November 9, 1998
REVIEWED BY THERESA W. CAREY
Edited by Randall W. Forsyth
Back in 1995, Intuit launched a clever add-on to its popular personal-finance program, Quicken, called Investor Insight. Working with the user's portfolio files, Investor Insight would log on to an online service, an innovation at the time, update prices and charts, and download news. Last summer, however, Intuit announced that, because of dwindling usage, it would discontinue the service. Users of Investor Insight instead should get the information they needed from Quicken.com, the Web site devoted to personal-finance issues, Intuit advised.
Judging by the E-mails that stuffed the Electronic Investor mailbox, many of our readers are among that supposedly dwindling user base, and are quite upset about Investor Insight's demise. Few are accepting the features of Quicken.com or the purchase of Quicken Deluxe 99 as a suitable compromise, and even months after Investor Insight's funeral are still asking us for alternatives.
Unfortunately, we didn't find anything that reads Investor Insight files, would facilitate the switch to a new program, and provides the desired functionality at a similar price. Among the Investor Insight features difficult to duplicate are the ability to load the five-year stock history database into the portfolio manager, giving long-term investors a long-range view of performance.
In contrast, Quicken.com substitutes five days of history, which isn't anywhere near comparable. Investors with complex portfolios containing many issues also will have to break those portfolios up into subsets containing no more than 50 ticker symbols each. Gains and losses can't yet be calculated at Quicken.com, though Intuit plans to add that capability at some point. Some users were troubled by possible security issues; Investor Insight stored the portfolio information on the user's computer, and just went online to get data. Quicken.com stores the portfolio on its server, and some users don't like that.
A recent Electronic Investor column ["Keep on Trackin'," August 17) reviewed Web-based portfolio trackers, but some readers say they don't want to have their investment analysis cluttered up with ad banners. While searching for alternatives, we ran across a winning package that combines the data-gathering possibilities of the Web with a downloadable program that crunches numbers, scans through extensive databases for stocks that fit your criteria, and creates charts that you can analyze with technical indicator overlays which you can E-mail to your friends.
IQ Chart, a Java-based combination of technical analysis and portfolio tracking, costs a lot more than Investor Insight, but might appeal to those still searching for an alternative. |
IQC Corp. has introduced IQ Chart, a Java-based combination of technical analysis and portfolio tracking that costs a lot more than Investor Insight ($24.95 per month for delayed quotes, plus exchange fees of $12.50 per month for real-time quotes) but might appeal to those still searching for an alternative. Notably missing in IQ Chart is notification of news about a particular issue, but that's more than made up for by its stock-scanning capabilities. IQ Chart lets you search through its universe of stock issues (over 10,000 ticker symbols available) on any combination of fundamental and technical criteria, price criteria, volume changes, and industry sector.
A feature I've yet to spot in any other program is what's dubbed the Candlestick scan, which allows you to specify a specific pattern in the search. You can develop templates to run daily or weekly. Double-clicking on a ticker symbol in the Results list brings up the issue's price/volume chart, to which you can add your choice of indicators or indexes. One indicator, the IQC Zone, displays color-coded bullish and bearish signals, and is based on a proprietary algorithm back-tested over 30 years of data. You can set up charts to display with updates ranging in frequency from every five minutes to monthly.
| Scorecard | |
| IQ Chart | |
| Overall rating: *** | |
| Rating | |
| Ease of Use | 4 |
| Depth of Features | 3 |
| Connectivity/Updates | 5 |
| Customizability | 2 |
| Overall Value | 3 |
| Total Score | 17 |
We give IQ Chart three stars out of a possible four. Starting up IQ Chart is remarkably easy, especially in light of the difficulties we've experienced setting up programs that are much more expensive. Download the 3-megabyte program from IQC's Web site to your Windows 95 or 98 computer, double click on the Install button, and that's about it. IQ Chart locates your Web browser, so you don't have to muck around figuring out where your modem is, or what phone number to call.
Tweaking the parameters of your favorite indicators can be done easily from the Utilities menu. IQ Chart displays a "hot list" on the left side of the screen, which you can customize as desired. Double-clicking on a hot-list entry brings up its chart.
On the downside, as noted previously, there are no links to news articles about a particular issue. Nor can you customize the chart display; to paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any background color you'd like, as long as it's black, gray or white. The line colors can't be changed at all. The portfolio tracker is pretty simple in its current incarnation and would benefit from being combined with a program such as Mantic Software's Reeally! (Electronic Investor, June 8).
IQ Chart doesn't allow the user to chart total performance of the portfolio either, but you do get a nice analysis package for the price others charge for the data alone. IQ Chart runs faster than MetaStock for Java on our test machine, and has a more comprehensive set of features. For the price, it's a good place to start if you're interested in checking out technical analysis. If you don't like it, you can just discontinue your subscription; you're not stuck with a program you paid hundreds of dollars for. Nor do you have to deal with a stack of CDs of out-of-date data.
The company's Web site (www.iqc.com3) is also full of charting capabilities and information about technical analysis. Free registration gets you access to the Web site, and it's well worth a stop on your online electronic path.
News and updates: Merrill Lynch, which recently decried the online trading phenomenon, announced that its research will be available on the Web for a four-month trial period at askmerrill.com4. The main page features a welcome message from Launny Steffens, Merrill's vice chairman, who decried online trading as a form of gambling a couple of months ago ... Merrill's own online trading capabilities, announced long ago but now expected by the first of the year, will come with a hefty price tag: the same full-service commissions you'd pay if you traded through a live broker ... Merrill also now is the main outside financial info provider to MoneyCentral, Microsoft's personal-finance site (www.moneycentral.msn.com5) ... Hoping for some profits following Japan's Big Bang, Charles Schwab has hooked up with Sony Corp. to provide discount brokerage services in Asia. Schwab also plans to allow Japanese investors to trade online, which would be a major innovation in this tradition-bound industry ... How's your financial plan shaping up? Take the test offered at www.planningpaysoff.org6, which is sponsored by the International Association for Financial Planning. Given that sponsorship, it's no surprise that the result of most of the tests is advice to hire a financial planner, but there are some other useful educational tools on the site.
Printing, distribution, and use of this material is governed by your Subscription Agreement and copyright laws.
For information about subscribing, go to http://wsj.com