Shares
Cottage Computing
1987

Label: Cottage, 1 Elm Cottage, Randalls Hill, Lytchett, Poole Dorset
Price: £7.50
Memory: 48K
Reviewer: Mike Wright

Shares from Cottage Computing is a database of monthly share prices for the 48K with Microdrive. The database consists of a number of files on three cartridges each containing information on companies in industry groupings.

Shares 1 covers Banks, Beers, Building, Chemicals, Drapery, Engineering, Food, Hotels, Insurances, Leisure, Motors and Newspapers; Shares 2 covers Electricals, industrials and Property while Shares 3 covers the remaining sectors.

On loading an automatic catalogue produces a list of data files that can be loaded. The file names are arranged with the number of companies on the file in the first three characters followed by the sector.

Shares uses the last twelve month's prices to prepare a statistical break-down of performance. To get the best from it you'll have to update all the prices each month, done by entering the number of the month followed by the latest prices for all the companies on the file. Once the prices are entered you get a final chance to check them all and re-enter them all if one is wrong. Then the program goes to work. The time for a monthly up-date of all the prices on a cartridge is estimated at somewhere over three hours. If this sounds like hard work Cottage Computing provides it's own update service for £2.50 per cartridge per month.

The information which the program extracts is limited to the latest share price for all companies on file and breaking out from all its data those firms whose latest price is greater then or less than it was twelve months ago. A list of companies where there has been no monthly share price drop can also be produced. This comparison is based on three month moving-average figures and it's also the only option where the data for the whole cartridge can be extracted at one go. For individual companies a histogram of the twelve month's data highlighting the latest, highest and lowest prices and the percentage change for the year can be drawn. A graph of the moving average price with the latest price superimposed completes the output.

Shares' attempt to cover an entire market has unfortunately been made at the expense of features such as details of holdings, that could have been included.

As a result the package falls between two stools.

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REVIEW BY: Mike Wright

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