MSP Share Analysis Software

How does it work?

Each entry in the Watch List can represent a parcel of shares you own. Enter the date and the price at which you acquired them and MSP will show you the average annual return on the parcel. If you don't require that level of detail, MSP can roll them up so they look like a single parcel.

Each day you will download End of Day prices from the internet and import these into MSP. By using the various views and graphs available you will gain a feel for how those shares are performing.

The Views

Columns for the current day include the  dollar value change, the percentage change, the close open, high and low prices, the volume traded and the value traded. The share's highest and lowest prices for the last year are also shown as well as the number of shares you hold, their total value at the end of the day and the day's change in your portfolio

The number of days for the change calculation can be set to any value. e. g. if you wanted to see by how much your shares had risen (or fallen) over the past week, you would enter 7 days as the Days Change value.

View Market Gain compares the value of your shares at the end of day to

• the book value (the price at which you bought them) to show the Total Market Gain and the average annual gain.,

• the value at the start of the financial year to show the gain in the current Financial Year

• the value 1 year ago to give the Rolling 12 Months gain.

As with the Watch List View you can have as many watch lists open at the one time as you like.

View Trading Ranges shows where shares currently stand compared with their 12 month trading range (the difference between their 12 month high and low prices). It is preconfigured with filters for shares trading in  the bottom and top 10%, 25% and 50% of their ranges.  It does not use a watch list.

Columns show the exact trading range percentage as well as the per cent above the 12 month low and the per cent below the 12 month high. The actual high and low and the respective dates are also shown together with the current day's closing price, volume, value  and dollar value and percentage changes.

View Announcements shows a list of company announcements released to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). These can be filtered by Share Code, Date or market sensitivity.

Daily Share Prices  gives a bare bones list of all listed shares similar to that in a daily newspaper. with the exception that it can be sorted by any column and includes a find facility.

Share Price History shows the complete price history for one share - a sort of inverse to Daily Share Prices which shows all shares for one day, this shows all days for one share.

Share Price Details shows for one stock, the maximum and minimum prices, the number of days since each price was achieved and the percentage change required for the share to again achieve that price. If this view is invoked from a watch list based view then it will also show the value of your holding at those prices and the profit.

View Real Time Prices allows you to do just that. It is designed for use with CommSec (Commonwealth Securities) and requires you to have an account with CommSec. You must logon to CommSec using MSP's built in browser  and MSP will download and import your CommSec watch list at predefined intervals. This facility can also be used with Yahoo!'s 20 minute delay share prices.

You can monitor in the Real Time Prices window or any of the other MSP views. You can refresh the view manually at any time by clicking the refresh button or use the automatic refresh.

The Graphs

The dates can be typed in or selected from a calendar by double clicking either date text box They can then be saved to avoid re-entering them each time .

The Share Price and Volume graph shows  the daily closing price and the volume sold of the selected share code for the specified period with the share price on the left axis and the volume on the right axis.

The Candlestick Share Price and Volume graph shows the daily opening closing and high and low values for the selected share code for the requested period. If the share price closed lower than it opened, then the body of the candlestick is red.  If it closed higher than it opened, the body is green.

Comparison graphs can compare two shares, two Watch Lists or a share against a Watch List. The left axis shows the price of one share or watch list and the right, the price of the other. The graph lines are colour matched to the prices.

The Managers

The Share Price Manager controls the downloading, importing and deletion of share prices.  Multiple files can be imported at once by placing them all in the same folder and multiple days can also be deleted if you decide the database is carrying too much data.

The Share Code Manager controls the downloading and importation of Share Codes together with their full names. The codes are downloaded from the Australian Stock Exchange. MSP also has an Extra Code List for codes which have dropped off the official list but which are still relevant to your research.

The Watch List Manager allows you to create an unlimited number of watch lists and add share codes, the number of shares held and the book value of the shares.

The Announcement Manager allows you to download company announcements directly from the Australasian Stock Exchange (ASX). You can choose to download Announcements for either the current or previous business day, the last week, the last month, the last month, the last three months or the last six months. You can also limit the downloads by share code or to include only those in your watch lists.