New SYSTEMS Module - SYSTEMS Shares v8a
Members may recall the mention of the 3rd program in the SYSTEMS
series being discussed earlier this year. I am pleased to report that
the new SYSTEMS Shares program is now almost complete and should be
ready for roll-out on the Issue 18 disc.
SYSTEMS shares as it's name suggests is an interactive share dealing
terminal which enables the user to keep track of a wide variety of
share portfolios. That is the basic theory behind SYSTEMS Shares, but
in practice it is a lot more involved ....
SYSTEMS shares was originally created to be of use in the educational
sector back in 1986 and was very successful in motivating the interest
of school pupils in the goings on of the stock exchange and city
financial reports. There are 3 modules of the program with the first
being the "dealing desk" at which users buy and sell shares, the
second being the "enquiries desk" which provides detailed analysis of
portfolios held, and finally the "supervisor mode" which is the
program that teachers and/or co-ordinators use to maintain various
accounts and portfolios.
The whole of SYSTEMS shares is based around the "Account" which
behaves rather like a bank account. Via the supervisor module the
user is allocated an "account" which is created and credited with some
capital at the supervisors discretion (ie. 1000.00). These funds are
then used to purchase and sell shares over a period of time in an
attempt to make some money. Accounts can be credited and debited at
the supervisors will.
Pupils at one of my local schools have now been using SYSTEMS shares
for more than 2 years and regular competitions are held to see who can
make the most money in a set period of time (ie. 3 months). The
financial times is regulary checked by pupils along with the city
pages of ceefax for reports hints as to which companies to invest in,
and which to aviod. Each pupils account information is held on
his/her own personal disc which is loaded into the disc drive before
dealing commences in order to keep security and secrecy absolute.
The share prices and information used by SYSTEMS shares is obtained
through an Acorn Teletext Adaptor with ATS rom. The share price list
on BBC's CEEFAX service is used to collect information on 300
companies for presentation within the program. At schools, "Dealing
Time" is once a day at lunchtimes when the computer club is open and
the latest share prices have been obtained via the ATS rom 10 minutes
before opening time. All dealings made by pupils are recorded on a
separate "transactions log" disc which is cross-referenced to when
selling shares meaning that the sneaky altering of files saved to disc
is instantly detected.
NEW VERSION 8a
As with all SYSTEMS programs, SYSTEMS shares has been through a lot of
versions to date. The latest version will be a total re-write of the
original program in order to accommodate all types of user whether
serious, educational or fun. A few of the new and existing features
are summarised below ...
1. 3 Modules - Dealing, Enquiry and Supervisor
2. "accounts" system makes for more realistic dealing as there is a
limit to what your account can stand.
3. Automatic capture of share data from an Acorn teletext adaptor
if available. The manual entry of share data is also permitted
for those users without access to a teletext adaptor.
4. Global or Individual share portfolio analysis.
5. Automatic updating of accounts each time program is run.
6. Full account opening, amending and closing facilities provided
from within the supervisor program.
7. Each purchase or sale is recorded and presented in a bank statement
style form when requested.
8. Highest and Lowest share prices recorded for the year on every
company.
... plus many more too numerous to list here.
Since the BBC in their wisdom decided to abandon their weekly FREE
downloading service, many teletext adaptors have become redundent with
their only apparant use to view teletext screens. SYSTEMS shares is
one program which will make full use of an attached adaptor. After
the BBC closed down it's telesoftware service the price of adaptors
has fallen remarkably and a good second hand working adaptor can be
obtained for as little as 30.00.
If all goes well, the SYSTEMS shares program will be signed off and
ready for issue by issue 18, together with the familiar massive
documentation. As the majority of members do not possess Acorn
Adaptors, there will be a datafile on every 8BS issue disc in the
future containing all the latest share prices. For users with access
to a modem the latest prices for SYSTEMS shares will be available
weekly on Resolve Communications. There will also be a new 8BS
service where members can send off for share prices as often as they
like. More details soon.
I hope that the above has whetted your appetite and I hope that all
members will make good use of SYSTEMS shares when it is lauched
hopefully next month.
Duncan Webster.