The latest release of Stock Rover, V4.2, introduces a variety of improvements, including a major step toward a transaction-based portfolio management system. This blog post reviews what is on offer in the newest version of Stock Rover.
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We are continuing to enhance the help resources on our website. Not only have we increased the amount of information available in our Support pages, a database of answers to real user questions, but we have also added a new search capability to make it easy for users to locate the information they need. You’ll find the search box at the top of all of our support pages, as shown below.
Test it out and see what answers you find!
This is a brand new feature for Premium users. On the right side of the Chart’s toolbar, as pointed out below, you’ll see an item called Shortcuts—this is a menu of your favorite chart configurations that you can apply to whatever ticker is currently displayed in the Chart. Selecting an item from the menu will set up the Chart exactly according to a previous configuration, including its time period and any benchmarks, events, technicals, fundamentals, and price settings in place.
Clicking that item opens up the following menu:
The menu includes a handful of sample shortcuts already, such as candlesticks over a 6-month period and Performance vs. Benchmarks, shown below, which pits a stock in the chart against its sector and industry, as well as a flat-lined S&P 500, over a two year period.
To create a new shortcut, simply set up a chart exactly as you want it, then go to the Shortcuts menu and select ‘Add Shortcut.’ You will be prompted to give your shortcut a name, and it will be added to the list.
To delete or rename existing shortcuts, or re-order the list, select ‘Manage Shortcuts’ from the Shortcuts menu. This opens the following manager:
You cannot edit a shortcut’s settings via the shortcut manager. Instead, just load a shortcut into the Chart, edit its configuration however you wish, and save it as a new shortcut.
Note that certain settings, such as candlesticks and price logarithmic, are applied only when there is just one ticker charted. So if you have multiple tickers charted and your shortcut includes a single-ticker-only setting, that setting will not be applied. Other elements of the shortcut will still be applied.
Our new portfolio manager is the most significant component of this release. In short, it is a more flexible and capable tool than ever before.
The portfolio manager is accessed either through the ‘Modify Portfolio’ or ‘Create Portfolio’ options in the Task Wizard or by right-clicking any portfolio in the Navigation panel and selecting ‘Modify’ or ‘Create.’
You can now import a portfolio CSV file directly into the portfolio manager using the ‘Import’ button, shown below.
Previously, the import function could only be accessed outside of the portfolio manager. This simple but significant change makes it easier than ever to update your portfolios with CSV files downloaded from your brokerage. Importing a CSV file through the portfolio manager automatically creates a new date record with the imported positions. The default date is the current day, but you can change that if the positions are from a different date.
Additionally, you can now update multiple date records within the same dialog session. To do this make sure the ‘Close Window After Update’ box (circled in the screenshot below) is unchecked.
After modifying your holdings for a certain date record, click ‘Update.’ The window remains open, allowing you to switch to different date records. When you are finished with the session, click ‘Done’ to close the window. Previously, it was only possible to update a single date record within one session—users had to close the window and re-open it to update multiple date records.
Note that if you don’t need to modify multiple date records in a single session, you may want to keep the ‘Close Window After Update’ box checked.
Now, for the most critical change to the portfolio manager: the ability to edit individual trades. This offers an alternative to Stock Rover’s position-based management system. The new transaction-based format allows for more accuracy in recording multiple lots and, for many, will be more intuitive to use.
In the screenshot below, the ‘Edit Trades’ option has been selected, which opens up a list of all the trades that make up the portfolio history.
From here you can add any new trades by hitting the ‘Add Trade’ button which allows you to then record any new trades. For example in the image below, I am recording a sale of 10 shares of DLPH on 3/14/14.
If necessary, I can also edit a past trade by clicking on its row. By doing this, I would be changing a trade that I have already recorded as part of this portfolio—this is NOT the way to update total quantities in the portfolio. In other words, you probably won’t want to update existing rows unless there is an error in the record of that trade. Also note that multiple lots traded on the same day will be merged into one summary lot and denoted by an asterisk.
The ‘Edit Cash’ button (pointed out below) allows you to enter new changes to your cash position. You can sort by any of the column headers to find specific trades or view your trading history in different ways. For example, in the following image, my trades are sorted by Date.
Those are the basics of the new portfolio manager. The ‘Edit Positions’ view allows you to see a snapshot of your portfolio on any given date, while the ‘Edit Trades’ view allows you to see a record of the portfolio’s individual trades. You can use either system exclusively, or use the two in tandem, as each one offers its own advantages.
While these developments are an important step forward for our portfolio management facility, they do not represent the end game. We are continuing to develop our portfolio manager to make it as capable and user-friendly as possible. (And, yes, we are still on track for offering brokerage integration later this year!)
Thanks to your feedback, we have added the Altman Z-Score as a new metric. The Altman Z-Score is a credit-strength rating that predicts the likelihood that a company will go bankrupt based on five financial ratios:
A score of 1.8 or below suggests that a company is at risk of going bankrupt. A score of 3.0 or higher means that a company is unlikely to go bankrupt. The Altman Z-Score is available to all users in the screener or as a column in the Table.
Enhancements to our tablet app were also included in this release. They include:
Users who access our tablet app simply by logging into Stock Rover from the browser on their tablet will receive these upgrades immediately. However, iPad users who have downloaded our app from the Apple App Store will have to wait a few days before the update is available in the App Store.
As always, there is no special action you need to take in order to receive V4.2—the new version will be there waiting for you next time you login to Stock Rover. We hope you enjoy these additions and look forward to hearing your feedback.
