Main Window

From here, you can access everything that you need. You can see a list of stocks and select one. Various options are shown on the right-click menu. For example, you can choose to show the chart.

The pastel colours serve a purpose; the three geographical areas are identified by a colour, for example, green for UK stocks, blue for US stocks, and orange for European stocks. The darker the shade, the larger the company.

Data-Capture

Data sources are held here and updated from time-to-time in priority (oldest first). You can decide how often to capture data. For example, you might decide to visit one data source every 5 minutes — and another every 25 minutes.

You can get data from Teletext and the Internet, and everything can be configured to your taste and your PC's settings. This means StockWave™ can accommodate both the power user and the not-very-powerful-at-all user. The point of this is to shorten the gap between the serious almost-professional investor or trader — and the ordinary-ish Joe.

It's worth pointing out that you can get data from different types of sources, for different stocks, which can be easily tailored to your needs, simply by casting a wide net. It's also possible use an existing subscription.

Teletext

StockWave™ can use the Teletext application that comes with Hauppauge WinTV cards.

Teletext is a great way to get data — and is often overlooked. If you've got a low-specification PC, or would be a casual user, this feature is ideal for you. It's free!

Charting

The chart is at the centre of StockWave™ — looking at the share price is your main activity. You may zoom in and out, select data for analysis, and view the analysis that you've done.

Chart with integrated News Viewing

You can also see news events as they relate to share prices, and by moving the cursor over the chart, see when a news event happened.

You can get a feel for what affects prices — some things do, some don't.

Basic Analysis Tools

From the chart, you can access various analytical tools. The screenshot shows the data that has been selected for analysis; a histogram showing the distribution of price movements; a multi chart showing the stock plotted against another; and a scatter chart showing how movements are related to movements in another stock.

Advanced Filtering

Using advanced filtering, you can apply signal processing techniques to your data.

The aim is to separate the underlying trend from the noise.

Probabilistic Prediction

Ideally, you want to know where a share price will go in the future. Unfortunately, predictions of this kind are pretty much impossible, given the nature of share prices.

What is possible, however, is calculating probabilities (or 'true odds') of where the price is likely to go. The technique used is called 'Monte Carlo simulation,' and its output is shown on the chart.

The hotter regions show where the share price is more likely to go. And, once you know the true odds, you can create a profitable trading strategy.

The second screenshot shows a Monte Carlo simulation that has just started. You can see the paths of the individual random walks. The probabilistic prediction overlay has contours showing the probability (in percent) that the price will be, within the boundaries on a given day.

Task Processor

Several types of Monte Carlo simulation are available — some of which are very processor-hungry. To make the application usable during the number crunching, all heavy work is carried out in background threads and held in the task processor.

The progress of each job is shown, as well as the likely finish time. If a job is taking too long, you can pause or delete it.

Portfolio Window

Each user's trading interests are held in their portfolio. You can select a portfolio using the menu and look at the trades they've made, analyse what they've done, and see the status of any trade alarms. Open positions are updated in real-time if data-capture is running.

Trade Creator

The trade creator is probably the most important tool — certainly it is the most complex, and the crux of the whole idea of StockWave™. It lets you select any piece of analysis, plus any possible trades that you could make, and have the payoff calculated and displayed.

On the payoff graph, red is a loss and green is a profit. Breakeven points are shown by a cross. Trading costs, if known, can be incorporated into the calculation.

The point of this is to help you make profits with high-probability trades.

The trade creator handles different types of trade — CFDs, spread bets and options.

In the second screenshot, there's a 'short strangle' combination trade. This is an options trade which involves selling a Call option and a Put option. Making this trade means that you'll profit if the share price stays between two prices, but make a loss if it finishes outside either edge.

Note that the profit level is capped, while potential losses grow with the distance outside the green region. Red triangles on the payoff graph show danger — and a short strangle has two of these.

When you're ready, you go onto make a trade. It's entered into your portfolio, where you may inspect it. Open trades are shown in red and closed trades in green. Current profit or loss is shown and indicated similarly.

(You aren't actually making a trade here — you need to go to your online broker and make the trade there; StockWave is not yet a trading platform.)

The complex possibilities of the various combinations are overwhelming. To solve this problem, there's the trade searcher.

Automated Trade Searcher

This takes a number of seed trades (for example, from an options table), then exhaustively calculates the payoffs for all combinations, to a given depth (up to a maximum of six).

The best trades are on the left hand side. You can select one of these and view it in the trade creator.

Trade Alarm

When a trade is created, a trade alarm, which knows the 'safe' and 'dangerous' regions for that share price to go to, is set up. Generally speaking, the deeper into a region a price goes, the better / worse you'll fare.

If the price stays in the green, you'll be in profit at closing time. If your trade starts to wander off track, an alarm will be sent to your mobile phone.

It's simple; do some analysis, find the trades with the best chance of payoff, set the alarm, then make sure the price stays in the green.

News Event Analysis

Most of what makes share prices move as they do is probably already in the share price itself — but not always.

News events are shown alongside the chart to let you see if there's anything that may be having a special effect. This is a useful visual check. However, StockWave™ goes further by offering definite quantitative assessment of the effects of news events on the price.

The scatter chart lets you take a sample of news events and see what the actual price response was; the right hand side shows the price response and the left hand side shows a graph of the expectation.

Again, red and green are used to show 'good' and 'bad.' News events are shown as crosses. When you move the cursor over them, you get a text display of what it actually was.

Market Summary

The market summary shows the biggest share price movements — up or down — plus the day's headlines.

Clicking on a headline lets you browse the original data source.

Web Agent

Create your own program to dig deep for information about a company's prospects and operations.

Most publicly-traded companies are large, complex beasts with a very great deal going on inside them.

If you want to think about fundamentals, then simply looking at the company report is not enough — you've got to look deeper to gather and evaluate information from a variety of sources. This is called the 'scuttlebutt approach to investing.'

System Sentinel

StockWave™ can easily use-up whatever resources your PC has � and can do a lot of thing simultaneously; the sentinel is a centralised monitoring facility that will help you get the best out of the machine you've got.

The system sentinel lets you check system loading, recent activities, and also any error messages, for example, with a data source that's not responding.

Local Help

There are full text search facilities for the StockWave™ help files and its news archives.

Import Historical Price Data

Get end-of-day price data from any free Internet data sources.

Options Strategy Browser

See payoff profiles for 40 options strategies.