Stox is one of several ways one can monitor personal investments. It is brought to us by the people over at JoeSoft, a Prosoft Engineering company (makers of Drive Genius 2 & Data Rescue II). For us Mac Old-Timers, Prosoft is a familiar desktop name, having been around since 1985 and being responsible for such Apple licensed technologies as Disk Utilities and Drive Setup. Although the people at JoeSoft are a whole new generation of programmers than those who helped up put hard drives on our Mac Plus's & SE's, they've been supporting the platform faithfully since our infancy.

This is a very impressive program at first glance. Although it is like an accounting program in that you cannot purchase stocks unless you have first deposited cash to purchase those stocks (that is If you expect it all to balance). Therefore, if you are moving from another program or just deciding to track your existing portfolio with a software application, then you have to first enter all your stock information then go back before the first entry date and make a cash deposit so all your purchases are paid for.

This will skew your actual gains since you are not seeing your initial investment grow, only your investment as far back as your account summary provides. In my case, I started my portfolio 20 years ago and stocks have come and gone in the interim, even though I'm still holding onto some of the positions I started with 20 years ago Apple has split twice in that time and other positions have been liquidated and new positions acquired. So with this program I had to enter a cash investment of around four times what my original cash infusion was twenty years ago.

The only way to make it accurate is to sit down with all your account records from day one and enter all your Buy/Sell transactions. If past accuracy is not what you are seeking, then starting from today and entering the information from your current account summary will be sufficient. You will quickly be able to see position gains/losses and set buy sell triggers in a particular position.

I have had some difficulties using this program in Mac OS 10.5.2 (even though it is said to be Leopard compatible). The program has left me with a spinning beach ball on several occasions (no trigger determined) which required a Force Quit. A second issue is the fact that Stox does not properly handle stock splits. Apple stock split back in 2000 and again in 2005 Apple slit 2:1 so after the first split of 100 shares I should have 200 shares (Stox shows I have 300) and after the second 2:1 split it shows that I have 900 shares when I should have 400.

This would be great considering Apple's recent gains in the past year, but that is not how it is supposed to work. Reverse spits are even better in that with 200 shares that reverses 1:8, you should have only 25 shares in your portfolio but now if you go to sell you have 225, which would be quite beneficial to the investor. JoeSoft has been making weekly beta upgrades and as of 3/25/08 the program actually recognized and notified me that an upgrade was now available. Therefore, the shipping version is now autoupdating and ALL the above issues have been resolved. This indicates that they are actively working on perfecting this application.

I like the configurability of the ticker. If you have separate portfolios, each can have its own ticker line and each be updated and scroll at different rates. Therefore, if you are a day trader and have one account for day trading you would want to have that particular portfolio updating more frequently than, let's say your IRA account.

Another feature that is beneficial to day traders is the transaction detail screen lets you time and date stamp transactions. For most of us the time of day the transaction took place is immaterial unless we are looking for time of day trends. That's like saying the best time to buy Starbucks is in the morning during the morning coffee rush, luckily the market is not that retail sales driven.

Another nice feature is the RSS feed indicator preceding each entry if new information is available since it was last viewed. As can be seen by the figure below, the screen is quite readable even with a large amount of information to display. The ticker, when displayed, floats above every other open window so it can become a nuisance when it covers other windows' vital information. This can be resolved by having two monitors attached to your computer, then have all your stock info on the second screen doing all your work on the primary screen.

When you are in the detail window transitions between the different tabs are instantaneous, as if all data is resident locally so what appears to be happening as information is being updated on the internet data is cached on the local machine and waiting to be accessed.

A disappointing feature is the Buy/Sell Alerts. My current stock application uses an audible tone as well as a flashing colored indicator bar to signify which position is out of bounds. Stox will bring up an alert box but will only keep it at the level of the application and will not push it to the foreground in front of other open windows as with the Ticker is always the most foreground window. It also only uses the default system Chiff so it could be a new mail message or some other system alert not necessarily that stocks have crossed a threshold.

Whereas my current application lets you select a specific unique sound for positive and negative boundaries as well as unique color indicators for each as well. With my current Application, I leave it in the background with the stock summary list exposed on the right side of my wide screen display so when I hear one of my buy/sell alert sounds I look to the right and see the approximate position of the colored indicator and based on the position I then determine if it warrants further investigation that instant. The alarm screen has been updated from the 1.0 version to provide more flexability but the above issues are still present.

Buy and Sell alerts have a common action screen so you cannot differentiate between a Buy or Sell alert unless you read the Alert dialog box. Another feature I miss from my current tracking program is to have an all inclusive portfolio (a summary portfolio) that contains all the stocks from all active portfolios I track four portfolios (an IRA, a Roth IRA, a personal investment account and my Wife's IRA). With an active day like the market's been the past month, I need to monitor all four simultaneously.

With my current application they have a summary screen which includes all positions the family owns and when one of the entries crosses a threshold I can then go to the particular portfolio and make trade decisions on available data. It would be nice if high thresholds could be differentiated from low thresholds by a different sound as well as a flashing the line item entry with some sort of visual indicator (Green Plus sign, Red Minus Sign or some other distinctive icon), my current program flashes the entire line with a color and sound of your choosing.

The technical charts offer a wide diversity of options (15) to track your stocks against. The only problem is that if you have more than two there is no key for the chart lines and since they are all blue (except for the closing price), it is really difficult to determine what you are looking at. Some of the 15 charts break off into separate charts below the main chart and if you are careful in your selections you can have lines which you can track, even when the lines are the same color. Another downside to technical charts is the fact if you want to look at a five day, six month or one year duration chart for one position and then view another position the chart duration reverts back to a 3 month view, so you have to reset to the view you wish.

Another word of caution, the program only loads to the installing user's Library, not the System Library, so if more than one user on the machine will be accessing the program you must register it in each user's directory. I would be nice if the installer asked if the application was to be used by only one user or all users.

The Bottom Line: if you want the most comprehensive and flexible Stox program available on the Macintosh for less than US$50, Stox is for you. With the few limitations mentioned above the vast amount of configurability and the voluminous amount of information displayed, it is doubtful that any information you would need to make an informed investment decision would be missing, but it is right there on your screen. If you desire to take the program for a test drive a 30 Day / 10 stock DEMO is available for download. If you are registered user of either Shareware program Blue Chip or MyStock, you qualify for a special discount price of only $19.95 which is 60% off Stox's retail price.

Let us know your experiences and what you think over in the comments and forums.