Power Tools for Sophisticated Investors

Reeally! and Captool crunch numbers that Quicken and Money can't

By Theresa W. Carey

Edited by Randall W. Forsyth

Athough personal-finance programs like Quicken and Money have beefed up their portfolio-management capabilities in the last two years, power investors still find these soup-to-nuts personal-finance programs fall a bit short of their needs or wants. For investments beyond the usual universe of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, their accounting is not up to the demands of super sophisticates. Nor is their in-depth reporting, forecasting and analysis.

High-end, sophisticated investors have asked me on occasion how to tweak Quicken or Money into accounting for multiple currencies, margin reserves, and options. Sometimes there's just no simple way to do it. And to be sure, these programs were designed for more typical family finances. So The Electronic Investor went on a hunt for tools to calculate internal rate of return, long-range forecasts, and ways to manage gracefully more than half a dozen portfolios. We also wanted programs that allow data updates via the Internet.

We came up with two powerful programs, Mantic Software's Reeally!, and Captool Individual Investor for Windows. (We also took a look at LiveWire by CableSoft, but decided not to include it in this column because it requires a satellite feed for the data.) Unlike programs usually reviewed in this column, both Reeally! and Captool will save you a trip to the store. You can download full demonstration versions of the software from the publishers' Web sites, and test them for a limited time. You'll get the full documentation and a code that takes the program out of demo mode when you pay. This method of distributing software also allows the publishers to provide updates and fix bugs quickly. And both programs also permit online updates of data.

Mantic Software, a new software publisher based in Colorado, offers Reeally! as a tool to help investors improve the overall performance of their portfolios in a unique way. One problem faced by many investors (notably the Beardstown Ladies) is figuring out portfolio performance when additional investments are made over time, such as monthly deposits to a 401(k) program or dollar-cost-averaging strategies in mutual-fund investments. Reeally! is designed to track, measure and compare investments, translating performance of diverse holdings into a true rate of return. The program lets you slice and dice your investments in a wide variety of ways. As long as you keep up with the data entry side, Reeally! can guide you through different takes on calculating how your investments are doing.

The initial data entry can take a few hours or more, depending on the complexity of your finances. To get the full power of Reeally!'s calculations, you also have to enter all your transactions for as many years as you want included in the graphs and tables. One feature that would be most welcome in a future release of Reeally! is the ability to read either Quicken files or other files that the user might already have on hand. (Reeally! since has posted an updated version on its Web site that can import data; it was too late for us to test, however.)

Reeally! provides unique tracking of portfolio returns ...

Reeally! has three main functional areas: the Universe window, where you set up accounts and assets in your portfolio; the Portfolio window, where you enter transactions in a spreadsheet-like screen, and the Returns window, where you produce graphs, tables and comparisons of investment performance. Data entry screens are easy to read and well-designed, walking you smoothly through the (usually very tedious) process of getting the information into the computer.

Specifying which assets are included in a performance report is done with data filters. Setting up a filter can be as simple as telling Reeally! to include only mutual-fund transactions. It also can get much more complex as you specify date ranges, types of transactions, and types of assets. You can easily compare different asset types, accounts, or date ranges. The manual is clearly written and provides not only a description of the program's features, but also a good primer on investment management.

Reeally!'s performance calculations are based on what the author calls a true rate of return. This figure takes into account irregular flows of cash into and out of a particular asset, and is expressed as an annualized rate that simplifies comparisons. Graphs and calculations are based on asset-price files; the more often those files are updated, the more meaningful the graphs.

Reeally! can track short positions, margin reserves, option trades, futures contracts, bonds (in the Professional version), and fixed assets. Updating price files can be done manually or using Mantic's free add-on, DataFeed, available from the Web site. For complex portfolio tracking, Reeally! is definitely worth downloading and checking out. The full version costs $150 ($525 for the professional version), and the publishers are very open to customer requests for additional features.

Captool Individual Investor for Windows also is a very flexible program in terms of the types of investments it can handle: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, certificates of deposit, options, commodities, GNMAs, annuities, real estate, zero-coupon bonds, partnerships, and others. This is a major upgrade from the DOS version, which has been on the market for many years. It calculates a return on investment based on internal rate of return, and lets you compare your investment performance against various market indexes. Captool also calculates such statistical measures as alpha, beta, standard deviation and correlations, along with tax-lot assignments.

... while Captool takes a more traditional approach.

The screens look like spreadsheets, and don't have all the niceties of Reeally!'s layouts. Unlike Reeally!, however, Captool does let you compare portfolio performance to the overall market, and also keeps track of estimated taxes based on tax-rate tables that can be customized for each portfolio. Data updates require either a CompuServe, Dow Jones or Dial/Data account, or you can also prepare an ASCII (plain text) file to import into the program from Web-based sources such as Quote.com (http://www.quotes.com/). Captool's analysis features include more of standard financial measures: relative strength and financial ratios for stocks, yield to maturity and duration for bonds. Also $249, Captool Individual Investor is a flexible, though not entirely user-friendly, way to examine your portfolio using standard methods of analysis. Reeally!'s true rate of return figure takes some getting used to, but makes a lot of sense once you convince yourself of its accuracy. Reeally! also would benefit from providing some of the classic tools available in Captool, such as comparisons to market indexes and statistical measures of risk.

Both are worth the time it would take to download the demos and test against your portfolio. The distribution method for these programs mark a real departure for power investors: Try before you buy, and ask the publisher lots of questions before you pay.

SEND COMMENTS on the Electronic Investor to hgold@online.barrons.com.