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BeanCounter -- A stock portfolio performance monitoring tool
1. Introduction
Ever wondered what happened to your portfolio on a day the market moved
500 points? Ever wondered what your portfolio returned over the last
(odd) period? Ever wondered if there was a simple cron job to report
portfolio changes on a daily basis? Ever wondered if you could database
the (public) price, volume, ... info on dozens of stocks for further
analysis?
BeanCounter does all this, and provides a convenient command-line tool as
well as a Perl library that can be used by other applications.
Beancounter support stocks from exchanges in the US, Canada, Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, HongKong... as well
as Australia and New Zealand. Tested patches for other markets are always
welcome. US mutual funds are supported, as are foreign exchange rates and
some precious metals.
This is still somewhat beta in the sense that the command-line options and
function interfaces might change. The (initial) release number is kept low
intenionally. However, similar code has been working here since the fall
of 1998.
2. How to get started
You need Perl and PostgreSQL, or MySQL (as of version 0.4.0). Plus a host
of Perl modules such as DBI (Database independent interface) with either
the DBD ODBC or the DBD Postgres driver (i.e. DBD-Pg) or the DBD Mysql
driver, LWP networking as well as Date::Manip and Statistics::Descriptive.
All of this is readily available for Debian; or else in source code at
www.postgresql.org and www.cpan.org.
Upon opening the .tar.gz archive, run
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make install
and everything should be fine. Run
$ beancounter --help
for a quick check.
Run 'setup_beancounter' to create the new database and tables, and to have
them filled with example data. This even runs a first portfolio report on
the (example) portfolio. The 'setup_beancounter' script has a few sanity
checks to ensure that Postgres (or MySQL) is running, that the current
user is a valid database user, that it is not called by root, and that the
database hasn't already been created.
3. How to use it
Beancounter's --help options shows the main functionality. This currently
comprised the following operations:
o "addindex index sym1 sym2 ..." fills the indices table with info on
stocks comprising a market index.
o "addportfolio sym1:nb1:fx sym2:nb:fx ..." fills the portfolio table with
the specified quantities (eg 'nb1' or 'nb2' in the example above) of the
specified stocks. Additional attributes of the holding can be specified
as well. These are 'type' in which one could store the tax
classification of a retirement account, eg 'rrsp' in Canada or '401k' in
the USA, 'holder' which can carry the name of the account holder so that
one could e.g. differentiate between spousal accounts, 'cost' which
stores the purchase price and 'purchasedate' for the time of the purchase.
o "addstock sym1 sym2 ..." to add one (or several) stock(s) to the
database by filling both the 'stockinfo' table with general company and
stock info, as well as the `stockprices' table with the most recent
price data. Its purpose is to initialise the database for new stocks.
o "backpopulate sym1 sym2 ..." backpopulates the database for one (or
several) stock(s). It can be used to extend the database with historic
prices. Limiting dates can be supplied via the --fromdate and --todate
arguments.
o "dailyjob" which combines 'update' and 'dayendreport'
o "dayendreport" runs a report summarising day-over-day changes
o "destroydb" removes the database entirely with not further warning.
o "plreport" runs an end-of-day profit/loss report on the portfolio.
It can be run automatically by cron(8) via an entry in crontab(5)
such as
15 17 * * 1-5 beancounter update && beancounter plreport
It can be run from cron(8) just after 'daily_update.pl'.
o "risk" runs an risk analysis with parametric Value-at-Risk (VaR)
calculated via the standard Delta method (a.k.a. RiskMetric (TM)),
a non-parametric VaR (using the 1% quantile) as well as marginal VaR
analysis.
o "quote sym1 sym2 ..." retrieves price info from the Web and displays
it without touching the database. This is useful for verifying a stock
symbol as well the network status.
o "status" computes a holdings value and (annualized) return summary
which also shows how long a stock has been held.
o "update" updates the database with day-end information. It can be run
automatically by cron(8) via an entry in crontab(5) such as
15 17 * * 1-5 beancounter update
(but also see about combining this with a call to beacounter plreport')
o "warranty" shows a brief statement about the GNU General Public License
The shell script 'setup_beancounter' initialises the database, creates the
tables and fills them with initial data.
The shell script 'update_beancounter' changes, if necessary, the database
table to bring an older (0.1.*) installation up to speed.
5. To Do
More error checking. More performance analytics. More markets. More
documentation. Maybe a GUI.
See the TODO file.
6. Disclaimer (taken straight from the GPL)
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS
TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
In short: if it breaks, you can keep the pieces. This is Free Software,
use it as you see fit, but don't come running or screaming if it doesn't
work as intended.
Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>
$Id: README,v 1.6 2001/10/12 01:47:53 edd Exp edd $
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