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Text File | 1985-10-13 | 12.0 KB | 256 lines

DOCUMENTATION FOR PLTSTKFL.BAS Copyright 1983 BY Michael Csontos 3228 Livonia Center Road Lima, New York 14485 January 4, 1983 INTRODUCTION This program is intended for use in making printer plots of securities (stock, bonds, options, mutual funds) from files created by the program MAKSTKFL.BAS by the above author. It contains printer commands for the EPSON MX-80 printer. The special GRAPHTRACK feature used is SCRIPT (subscript or superscript) for high resolution plots. Medium resoluton plots should work with the IBM version of the printer. Several files which should be on the same disk with this program. They are: PLTSTKFL.DOC which you are now reading PLTSEQFL.DAT a list of files you want plotted automaticly PLTSEQFL.ALL a list of all files to edit to PLTSEQFL.DAT MONEYMKT.INT containing the inerest rate to be used in plots ????????.DJA data file created by MAKSTKFL ????????.NYS " " " " " ????????.OTC " " " " " ????????.OPT " " " " " ????????.MUT " " " " " The program will run without these files, except that of course at least one data file must be present for it to do anything. The plots may be continuous over all of the data in the files or adjusted for the most recent data that will fit on an eleven inch page. Each plot consists of a heading giving the date and time plotted, the type of data (price or volume) and some statistics about the data (average price, lowest low, highest high, percent range). No scale is generated for the plots. Instead the data is referenced to a line based on the average closing price for the security and the daily price is printed with the date on each line (or for every Friday in high resolution). The placement of the date and price is adjusted so that the price plot can take full advantage of the width of the paper. The purpose of this type of plot is to emphasize price movements rather than to show the value of a stock. The presence of the average value baseline with the money market growth plot makes it easy to see when it would have been a good time to have bought or to have sold. PROGRAM OPERATION When the program is run it first checks for the presence of the file MONEYMKT.INT. This file should contain a single number, the interest rate in percent, to be used in all but options plots to show a compartatve growth in the average price of the security over the time plotted. The file may be created or revised in DOS with EDLIN. If the file MONEYMKT.INT is missing the program will ask you to enter an interest rate for use for the current run. If you enter 0 or just press enter, the program will assume a rate of 10% The program next checks for the presence of PLTSEQFL.DAT and PLTSTKFL.DOC. If they are missing, the menu options requiring them are skipped in the displays to follow. MENUS Four menus are produced by the program. The first selects the program function. The second selects the type of plot. The third selects the type of security. And the fourth selects the data to be plotted. The <Esc> key may be pressed at any of these to abort the program. Menus will be skipped if they do not apply to the function selected. FIRST MENU - FUNCTION (1): DOCUMENTATION This appears if the file PLTSTKFL.DOC is present on the active disk. It allows you to read the documentation file without exiting BASIC or reloading the program. (2): SINGLE FILE In this mode the program will ask you to specify a single securities file and then will plot the data for that file, returning to BASIC when the plot is completed. (3): SINGLE TYPE If PLTSEQFL.DAT is present, this mode will ask you to select a type of security and then plot all files listed in PLTSEQFL.DAT for that type of security. (4): ALL FILES All files listed in PLTSEQFL.DAT will be plotted. The securities selection menu will be skipped. SECOND MENU - PLOT Selections (1): and (2): are for a continuous plot. The plot will start at the beginning of the file and run to the end. No provision is made for skipping perforations on fan-fold forms. (I use teletype paper.) If your printer's bit switch is set for "1 inch skip over perf" you may get gaps in your plots. This may also cause trouble in the 11 inch page mode, since this program makes full use of the page. A space of two lines is left between successive plots in this mode. Selections (3): and (4): limit the plot to an eleven inch page. The program determines the number of entries in the data file, then plots the last 80 of them in medium resolution mode, or the last 200 of them in the high resolution mode. In order to obtain this much data per page the spacing between pages is about 1/2 inch. Therefore align fan-fold paper carefully and be sure printer bit switch SW2-4 in the EPSON is off (its normal position). The paper is advanced to the top of the next form at the end of each plot. Selections (1): and (3): use compressed print and 1/8 inch line spacing to produce plots with a resolution of 1/130 and eighty days per page. The date and relevant price or volume data are printed on each line. Selections (2): and (4): use the EPSON's compressed script mode to print 130 points per line on a 1/18 inch line for 200 lines per page. Because of the overlapping of lines, the price or volume data is printed only for Fridays. The script type (superscript or subscript) is randomized for each run using the TIME$ function to equalize wear on the print head and ribbon. . THIRD MENU - SECURITY TYPE Selection of the type of security is necessary for the format of the plot since the data files present different types of information and in different order for various markets. All of the formats are based on listings in The Wall Street Journal. (1): Dow Jones Averages This is for the entries from the tables of 30 INDUSTRIALS, 20 TRANSPORTATION, 15 UTILITIES and 65 STOCKS COMPOSITE AVERAGE data. The data file format is actually the same as for selection (2) but this selection allows for handling the larger volumes and prices in the plot. The data file format is "date",volume,high,low,close. (2): New York Stock Exchange Covers the data for the NYSE-Composite Transactions as well as New York Exchange Bonds and Amex-Composite Tranactions. On each line are plotted the daily low, high, close, average close, and the value that the average would have become since the beginning of the plot at the market interest rate. The space between the low and the high is darkened with "#" symbols and the offset of this bar from the average is filled with "-"'s The data file format is "data",volume,high,low,close. (3): Over the Counter Markets This format covers NASDAQ quotes of the Over-the-Counter Markets. The plot is similar to selection (2): except that there is no closing price. The spread between the bid and asked prices is filled with "#"'s. The data file format is "date",volume,bid,asked,0. (4): Options These files contain data for listed options. It is important for options files that the last two characters of the filename be the strike price of the option if this data is to be used by the program PLTSTKFL. An example is BETHJA35 where the filespec will be BETHJA35.OPT. In plotting options data, PLTSTKFL extracts the last two characters in the filename for use as a baseline in the plot. The plot for options is quite complex. The put and the call prices are scaled independantly to fill the available space and plotted without a baseline. They are bracketed by "#" symbols to make them stand out. The strike price is extracted from the file name and is used as a baseline for relative price comparisons. Two new data points are generated by subtracting the call price from the closing price and by adding the put price to the closing price in the data file. These numbers are listed, with the date, on the left of the plot. The resulting low, strike, close, and high prices are scaled to fit the available space and plotted. The space between the low and the close is filled with "-"'s and between close and high with "+"'s to tie them together. A study of this plot should provide considerable information about the behavior of options. The data file format is "date",0,call,put,close. (5): Mutual Funds This format is the same as for Over-the Counter stocks except the Net Asset Value and Offer Price are plotted, and there is no volume data available. The data file format is "date",0,nav,offer,0 The data file formats above are what you will see if you list the files with DOS [type] or EDLIN. The null (0) entries are used to allow common subroutines to be used for search or conversion of all of the data types. FOURTH MENU - DATA TO BE PLOTTED For most types of files both price and volume data is available. This menu lets you decide which you want plotted. - Printing will start after the last menu selection is made. There is considerable disk activity and calculation with this program. Therefore speed will be considerably improved with any or all of printer buffers, ram memory disk simulation, or a compiled version of this program. DATA FILE GENERATION This program is intended to be used with the program MAKSTKFL.BAS by the same author. However you can create data files with EDLIN or other editor or write a simple high level language yourself. The files are sequential with the folowing format on each line" "date",data-AA,data-BB,data-CC,data-DD The location of the values for each type of file is shown under THIRD MENU above. The date is a string variable in the form used by the BASIC [TIME$] command. The data is fixed point. An EDLIN listing would appear as follows: 1:*"04-07-83",3598,24.5,21.25,23.875 2: "04-08-83",4259,26.25,23.125,25 3: "04-11-83",5983,27.875,25.625,26.625 With this information you may be able to use this program without any other software. MISCELLANEOUS At the time of this writing this program is still in a fairly rough form. Most work is needed in the error recovery routines from disk and printer faults. Hwever since the software only opens files for input, there is little likelyhood of loss of data and the program can always be restarted with <Ctrl>+<Break>. Revisions and companion programs will be made available through the user groups that distribute this program. ---***--- The program PLTSTKFL.BAS and its associated files are made freely available for non-exclusive distribution by the Picture City Personal Computer Programmers' Club and through exchange with other users groups as long as (PC)^3 and the author are fully credited.