Internet Quotes Assistant

1. Can I get real-time stock quote updates using IQA?
The download settings provided with IQA provide configuration for servers that usually provide quotations with a delay of 15 minutes. If you have access to a web server that provides real-time quotes, you are free to configure IQA to download real-time quotes from it.

2. How can I add a new stock, mutual fund or currency to my IQA portfolio?
A. In IQA open the Item menu and select “Insert New Item…”. A new investment item will be created.

B. Enter the new item’s General Properties: Name and Symbol/ISIN – note that the Symbol/ISIN should be entered as required by the selected quotation server (i.e. some servers might require a stock ticker while others might require a different ID such as the item’s ISIN). Note that after you have filled the item's name field, you can press the "Symbol Look-up" button to open a web page showing possible Symbol/ISIN matches for the selected quotation server.

C. Select a suitable quotation server configuration from the list – make sure that the selected server provides the desired quotation.

D. Check if the automatic quotation update works properly by pressing the button “Test quotation update”.

If the quotation update doesn’t work properly, check if the quotation's web page URL is correct by pressing the button “Open web page”. If the web page doesn’t exist anymore or its layout has been changed, you might need to update your quotation server settings – click here for more information on using the Server Configuration Wizard.

3. I’m having problems updating quotations over the internet. What should I do?

A. First of all, if you have installed a Firewall (e.g. Windows built-in firewall or a third-party firewall), make sure that your firewall is configured to allow both Internet Quotes Assistant and Microsoft Internet Explorer to download data from the Internet. Moreover, make sure that you have administration rights on the PC where you install IQA - specially during installation IQA requires administration rights, in order to configure the download server configurations.

B. If your internet connection requires a proxy, check your proxy settings in IQA under Extras - Options... - Connection. If you select the option "Use standard Windows' internet connection settings", make sure that the standard windows internet connection is configured correctly (check your Windows' proxy settings in Start - Control Panel - Internet Options - Connections - LAN Settings).

You can check if your internet connection is ok, by pressing the button "Open web page" in the item’s properties dialog. If the Internet Explorer can open the URL, IQA should have no problems with the connection. Note that if your standard browser is not the Internet Explorer, you should manually check that you are able to access the internet using the Internet Explorer.

C. If your internet connection configuration is all right but you still have problems updating quotations over the internet, the server configuration you are using might be out-of-date – this might happen if the quotation download URL has changed or if the page layout of the quotation server has been changed.

To correct this you can download and install the newest quotation server settings from http://www.marcos-rocha.com/soft.html. However, there is no guarantee, that the settings for the quotation server of your choice will be kept up-to-date at IQA’s web site. So you might need to correct the server settings by yourself.

The easiest way to correct quotation server settings is by using IQA’s server configuration wizard.

C1. To start IQA’s server configuration wizard right-click on an item in the item’s list, select Properties in the context menu, and then click on the “Wizard” button.

The server configuration wizard will then guide you through the configuration process.

C2. Enter quotation server URL – you might copy it from your internet browser and paste it into IQA’s server configuration wizard dialog.

C3. Check if downloaded web page contains the quotation to be extracted and then continue with the next step.

[screenshot from Yahoo Finance web page]

C4. Define quotation to be extracted from web page (current quotation & thousands/decimal separator format).

C5. Click on “Get Configuration” and then select one of the automatically generated quotation extraction rules. If the automatically generated rules are not suitable, you can try choosing a different web page format: “original”, “convert to semi-html” or “convert to text-only”.

C6. Save the configuration – select an appropriate server name using the format [Country]-[Provider], e.g. “US-Yahoo”.

4. How can I analyze the evolution of a stock/investment within a specific time frame?
Select the item you want to analyze and its chart will be displayed. Then use the mouse to select the chart interval to be analyzed (press the left mouse button on interval begin, drag-it, and release the left mouse button on interval end). The analysis data of the interval will be displayed in the status bar: “interval start/quotation - interval end/quotation; interval length; +-%; extrapolation +-% per year”.

5. How can I compare the evolution of different stocks/investments?
When you select multiple items in the items’ list, the comparison chart will be automatically displayed. You can select multiple items by holding the Ctrl-key pressed while you click on the items in the list. If you want to compare them only in a specific period, you can specify it by right-clicking on the chart and specifying the comparison interval under “Properties”.

6. How can I import historical quotations directly from the internet?
A. Right-click the item for which you want to import historical quotations and select “Import quotations…” in the context menu. Then you will see the following dialog in which you can specify the historical quotations server to be used. After selecting a server from the list, make sure that the specified item symbol is supported by the server (server symbol requirements will be automatically displayed). Finally select the time frame for which the historical quotations should be downloaded and then press either the “Next” or the “Finish” button. By pressing the “Finish” button the quotations will be downloaded and imported at once.

B. If you have pressed the “Next” button, you will be able to check out and modify the configuration of the selected import server as depicted in the screenshot below.

The import server configuration specifies:

· The server URL which might contain the following IQA variables: [&symbol], [&day_begin], [&month_begin], [&year_begin], [&day_end], [&month_end] and [&year_end]);

· The file conversion option (useful for filtering out layout data, making it easier to extract the quotation from html pages);

· The quotation numerical format (i.e. quotation’s thousands and decimal separator);

· The import rules specify the format in which the historical quotations are stored in the downloaded file. Usually the servers provide historical quotations in a file with one entry per line, where each entry contains information such as date, open, high, low, close and volume separated by commas. In this case the import rule would be something like
“[&day]-[&month]-[&year],[&quotation_open],[&quotation_high],[&quotation_low],[&quotation_close],[&volume]”

Note that the exact data format (e.g. date format “[&day].[&month].[&year] or “[&month]-[&day]-[&year]) must be specified. The following strings might be used for specifying data separators: new line “\n”, carriage return “\r” and tabulator “\t”. Moreover regular expression syntax might be used in the import rules format specification.

C. When you press the “Next” button again the historical quotations will be downloaded – if for some reason the download fails, you should check if the URL is valid and if the item’s symbol (e.g. ISIN, Ticker, WKN, etc.) is supported by the selected server.

[Before continuing with the next step, if you want to check the data provided by the server, you may open the downloaded file in the notepad or in a web browser by pressing the respective button.]

D. Then you press the “Next” button to continue with the import process. If the downloaded data and the format specified are all right, the following dialog will be displayed.

In the dialog above you can check if the extracted quotations are all right. If you want to, you might narrow the timeframe of the quotations to be imported.

When you press the OK button the quotations will be added to the item.

7. How can I configure my portfolio so that IQA automatically converts quotation currencies? (e.g. for converting quotations from a foreign stock exchange)

A. Open the Properties dialog of the item for which do you want to have the quotation currency automatically converted. Open the Currency Conversion tab.

B. Check the option "Upon download automatically convert quotation currency..."

C1. Select the item that provides the appropriate currency exchange rate or

C2. Create a new currency exchange rate item by pressing the button "Create exchange rate item..."

After you have configured the portfolio, every time you update it (Update All), IQA we make sure that the currency quotation will be updated before the foreign currency item. By doing so it is ensured that the currency conversion is done using a current currency exchange rate.

However, if you update item quotations separately, or import item quotations, you must make sure that you always update/import quotations for the currency items before doing it for the other ones.

8. Can I change the column ordering in the item list?
Yes, just click on the header of the column you want to move and drag it to the new position. By the way, if you click on the header of a column without dragging it the items will be sorted based on the selected criteria (e.g. item name or investment volume).

9. How can I add a user-defined formula to the portfolio list view?

A. Open the Properties dialog of the item for which you want to specify a user-defined formula. Open the Advanced tab.

B. Specify a formula using the standard operators ()+-*/^ by referencing the values given by the variables x and y.
E.g. use the formula x*100/y, where x="item's investment volume" and y="total investment volume", to calculate the fraction of the item's investment in your total investments.

10. How can I copy items from one portfolio to another?
Open two instances of IQA. In one of the windows select the items you want to copy and press Ctrl+C for copying them. Then go to the other window and press Ctrl+V for pasting the copied items. Alternatively you can directly drag and drop the items from one window to another.

11. Can I have multiple portfolios opened simultaneously?
Yes, you can start multiple instances of IQA and open a different portfolio in each one.

12. How can I set the investment data to be used for investment performance calculations (number of units invested, break-even, total investment volume, etc.)?
Right-click on the item in the item’s list, select “Display Investment” in the context menu, and then click on the button “Transactions - New” to add your investment transactions for the selected item (buy, sell or dividends/interests payout).

The current number of units invested, and the implied quotation break-even will be automatically calculated based on the transactions. Moreover, a hypothetical sell transaction will be automatically added, so that you can see the investment result that would be achieved if you would sell the investment for its current market price.

IQA calculates the break-even based on the average buy price, the commission/taxes and the paid dividends/interests. Note that break-even calculated by IQA doesn't take into account past sell transactions - a past sell transaction is considered a realized profit/loss that only concerns the units sold. So, if you buy 10 stocks of a company at $2 and sell 5 of them with a 50% loss for $1, IQA's approach is to say that when the given stock reaches $2 again, you'll have a break-even for the remaining 5 stocks.

The total investment volume of your portfolio (sum of all investments) will be automatically calculated based on the investment data you enter for each investment item. The total investment volume is displayed on IQA’s status bar under “Investment sum”.

The history of your portfolio’s investment volume is tracked by the “Investment History” item. Every time you update the quotations of the items in your portfolio, the “Investment History” item will also be updated. Thus you can easily visualize the evolution of all your investments by opening the “Investment History” item.

In order to make sure that at anytime you get a complete overview of your investments, you should make sure that the money that you might have temporarily “parked” in your cash account is computed in the portfolio “cash account” item (e.g. you sell stock A and wait two months before you invest the money in stock B, during this two months the money should be booked to your cash account). When you create a new investment transaction for e.g. a stock, IQA will automatically create the concerned cash account credit/debit transaction (option available under menu Extras – Options – Advanced: “Cash account: [X] automatically create related cash/debit entry”). However, you must specify by yourself the initial cash you provide for investing and information about subsequent deposits/withdraws. This is can be done by adding credit/debit transactions to your portfolio cash account item.

13. How can I specify a configuration for a new quotation server?
The easiest way to specify a configuration for a new quotation server is by using IQA’s server configuration wizard.

To get more information on how to do it manually, click here.

14. Is it possible to automatically update detailed quotation information (quotation open, close, high, low and volume)?
Yes, you can automatically update quotation open, close, high, low and volume by specifying an advanced quotation extraction rule. To get more information on advanced quotation extraction rules click here .

15. How can I configure IQA to automatically update my portfolio regularly?
In the menu Extras select Options to open the program options dialog. In the General tab you can then activate the auto-update functionality by setting the appropriate options (e.g. update quotations every 15min from 9:00 to 17:00).

Note that the IQA's built-in auto-update will only work when IQA is running. If this is not an option for you, consider scheduling a recurring Windows Task:
A. In Windows go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Scheduled Tasks
B. Select "Add scheduled task" and set your preferred update options (e.g. run Monday to Friday at 20h00)
C. Set task command to IQA's application path + /u + portfolio path, e.g.:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Quotes Assistant\IQAssist.exe" /u "C:\Documents and Settings\user\Desktop\WorldIndices.IQA"

16. How can I reduce the size of IQA portfolio files?
There are mainly three possibilities to reduce the size of IQA portfolio files:

i. In the menu Extras – Options – General Tab: [X] Disable storage of intraday quotations (auto-overwrite previous intraday quotation).

ii. In the items’ quotation dialog press the button “Delete multiple…” to filter out multiple quotations available for the same day/month.

iii. In the menu Extras – Options – Advanced Tab: enable [X] Use compressed portfolio file format (IQA portfolio data will be compressed before it’s saved to the file).

17. Can I export my portfolio to another format, so that the data can be processed by other applications?
You can both export your whole portfolio to Excel/Text-format (menu File - Export Portfolio), or export only your portfolio quotations to CSV format (menu File - Export Quotations).
Moreover you can export quotations using the command line option "/e", e.g.:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Quotes Assistant\IQAssist.exe" /e "C:\Documents and Settings\user\Desktop\WorldIndices.IQA"

18. Do I have to pay a periodical fee to use IQA?
No, if you want to continue using "Internet Quotes Assistant" after the evaluation period, you just have to register it. You can register IQA at through PayPal or ShareIt!. Please note, that future releases of Internet Quotes Assistant providing extended functionality might require a license upgrade.

19. Which payment options are available for registering IQA?
You can pay IQA’s registration fee either by credit card, bank transfer or PayPal transfer.
For more information on current licensing conditions please refer to http://www.marcos-rocha.com/soft.html.
For more information on available payment options please refer to http://www.shareit.com or https://www.paypal.com.

If you have any questions, you may contact the author via e-mail:

Marcos Rocha <mailto:IQA@gmx.net>

For more information, check out IQA’s web page at http://www.marcos-rocha.com/soft.html.

For trouble shooting, don’t forget to provide the following information:

· IQA version you have installed

· Windows and SP version

· Internet browser you are using

· Whether your internet connection requires a proxy

· Whether you can update the quotations of at least one of the portfolios that are provided with the software