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FAQs
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Who developed Trade:2:Plan?
What is Trade:2:Plan?
What does the program do?
Who can Benefit from Trade:2:Plan?
Can I learn to trade using Trade:2:Plan?
What do I need in order to use it?
What do you do with my information?
Why another Trading Program?
How much does it cost?
If your question is not asked or answered then feel free to drop us a line through the contact page.
Q. Who developed Trade:2:Plan?
A. My name is Ian McIvor. I've been trading more or less fulltime since mid-2004, ... long enough to know exactly what it feels like to win and to lose on the stock market. And long enough to know that if you don't trade to a plan, you'll lose more often and more money than you win. When I say "more or less fulltime" ... I do run my own business from home (IT / Webdesign / Database prgramming: eg GuitarSales.com.au is a site I developed and operate, my current business is Base Logic, database development services) which gives me time and exposure to the market all day. Trade:2:Plan is one of several projects I am developing as part of my business. I'm both a short-term and long-term trader, depending on the stock and the research. I use charting software with a mix of Fundamental analysis to make my market decisions. I'm also active on share forums. So I consider trading the market as very much part of my business, rather than a hobby or a sideline.
Q. What is Trade:2:Plan?
A. Simply put, this is a share trading planner and portfolio management system, but with some extra features. It might be helpful at this point to say that Trade:2:Plan is NOT a so called "black box" system for finding stocks gaurenteed to "make money".
What you buy or sell in the market is entirely up to you! Trade:2:Plan does NOT help you choose stocks. It is, however, a very helpful tool for encouraging you to have some justification for the stocks you do trade, and helping you to plan then record your trading decisions, then produce the appropriate reports to track your progress. It's designed to help you develop your own trading disciplines, to find what works for you, and hopefully to stick with it. In other words, to be accountable to yourself.
Q. What does the program do?
A. Trade:2:Plan does several essential things for basic trading requirements, it also has a few extra features that I have found very handy. I'll briefly outline some of the benefits / features here. These are explained in a little more details on the features page.
- Security. When you launch Trade:2:Plan the first thing you'll notice is that you need to login and immediately reset your own username and password.
- Easy Navigation. All feature are accessible from the main Navigation form, and every window / feature returns to this point. So everything is easy to find, and you should never get lost. Trade:2:Plan has an easy, open, uncluttered interface design.
- Trade Calculator/s. The main Full Trade Calculator is designed help you position size for both long and short positions. It is broadly based on the 2% rule, ie., experienced traders advise never to put at risk more than 2% of your total trading capital on any one trade. The Full Trade Calculator takes your total trading capital and helps you work out how many of any given instrument to buy (or sell short) once you've provided the buy and stoploss prices. Once you have this information the Calculator gives you additional trade information such as trade cost, risk on the trade, your break even price, gross / net / clear return on the trade (whether profit or loss), % return on trade, and the risk / reward ratio of the trade. Once you've done your trade Calculations you can either go ahead with informed confidence or decide the trade is not worthwhile. The advantage of the Full Trade Calculator is that it forces you to make decisions about risk by setting a stoploss. Also, because it takes time to enter the information it's a deterant to impulsive trading. What seemed like a good trade may not be worth the risk.
- Trade Management. Trade:2:Plan has both long and short trade management facilities. This is where you enter your trade details once the trade has been opened on the market. The Trade Management facilities cater for three separate instruments, shares, options, and CFDs (based on direct market prices). End of Day closing prices are available for download each day. Once trades are closed (ie, when your position in a given stock returns to zero) it is automatically compiled, then is available for reporting purposes. Before entering trade details you can provide trading journal entries where you record the reasons for buying or selling a particular instrument. Within the trade management section (of the main Navigation form) you have Planning Notes where you can record your daily or weekly research notes, which you can then call up at any time for any date.
- Trade Reports. Trade:2:Plan can generate a variety of reports on all codes or selected codes. You can choose the dates you want reports to cover on any or all trading instruments, open, closed or both, long or short trades. You are given information such as total turnover, total trades, total brokerage, interest paid (long) or received (short), and of course profit / loss details. A full report will measure all this against your starting capital.
From the Company Details form you can also run reports on open / closed positions for any given company. Separate reports are generated for Dividends. As well as trades and dividends you can get a snapshot of your overall account through the Account form. This calculates your starting capital against, withdrawals and deposits, profits and losses, interest, brokerage and dividends all paid or recieved.
- Account Management. This is where you record withdrawals and deposits that effect your account balance and where you record your company dividend receipts (or payments if trading short). In addition you can monitor when dividends will be paid, which is useful especially for short trading if you don't want to PAY the dividend.
- Additional Information. This includes the facility to input your own trading business details, ASX company details, broker details. You can also record and list your trading rules. Two other helpful features are the ability to record, summarise and rate your favourite trading books, and your favourite trading related websites. Within your details you can browse for your charting program which then can be launched from the main Navigation form.
- Company Changes. If a company changes it's stock code or has a stock split Trade:2:Plan can make the appropriate changes.
Q. Who can Benefit from Trade:2:Plan?
A. Trade:2:Plan was designed and built by a trader for a trader (ie, me) and is consequently a useful tool for anyone who trades. It is the ideal starting program for new traders or those who've been trading for a while and don't currently have a satisfactory system for planning, recording and tracking their trading activities, and who want a simple, affordable share portfolio management solution.
Or, to take a step back ...
Q. Can I learn to trade using Trade:2:Plan?
A. Plan to Trade? - try Trade:2:Plan! it's the perfect training tool for anyone thinking about getting into trading. To see if trading is for you, use Trade:2:Plan to practice by paper trading with a realistic portfolio, reports, calculator, and trade management tools and resources. The demo gives you the first 2 trading weeks free, thereafter it's a once off investment of $29.90 that may save you $???.
The demo is the full program with a 14 day trial period. Try it and decide for yourself. Simple.
Q. What do I need in order to use it?
A. At this stage Trade:2:Plan is designed to run on PC's with Windows operating systems. It was built using Microsoft Access 2000, but the installer comes packaged with an Access 2000 Runtime Installer in case you don't have Access.
Q. What do you do with my information?
A. Before you download the program demo, you need to register with our website. All we require is your first name and an email address. This is used by you to enable logging in to the website, and by us solely for the purpose of contacting you when program updates or news is available. We do NOT pass your information on to any other party. For more information on this see our Privacy Policy.
Q. Why another Trading Program?
A. Yes ... good point! There's no shortage of similar trading programs "out there". What's the point of developing another one? Well, for me, it boiled down to a few simple things.
- Because it's simpler. Have you ever heard the expression, "It's like using a cannon to kill a fly"? Maybe it was just me but I found some other programs I used were a bit complicated, and more features than the average trader is likely to use. I just wanted a simple program to help plan and track my trading activity. Trade:2:Plan is simple.
- Because it does what I want. I've played with other similar programs and though I thought they had good features they didn't quite work the way I thought they should.
- Because it's cheaper. It was cheaper to build my own than buy someone else's. Also, I could build-in some nice feature that I find useful and I think other traders will to.
Q. How much does it cost?
A. By the time you get to this question I reckon you'll already know. But just in case: Trade:2:Plan is around the cost of just one trade, $29.90. I have deliberately made it affordable, not just because I want people to buy it, but because I want it to be excellent value for money. Sometimes you get what you pay for, sometimes you get more. To see what you would be getting for your money download the demo or check out the features.
Enjoy! Again, if you want to contact us you can register, then click on the help link.
Cheers
Ian
Admin :: Trade2Plan
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