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Capital Gainz - Introduction

eZine lover (@eZine)

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Capital Gainz

· 21 Jul 2023

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Capital Gainz is an investment portfolio manager that successfully balances the modest needs of the small investor with the complex requirements of the professional investment manager.

The professional investment manager needs to keep track of portfolio information for multiple clients. Individual securities are globally defined, and available to multiple portfolios from a single pool. A wide range of reports, with flexible options, lets you keep clients up to date. In particular, detail and summary information is available for selected date ranges. Schedule B and Schedule D information is accessible in the format required by those tax forms. The variety of graphics capabilities helps you spot trends quickly.
The individual investor needs quick, no-hassle access to investment information. Price histories of securities are automatically built as you record activity. You can easily access performance information in summary form. Other needs arise with the popularity of dollar-cost averaging strategies with mutual funds and dividend reinvestment plans. Specifically, automating the sale of a number of shares via a particular method, such as first-in/first-out, is immensely useful. Graphics bring the numbers and calculations alive, trimming hours of analysis time.

1.1 What Does Capital Gainz Offer?

Capital Gainz has many features that appeal to the needs of each type of user:

You record purchases, sales, and distributions with easy to understand forms, and select records to change from a scrolling table. Capital Gainz' input forms are easy to understand, and not cluttered with useless information. Also, you can choose a record to change or delete by 'pointing' to it in a scrolling table. You're not forced to enter record numbers or dates to locate a record.
You can easily record the sale of a number of different purchases that occurred over a period. Most programs only allow you to select specific open shares to sell. Thus, selling two years worth of mutual fund shares, assuming monthly purchases and yearly dividend and capital gains distributions, becomes a tedious exercise requiring you to specify 26 different selling actions. Other packages are a little bit better, but still force you to explicitly 'group' the purchases together. With Capital Gainz, you can specify a number of shares to sell and a selling method such as first-in/first-out, and the appropriate open shares are automatically retrieved and displayed for confirmation of the sale. Thus, in the earlier example where you wanted to sell two years worth of accumulated shares, Capital Gainz requires you to enter only a single sell transaction. Of course, Capital Gainz also provides a way to specify individual shares to sell, but again only a single logical transaction is required. To sell specific shares, you select the shares from a table, and then tell Capital Gainz to sell the selected shares.
You can access a variety of selling methods. The IRS gives you several options when disposing of investments. So why do most programs limit you to only one or two? Capital Gainz allows you to sell shares by specific identification, first-in/first-out, last-in/first-out, maximize gains/minimize losses, minimize gains/maximize losses, and average price. All methods use a single, logical transaction. The methods employing maximization/minimization of gains are particularly powerful. You can see the effect of maximizing profits, post the sell order to the broker or investment company responsible, and then commit the sale after receiving share price confirmation.
You can calculate a security's total return. Most programs can show the progress of a security's price, but fail to add back dividends and capital gains distributions to get a true total return figure. Capital Gainz finds the earliest price, latest price, and cumulative reinvested distributions within a range of dates to calculate a true total return figure. This feature is a boon to the investor who seeks both dividends and price appreciation, since these two values fall short when viewed individually. Now this income oriented investor can easily determine if Stock X's appreciation over the last year adequately made up the difference between its 4.5% yield and the current 7% average money fund yield.
You can compare a security's total return to your actual realized performance. Capital Gainz annualizes and combines your current holdings, sales, and distributions of each security to arrive at your actual realized performance. Does your 'dollar-cost' strategy beat the 'buy-and-hold' strategy reflected by the total return figure? Capital Gainz will let you know.
You can specify a range of flexible reporting options. Capital Gainz gives you several levels of detail and summary reports, and the ability to restrict the information to a specific date range. Plus, a variety of other reports, such as portfolio allocation, help you stay on top of your portfolio. Dollar-cost averagers can breathe a sigh of relief with Capital Gainz' tax form Schedule B and D reports. You can send reports to a printer, a DOS file, or the screen.
You can perform powerful 'what-if?' scenarios. After specifying how many shares to sell and the selling method to use, Capital Gainz displays a table of all affected open shares with the associated gain or loss. You are then given the choice of confirming or backing out of the sale. Confirmation results in recording the affected open shares as sold, while choosing not to confirm the sale leaves all files in the same state as before entering the selling information.
You can easily maintain securities' price histories. Buy and sell transactions automatically add entries to the price history. You can also manually add entries, change entries, and delete entries. The price history information presented flags the high and low prices, and gives you a simple average price. In addition, distributions are noted so you can easily tell when a price dip is attributable to a dividend payout. Stock splits are also recorded in the price history.
You can separate out commissions and loads, and determine how you want to factor them into the basis cost. Capital Gainz has a separate entry for commissions when you buy and sell shares. Commissions are always factored into the gain/loss calculation, but you can choose to include or not include them in the actual basis, affecting the calculated percentage gain/loss. You also can print out commissions paid, broken down by broker. When recording a mutual fund purchase or sale, a load calculator is available to determine the load and net asset value based on the entered amount and load percentage.
You can maintain separate portfolios. Capital Gainz lets you maintain up to 999 different portfolios. All portfolio-specific screens and reports show the associated portfolio. Additional utilities let you copy or move security holdings between portfolios.
You can keep a pool of defined securities for populating portfolios. Capital Gainz separates securities into 'local' and 'global' entities. Global securities embody a symbol, a name, a type, and a number of dividend payouts per year. These define different stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. Local securities are specific instances of global securities. Portfolios actually consist of local securities and their associated activity logs. The local securities are linked to the global securities, which in turn each have price histories. So, when you want to add an already defined security to another portfolio, use the global information you've already specified.
You can associate brokers and investment companies with securities. Capital Gainz lets you identify brokers or investment companies for global and local securities.
You can copy securities between portfolios, and even move entire portfolios to diskette. The Capital Gainz Utility Program provides a number of valuable functions for high-level manipulation of data. Probably the most useful of these lets you move securities with no open shares remaining to another portfolio, for archival purposes. This 'inactive' portfolio can be on a diskette, thus returning precious hard disk space.
Use graphs to quickly and easily assess trends and performance. The Capital Gainz Graphics Program uses data you entered in Capital Gainz to generate price graphs, total return area graphs, allocation pie charts, security cost/value bar graphs, and performance pie charts. You can send graphs to your printer or a file, and file output can be in PCX format. Automatic scaling of data relieves you of tricky setup details found in many graphing programs.
You can gauge price trends and analyze total return with graphs. All or a specified range of prices for a security are chained together for the Graphics Program's price graph. Prices are shown on the vertical axis, and dates on the horizontal axis. Average, standard deviation, and best-fit lines are drawn. The price graph even lets you chart two securities at once, so you can compare trends. The first security's price axis is displayed on the left, and the second security's price axis is displayed on the right. Another graph, the total return area graph, breaks down performance into distribution and price components. You won't find anything like this in other programs.
Performance graphs let you grasp the big picture. The Graphics Program's allocation pie charts break your portfolio down by security class (Stock, Stock Fund, etc.), security type (Small Company Stock Fund, Growth Fund, etc.), and security. The security cost/value bar charts show bars representing the cost and current value of each security in your portfolio. And the performance pie charts show ending value, distributions, and selling amount in one pie, and beginning amount, purchase amount, and gain/loss in an equivalent pie, with the gain/loss slice exploded.
You can keep up with the performance of investments, such as 401K plans, that don't provide price information. Many retirement plans that let you direct funds among options such as mutual funds or fixed income vehicles provide statements showing total value, but not prices. Capital Gainz' 'Price From Value' calculator solves the problem by letting you maintain a fabricated price based on the total value. While this is not a real price, it provides a way to measure performance based on additions, increases, and decreases in total holdings.
Built-in Consistency Checker helps you avoid incorrect or stray entries. Duplicate entries, incorrect dates, or mistyped prices are common errors in data entry. Some errors are easy to spot, based on comparisons between Capital Gainz data and broker or mutual fund statements. Others are more difficult, such as a stray date that skews the total return calculation. Capital Gainz Consistency Checker examines all of your data for suspicious values, and reports its findings along with suggested actions to remedy the problems. You can even adjust the tolerance levels.
Generate Schedule B and D-1 reports. Capital Gainz lets you generate Schedule B and Schedule D-1, in a format ready to be copied to your tax forms. Securities classified as IRAs are skipped, and tax- free securities' dividends are treated correctly on Schedule B. You can even generate a file for import into TurboTax. 'Group sales' is a unique feature that automatically groups all purchases involved in a sale into a single short-term and a single long-term entry. This avoids those instances where you're stuck filling out multiple Schedule D-1s after a large sale involving shares accumulated over many small purchases.
On-line context-sensitive help brings up relevant sections of the users manual. When you hit the Help key, the appropriate chapter in the users manual is displayed. From there, you can easily jump around to other topics.

1.2 What Capital Gainz Is Not

Capital Gainz is currently a single user application. It does not include multi-user features such as record-locking.

Capital Gainz does not support stock options. Also, there are no special calculations for bonds, such as yield-to-maturity.

1.3 Getting Started

===>>> There's really no need to read this entire manual before jumping in. Personally, I never read documentation before trying a program. If the program is easy enough to use without it, then I refer to it in the future for more advanced features. I hope Capital Gainz is easy enough to use without painful reading of this long manual.

However, I do strongly encourage you to:

Run the screen show demo/tutorial program described in CGDEMO.DOC. This comprehensive overview of Capital Gainz is invaluable.
If you're still not confident after viewing the demo, follow along with the Quick Tour in Chapter 4.
If you installed the Example Data, you can play with it for awhile in Capital Gainz.
Read through the Questions and Answers in Chapter 5. These cover more than 75% of the user questions we receive.
Read over the README.DOC file for any important, last minute information. After installation, Capital Gainz can be started with the CG.BAT file by typing: CG

1.3.1 Getting Help

===>>> Online help is only a function key away in Capital Gainz. The F1 function key brings up the section in the online documentation most suitable for the current table or form. You can also view help on any topic by bringing up the Help Index from any help screen.

1.4 System Requirements
1.4.1 Processor

Capital Gainz requires an Intel 8086, 80286, 80386, or 80486 based personal computer, or a close compatible. Capital Gainz performs well on 8086 based computers, but you may prefer 80286 or 80386 systems.

1.4.2 Operating System

Capital Gainz will run on MS-DOS or PC-DOS version 3.00 or later. Isolated problems have been reported with versions of DOS prior to version 3.00. See Chapter 24 for information on running Capital Gainz under other environments, such MS Windows 3.0, DESQview, and 4DOS.

1.4.3 Memory

To coexist with a normal set of TSRs, 512KB is a safe minimum amount of free RAM. This generally requires you to have 640KB of installed memory as some amount of memory is consumed by DOS, file buffers, drivers, and TSRs. Although the size of the Capital Gainz executable file CAPGNZ.EXE and the runtime library CLARION.RTL far exceeds 512KB, extensive use of overlays reduces actual runtime RAM requirements. The Graphics Program, CGGRAPH.EXE, and Utility Program, CGUTIL.EXE, also use the runtime library and overlays.

1.4.4 Disk Space

To accomodate large executable files, as well as for performance considerations, Capital Gainz requires a hard disk.

The Capital Gainz executable file is over 600KB. The required runtime library and other miscellaneous files add another 300KB. The Graphics Program, along with font files and the logo screen, is around 500KB, and the Utility Program is nearly 300KB. The online documentation adds close to 700KB, and the demo/tutorial increases the total another 1.2MB. Thus, a full release requires about 3.6MB of disk space, not counting space required for your data. Chapter 23 lists the disk space used by data files and their associated key files. Unless you're a very active investor, 200KB of disk space will hold about 3-4 years of data. This brings the total disk space required for a full release and data to around 3.8MB.

If you need to free up disk space, see Chapter 23. Deleting the non-essential files mentioned in this chapter, such as the documentation files, demo/tutorial, and Utility Program, gives back about 2.2MB of disk space. If you don't want graphics, then deleting the Graphics Program and its files returns another 500KB. Thus, you could get by with as little as 1.1MB for a bare-bones installation, which includes several years worth of data.

1.4.5 Monitor

The main Capital Gainz program will work with any monochrome or CGA/EGA/VGA monitor that can display the IBM extended ASCII character set, which includes the special line drawing characters. No special graphics boards are required. However, you must have Hercules, EGA, or VGA graphics capabilities in order to use the Capital Gainz Graphics Program. The Graphics Program will prompt you to enter your monitor type the first time you run the program.

If some of your screens are difficult to read and you have a color monitor (VGA, EGA, or CGA), try changing the color settings in the User Settings Form. If you don't have a color monitor and have difficulty seeing the screens or highlight bar, enter the following command prior to starting Capital Gainz:

  C:> MODE BW80

     C:> MODE MONO

Capital Gainz was probably getting incorrect information returned about the type of monitor you had, and this command sets your monitor to emulate a monochrome screen. If this fixes your problems, you may want to use a text editor to add this command to CG.BAT.

1.4.6 Printer

Capital Gainz does not require a printer, as you can either send reports to the screen or to ASCII files. A printer is recommended, though. Before printing reports, see if your printer can print the IBM extended ASCII character set. You may need to set the printer's DIP switches for this. Alternatively, you can set the Line Draw Chars value to NO in the User Settings Form. This tells Capital Gainz to use substitutes for the line drawing characters.

Capital Gainz always prints to PRN, which goes to the first printer port. If your printer is connected to a different port, you will need to send reports to ASCII files and print them after exiting from Capital Gainz.

The Capital Gainz Graphics Program can print to the following types of printers: dot matrix printers with Epson graphics, laser and deskjet printers that support HP PCL, and postscript printers. You'll need to tell the Graphics Program your printer type. As expected, using a dot matrix printer results in lower quality graphics output.

1.4.7 System Clock

Since Capital Gainz uses the system date for calculations involving the long term holding period, a battery powered internal system clock is recommended. If a clock is not installed, you should set the system time before running Capital Gainz. The best way to remember to do this is to add the DOS DATE command to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, or to the CG.BAT file.

1.5 Performance

Every effort was made to boost Capital Gainz performance without sacrificing reliability. File buffers and index caches are used at runtime, so the computer's hard disk is strangely quiet while performing some operations based on reading files, such as building activity logs. Chapter 23 includes an in depth discussion of ways to further boost Capital Gainz' performance.

1.6 Terminology

To avoid possible confusion, this section describes the main terminology employed by Capital Gainz.

Amount: Amount is usually qualified, such as 'purchase amount' or 'selling amount'. It refers to the total dollar amount, not including adjustments such as commissions.
Cost: Cost is used infrequently, due to its somewhat ambiguous meaning.
Price: Price is usually qualified, such as 'purchase price' or 'current price'. It refers to the amount paid or received for a single share.
Value: Value refers to the current worth. For example, the 'value' of a mutual fund holding is the current price multiplied by the number of shares owned.

1.6.1 Investment Terms

Activity: This refers to the core operations of share purchases, share sales, and distributions.
Basis: 'Basis', or 'basis amount', refers to the amount of a purchase. Likewise, 'basis price' refers to the purchase price. The term 'basis' is used to reflect the fact that the actual purchase amount or price is not necessarily the same amount or price used to determine gain/loss amounts. When using an averaging method the basis price and amount usually differ from the actual purchase price and amount.
Broker/Investment Company: Broker/Investment Company refers to the individual or company that should be contacted to buy or sell shares of a particular security. An address and phone number are associated with the person or company.
Category Method: A category method is a selling method that uses share price averages, such as the single category average.
Closed Shares: Closed shares are instances of a security that you purchased and subsequently sold. 'Closed' and 'sold' are synonymous.
Commissions: Commissions are charges by broker/investment companies for purchasing or selling securities. Commissions should include mutual fund front end and back end loads.
Discount: Some dividend reinvestment plans give you a discount on shares purchased with reinvested dividends.
Distribution: Distributions are dividends, short term capital gains, and long term capital gains. In addition, miscellaneous fees, such as IRA maintenance fees, are kept as distributions.
Distribution Per Share: Whenever a security distributes funds, like dividends, there are two components. First, there is the actual amount. Second, there is the per share amount, or the amount of the distribution divided by the number of shares owned.
Distribution Type: A distribution type is a specific type of distribution, such as a dividend or short term capital gain distribution.
Fees: Fees are IRA maintenance fees, low share balance fees, or other fees that aren't associated with particular shares. Since they can't be associated with particular shares, fees are not used in most gain/loss calculations. Fees are managed along with distributions.
Global Security: A global security defines a particular stock, bond, or mutual fund. A global security has associated price information, but no actual shares. Local securities are linked to global securities, and have associated holdings of the global security. Thus, Fidelity Magellan is a global security, with a price history, but several portfolios may contain Fidelity Magellan holdings in local securities linked to the global security. (See Local Security.)
Group Sales: Group sales refer to grouping all purchases involved in a sale into a single short-term entry and a single long-term entry on Schedule D.
Load: Mutual funds often charge front end loads on purchases, and/or back end loads on sales. These charges should be treated as commissions.
Local Security: A local security is a specific instance of a global security. A given local security is located in a single portfolio and has associated shares. Thus, while Fidelity Magellan is defined as a global security, you can hold shares of Fidelity Magellan in more than one portfolio. (See Global Security.)
Log: The activity logs refer to the Open Shares, Closed Shares, and Distribution File records.
Open Shares: Open shares are instances of a security that you have purchased but not yet sold. 'Open' and 'Buy' are often used interchangeably when referring to open shares.
Portfolio: A portfolio contains some number of securities and associated open or closed shares. Portfolios group related holdings together.
Price History: Price History refers to a log of date/price, date/distribution, and date/split records, useful for investment analysis.
Realized Gain/Loss: A realized gain or loss occurs when you sell shares. 'Realized' indicates that it can't change.
Return of Principal: Return of principal refers to non-taxable distributions of invested capital. This is usually associated with unit trusts or partnerships.
Security: A security refers to a particular company's stock or bonds, or to a particular mutual fund offered by an investment company. Thus, both IBM stock and the Fidelity Magellan mutual fund are examples of securities.
Security Class: A high-level classification of a security type, such as Stock, Bond, Stock Fund, or Bond Fund.
Security Type: A specific type or class of security, such as Bond Mutual Fund or Large Company Stock. Security types are used to determine portfolio allocation. You can specify how to treat certain security types relative to the tax form reports.
Selling Method: A strategy for selling shares, such as First- In/First-Out or Maximum Gain/Minimum Loss.
Total Return: A figure often used by mutual funds to show the performance of a fund over time. Total return includes distributions and price changes, and mirrors a 'buy-and-hold' strategy,
Unrealized Gain/Loss: An unrealized gain or loss is associated with open shares. While a gain or loss may be indicated based on the current share price, you haven't yet 'realized' it.

1.7 Data Entry
1.7.1 Terms

Forms: Forms refer to screens that require you to enter information.
Tables: Tables refer to lists of associated records. Sometimes you must define the association through a data entry field at the top of the table. There are several variations of Tables - without any qualifying adjectives, a Table refers to a list of associated records that allows some combination of Add/Change/Delete/Select operations.
Choice Tables: Choice Tables are similar to ordinary Tables, except they only allow rows to be tagged/untagged. Add/Change/Delete operations are not supported.
Menus: Menus offer you a list of choices, and you make a selection by hitting the Enter key after highlighting the desired choice, or by hitting the key associated with the desired choice.
Point To: 'Point to' refers to the cursor's positioning in relation to the fields on the screen. When you position the cursor on a field (or sometimes a set of fields), the field (or fields) is distinguished by reverse video attributes.
Fields: Fields are values that you enter. When a field is waiting for entry, it's highlighted. Fields may be optional, in which case you can leave it blank. Some required fields will pop up a Lookup Table if you enter a blank or invalid value. You highlight the desired choice in the table and hit Enter. Other required fields may present a list of several options next to the cursor. For these fields, you can highlight your choice and hit Enter, or just hit the initial character in the desired choice.
Reports: Reports contain information about data stored in Capital Gainz. Reports are viewed on the screen, and can be sent to a file or the printer.

1.7.2 Command Keys and Key Combinations

Command keys are keys that have special meaning. These include: Enter, Ctrl-Enter, Esc, Ctrl-Esc, PgUp, Ctrl-PgUp, PgDn, Ctrl-PgDn, Left Arrow, Right Arrow, Up Arrow, Down Arrow, and the function (Fn) keys. Ctrl-Enter means to hold down the Ctrl key while hitting the Enter key. The Ins and Del keys are usually found on the numeric keypad, and NumLock must be turned off to use them. You can use the Enter key on the main keyboard or the numeric keypad.

Forms accept the entry of values for one or more fields.

Form Field Entry Section:

Esc - Go to previous field, quit form if on first field.
Ctrl-End - Erase field.
Enter - Accept field and go to next field, accept form if on last field.
Up Arrow - Same as Esc.
Down Arrow - Same as Enter.
Ctrl-Enter - Accept form. Same as hitting Enter on every field.
Ctrl-Esc - Reject form. Same as hitting Esc on every field.

Menus accept a choice which triggers an indicated action.

Menu Section:

Enter - Call routine for current item.
Esc - Quit menu.
Up Arrow - Point to the previous item.
Down Arrow - Point to the next item.
Other Keys - Execute indicated function for key.

Tables show a repeated set of values. Tables also may accept the entry of one or more fields. Most tables allow you to call up a form to enter, add, or delete values. Choice Tables only allow you to tag one or more values.

Table Field Entry Section:

Same as Form.

Table Record List Section:

Esc - Quit table, or go to field entry section.
Up Arrow - Point to previous record.
Down Arrow - Point to next record.
PgDn - Scroll table down.
PgUp - Scroll table up.
Ctrl-PgDn - Point to last record.
Ctrl-PgUp - Point to first record.
Ins - Call form to add a record.
Del - Delete table entry at cursor.
Enter - Select or Change table entry at cursor.

Special function keys and common key combinations are labeled at the bottom of all tables and forms. If all of the function keys won't fit on one line, there may be a More key to scroll through the available function keys. The function you want to use does not have to be displayed for you to invoke it with the associated key. Alternatively, you can use the Function List key to popup a list of functions to choose from. The F1 function key is always used for screen help. Finally, many entry fields bring up a table to choose from if you enter a blank or invalid value.

1.7.3 Editing Field Entries

When filling in forms, you can use the Ins, Del, Ctrl-End, Backspace, Left Arrow, and Right Arrow keys for editing fields.

If a field is required, you can't go to the next field until you enter a valid value. If a field is not required, then you can leave it blank and hit Enter.

Except when offered a choice of values for a field, you must end an entry with the Enter key. When offered a choice of values, you can enter the first character in your choice to automatically select it. Or, you can use the arrow keys to highlight your choice and then hit Enter. For example, when given a choice of YES or NO, you can simply hit the y or n key.

Capital Gainz tries to 'guess' what you want to enter. For instance, it globally saves the last entered date field, and displays it in subsequent forms' date fields. Likewise, symbol entry fields show the last referenced security symbol. As you can see, Capital Gainz relies heavily on default values to make your data entry experience pleasant. Of course, you can change the displayed defaults.

1.7.4 Entering Negative Values

There are only a few places in Capital Gainz where you can enter negative values. To enter a negative number, enter the digits and then hit the - key.

1.8 Who to Contact

Dave Cohen
DBLinx
P.O. Box 12545
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2545
(919)-469-5196
(919)-469-3972 BBS
CompuServe ID: 70431,132
Internet: davec@rock.concert.net