We‘ve started to create some “how to“ video demos for the site. The first one is on setting up a screener and backtesting. Take a look by clicking on the “this flash movie” link in the getting started forum post called Stockworm stock screening .

We know a lot of you are old pros at the Stockworm tools so if there are any tips you might have we we‘d be interested to hear about them. Please give us your feedback along with suggestions for future demos. The next one we are planning is on simulations.

Thanks!

Many of you have noticed that we have updated our membership levels. In the past, we have offered ‘analyst‘ (free, very limited membership), ‘investor‘ (no custom strategies or simulations), and ‘investor plus‘ and ‘pro‘ (full-featured) memberships. We found that this array of membership levels was very confusing to our clients. Often a new member signed up for a level which didn‘t offer the features that they needed and they were frustrated.

The new membership levels are very simple: standard (full featured, equivalent to old investor plus) and pro (for professional investors). Both membership levels offer full-featured access to the site, so new members will have the opportunity to fully experience the Stockworm toolset. The old ‘analyst‘ level will be grandfathered for current analyst members but will not be offered to new members.

In addition to the membership level updates, we are offering new users a 14 day free trial, rather than the previous 30 day money-back guarantee. We hope that this will encourage more site visitors to try our toolset and to become members of this growing community!

In response to multiple user requests, we have added a new ‘historical high price filter‘ rule for screeners and strategies. This rule allows you to select stocks which are within a percentage range of their historical high price. For example, you can now select stocks which are currently trading within 90% and 100% of their 6 month high price.

For more information, please see the manual.

Our feed provider, Hemscott, has notified us that they are experiencing delays in delivering data files to their clients, including Stockworm. This means that the site data has not yet been updated to include changes from the 1/10/2008 trading day. Hemscott has not yet provided an estimate of when these files will be delivered.

We will update this news release as we receive more information.

UPDATE at 7:15am CST: all files have been received and we are currently updating our databases. We expect to have data updated by approximately 7:30am CST.

UPDATE at 7:26am CST: all data is up-to-date!

We‘d like to highlight a new rule which has been added for use with screeners and strategies: the ‘filter stocks by medians‘ rule. This rule allows you to filter your list of stocks based upon a comparison between the values for a selected stock data item (e.g. p/e, roa, etc.) and a selected median. Median choices include: market median (median for the market as a whole), industry median (median for the respective stock‘s industry) and list median (median for the current list of stocks).

The ‘list median‘ is a particularly interesting item because it allows you to segment the current list of stocks. For example, you can filter by ‘roa > list median‘, which only allow stocks with an roa greater than the median in the current list to pass the filter. This would be about 1/2 your current list of stocks. You could then apply a second list median if you wish to cut the list of stocks in half again. We‘ve also added a new custom filter function called ‘MEDIAN_IN_LIST‘ to parallel this functionality.

You can read more in the manual.