Trademan analyzes and displays stock price information together with
technical indicators.  By providing web clients and conversion routines,
Trademan helps you keep your stock price database up to date using 
freely-available quote information from the internet.

Trademan is distributed as shareware.  This means that you are allowed
to evaluate the software for up to 30 days free of charge, after which 
time you must register the software if you intend to continue using it.  
You may redistribute the software as you wish, as long as you distribute 
only the full unmodified package that you obtained in the first place.  
Information used to unlock the shareware version and thereby turn it into 
the registered version may not be redistributed.

Trademan requires about 6MB of hard disk space for the program files.  
Another 17MB would be required for the S&P 500 database, which contains 
a year's worth of quote information for the S&P 500 stocks.  I would 
consider this to be a database of moderate size.  You should have at least
8MB of RAM installed to run this software.  At least a 66MHz 486 system
running Windows95/98/NT is required to run this software at acceptable
levels of performance. 

The following is a step-by-step procedure that should help you get started
using Trademan, once you have unpacked the files.  If you have trouble
installing Trademan or getting specific features to work right, contact me
(Ron Hospelhorn) at stocks@swcp.com.

It will be easier for you to install Trademan if all file extensions are
visible.  Please go to the View|Folder Options menu item in Windows Explorer
and select the "View" tab.  If the "Hide file extensions for know file types"
box is checked, please uncheck it for the time being.  Click OK and proceed.
To install an icon for Trademan on your desktop, go to the installation
directory (where you downloaded wtrade.exe or wtrade27.zip) and select
Trademan.exe.  Click the right mouse key over it, and a menu should pop up.
Select "Create Shortcut" from this menu.  Find the "Shortcut to Trademan" item
and select it.  Hold the right mouse key over it and drag to the desktop.
When you release the mouse key, a menu will appear.  Select copy or move, and
you are done.  You may rename the caption if you wish by selecting the icon
on the desktop with the right mouse key and selecting rename from the
resulting pop-up menu.

You can add Trademan to your startup menu (the one under Programs when you
hit the Start button at the left end of your taskbar) by selecting "Settings"
then "Taskbar & Start Menu" after clicking Start.  Select the "Start Menu
Programs" tab and click the "Add" button.  Click the Browse button to find
the installation directory and Trademan.exe.  Select Trademan.exe and click
the "Open" button to select it.  Click the Next> button and then click the
"New Folder" button for a new program group.  I just call mine "Trademan,"
but you can call it whatever you like.  Click the Next> button and use the
suggested name as the executable and you should be set.


NOTE:  Now Trademan is packed with a sample database and configured to open
to it when invoked for the first time.  Perform the following procedure to
create your own database from the S&P500 database available at my web site.

1.  Download the full_set.zip file from http://biz.swcp.com/stocks by
clicking on the "Get Full Set" icon.
2.  Unzip full_set.zip, if you haven't already.  This will give you a
file named "sp500hst.txt."
3.  Start up Trademan and go to the menu bar.  Select File and then New.
4.  Select the sp500hst.txt file and click the Open button.  This will
convert the txt file to a file with ".nxt" extension and also create an
index file with ".idx" extension.  This process may require several
minutes.
5.  When the conversion/indexing step is complete, the Title bar of the
Trademan window should read:  "Trademan - sp500hst.nxt" or something
similar, depending on the directory you're using.  You are now ready to
start plotting.
6.  To plot a stock, just enter its symbol in the box labeled "Ticker:"
You will notice that the list that appears when you click on the arrow
to the right of the Ticker box is initially empty.  If you click on the
button with the plus sign after you type in a symbol, the symbol will be
added to the list.  If you click on the button labeled "Save,"
the list will be there the next time you bring up Trademan.
7.  You can do a couple of things now.  One is to go to the File menu
item and click the Set Default entry.  This will save the current
database as the default so that next time you bring up the program, it
will automatically open the same database.  The other is to plot until
you're tired of it and leave the program.  When you bring up the program
again, there will be no database selected.  You will have to open the
database.
8.  If you have to open the database, go to the File menu item and
select Open.  You will get the open file dialog.  Select the
sp500hst.nxt item.  (Note the ".nxt" extension.).  If you select an 
Indicator from the Indicator list, one or more of the Period, 
Smoothing, or Averaging boxes may become active.  These parameters have
default values that you may change if you wish.  Please refer to
the Help for information on individual technical indicators.
9.  To access Help, go to the Help menu item and select
"Contents."  Reading that should get you going (I hope.)
10.  A useable table of splits (splits.html) is now included with the 
package, so you don't have to download it to get started.  Just copy
it to the directory where you have installed your database(s).  You
can update it by either downloading a new copy from my site or by editing
it manually using Notepad or some other text editor that leaves it in
text format.  
