as well.
    
    I personnally use Quicken 5.0.  It is cheap, easy to use and it does
    give you some "reasonably" good investment performance reports. 
    However, I would like to get something a bit more sophisticated.
    
    John
    
    P.S.  The AAII publishes a bi-monthly "computerized investing" letter
    and a yearly compliation of all investing software.  Have not seen any
    of these, just know they exist.

     I own Managing Your Money (and don't intend to compare it with
     Quicken).  It does have what seem to me to be a reasonable set of
     Portfolio functionality--let's you track your investments, knows
     about IRAs, has the ability to link checking and investment
     accounts, and more (I'm not a sophisticated investor at this point,
     so I won't give opinions on the features).
     
     MYM also has two other features which seem useful.  The new one is
     called "Asset Allocator" which it says is "based on the same 'Nobel
     Prize Winning' strategies as some software costing $170" (Is that
     WealthBuilder?).  Unfortunately, I haven't used this in depth, what
     this does is to ask you a lot of questions about your age, family
     status, income, future needs, etc. and then propose an appropriate
     investment strategy.  Don't know yet what the output looks
     like...Sounds kinda like a portion of what we'd all like investment
     councilors to do for us.  I'll put more in later after I play around
     with it more.
     
     The other feature, which has some additional cost is a link to
     something called Managing the Market, which at the very least will
     call a service via your modem and update all of the current prices
     of your holdings.  I'm sure that it does much more--just don't know.
     
     These features are NEVER discussed in the IBMPC notes conference
     (the point of interest being more focused on CHECKFREE type
     services).  But this stuff is getting to be of more and more
     interest to me.  Can anyone else give more information on this?  If
     not, again, I'll try to write more later (when I'm smarter???).
     
                                       lance

    I am not familiar at all with these software packages but saw the note
    and am curious.  Could someone give a basic summary of what these
    software packages do?
    
    Thanks,
    Bob

I kept getting info from Parsons about their "MoneyPlans" They claim its a 
personal financial advisor. If I recall their glossies correctly it will do 
the following.

	. Develop short-term financial plans
	. Develop long-term financial plans (retirement planning?)
	. Compare and analyze your investments
	. Insurance planning
	. College planning
	. Organization of personal records
	. What if analysis
	.
	.
	.

All for the introductry price of $29.00 and a 30 day money back guarantee. Don't
recall their normal retail price. I have not purchased this package but thought 
I would pass on the information. If your interested in their a 30 day free trail
Parsons number is 1(800)223-6925.

     
>                                -< MoneyPlans >-
>
>	. Develop short-term financial plans
>	. Develop long-term financial plans (retirement planning?)
>	. Compare and analyze your investments
>	. Insurance planning
>	. College planning
>	. Organization of personal records
>	. What if analysis
>	.

     Managing Your Money does all of that.  
     
     I looked again at the Managing the Market part.  They say it lists
     at $79, which gets you modem access to Dow Jones information (for as
     little at $0.16/min).  It will go out and update all of your stocks
     (or those you tell it to), log whatever news you are interested
     in, and that sort of thing.  It looks like it creates a file with
     updated prices that Managing Your Money can then read.  They do
     appologize for is lack of sophistication--they term it a plain
     "workhorse" type of program.
     
     The Asset Allocator function contains historical information on 9 or
     10 different types of investments, including risk, average return,
     highest and lowest returns to be expected, and more (this is per
     class, not per stock).  It will extract information elsewhere in the
     program (current investments, insurance, cash, lots more) and take
     you through a Q&A session to fill in the blanks and let you change
     the extracted portion.  You pick up to 5 investment types and it
     will suggest some ways to reach your goals.  It will also allow
     what-if scenarios so you can play with it.  
     
     The results "look" reasonable and match the general rules I know
     (e.g. high risk is better for long term, liquidity affects income).
     
     Again the disclaimer that I am not an investment whiz and have
     little to compare this with.
     
     The more I work/play with MYM, the more interesting features I find.
     For instance, it evaluated my rental house situation (I'm renting my
     home while on assignment) and told me how much money I'm losing
     compared to sale/investment of equity.  It has home trade-up
     evaluation aids, too.
     
                                            lance

    Does MYM interface with Quicken files?
    
    Steve

>
>    Does MYM interface with Quicken files?
>    

     One disappointing feature of MYM is that it does not take much of
     any input at all.  In fact, the Managing the Market information is
     the only that I know of that MYM reads.  I'd love to eventually get
     electronic bank statements and have MYM (or whatever) input that
     data and balance the old checkbook.  The same would go for my
     investment reports.  WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY, just not the incentive
     yet.
     
     MYM will output information.  You can write numerous ASCII reports
     to files, output Lotus123 readable files, and output info for
     various tax packages.  I have not tried many of these (a few reports
     only).
     
     I also don't know what, if anything, Quicken might input.  I have
     never heard of a database converter between Quicken and MYM.  I
     believe that it is an apples and oranges kind of situation.  Most
     information won't match exactly.

                                            lance

The Wall Street Journal had a review of five retirement planning
packages a couple of weeks ago.  The top-rated one was "Retire ASAP".
Has anyone used it?  And/or any experiences with the company, Calypso
Software?

I would like to find a software package that:

	- runs on the VMS
	- is available internally so I can install it freely
	  (i have a 3100 at home)

to help me track my investments.  In particular, the data i'll be entering
is:

	- trans date
	- share price
	- cash investments
	- dividend re-investment
	- selling a position
	- load paid (front-end abd backend)

I have several mutual funds, dec stock, and a couple of bank accounts that
I want to track.  At the end of the month, i'll enter the data, then I'd
like to produce a report showing the value of everything.  it would be nice
to produce graphs on the entire portfolio's value or per-investment.  also,
i'd like to compute monthly RIO (if applicable), etc...

I'm not going to use it for: what-if analysis, etc. just plain old tracking.

suggestions?

fwiw, i'm a software engineer by trade.