The system is designed to either track a simple Stock List or your own Portfolio. If you don't already have a portfolio or stock list, it's easy to set one up and only takes minutes!

Max portfolios per screen name: 20
Max tickers per portfolio: 400
Views: 4 (more later!)
Max characters in portfolio name: 20

Change the name, order the tickers the way you want them, have it refresh as often as you select and view it the way you want. Our system is fast, secure and easy to use. It handles different currencies based on where a stock trades and allows multiple entries of the same ticker for multiple entry points or DRIPs. Want a hard copy? Each portfolio view provides a printable version formatted to look better and work in most printers.

Portfolios and Tickers
You can create up to 20 different portfolios for each Screen Name or UserID. You don't have to own stock to use it - the most popular way to use this system is to create a stock watch list to track several ticker symbols of your choice.

So go for it! Create a portfolio for your IRA. Make another for your personal 401(k). Build another to track a list of high-tech stocks to follow. Make still another to monitor your mutual funds separately. The opportunities are endless and left to your own creativity. Come on--we dare you to use them all!

You can add stocks, funds or indices into your portfolio from the Detailed Quote page, from the Edit Portfolio page or even from the Add Ticker box below the Portfolio. You can simply enter tickers to build a watch list, or you can add the additional information to track your holdings, number of shares, purchase price and purchase date. Go ahead, pile on the tickers! Can you really use 400 tickers? In 20 portfolios? Track 8,000 stocks with one Screen Name? You can if you want to!

What's That Ticker Symbol?
Got several tickers in your portfolio but can't remember what they stand for? Hover your mouse over the ticker symbol and the name of that issue will pop up.

Different Views
We now provide four ways to view your portfolio. First is called Current Price view. Current Price view is most popular when used for a simple Stock List providing several quotes all at once.

The second view, Portfolio Value view, displays the same tickers like a traditional portfolio number of shares, purchase price, current value, change from original price and so forth. We have enhanced this look by providing more information to make it more useful.

The third view, Today's Performance view, is much like Portfolio Value view, except that tells you how much you made or lost today. You can see the gain or loss per ticker and overall for the most recent day's trading (or intra-day if the markets are open), as well as the gain or loss since you entered your positions in your portfolio.

Fundamentals view gives you the complete name for the issue, plus many pieces of information such as the Price-Earnings (P/E) ratio, number of shares, market capitalization and so on.

You have a drop-down selector to choose between the four views on every portfolio. If you like seeing a portfolio in a particular way, that same drop-down allows you to set that view as the default way of seeing that portfolio. After setting the default, you can come back later to see that portfolio and you'll see it the way you chose to. Otherwise, you'll see it the way you last saw it.

In the future, we will add even more ways to view your portfolio, giving you more flexibility in how you look at your lists.

Sort Them Your Way
Any time you enter a list of tickers into our Portfolio system, it will sort them in alphabetical order.

But you're not stuck with it that way: you can place the tickers in the order of your own choosing.

Contrarians: Enter Your Shorts
Our system has ability to enter short sales into the portfolio. Simply enter a negative quantity of shares for any shorts you hold.

If you don't know what "selling short" is, don't attempt it as it is one of the most risky ways of investing out there.

More than Just the U.S.
In addition to U.S. stocks and funds, you can get quotes from Canada and the U.K. The Portfolio system will automatically sort your holdings by currency, tracking U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars and British pence, pounds sterling and even some Eurodollar issues traded in London separately.

Combined Portfolio Report
What good is it for us to allow you to set up a bunch of portfolios without giving you a report on all of them combined? We thought the same, so we've created a powerful Combined Portfolio Report that lists all of your portfolios with totals of their values. If you have a 401(k), an IRA and an investment portfolio, you're one click away from seeing them all totaled together.

Don't want them all added up? No problem! You will be able to easily pull one or more of your portfolios out of this report with a click. Say you have an investment account that you watch over for your parents. Click to remove that portfolio from the Combined Report, and you'll see the summary of the remaining reports. Click again to put it back into the report. We've designed this new report to be easy and flexible.

You Pick The Names
Call your Portfolios anything you want! Get creative with the names that you give them, using any combination of letters, numbers, spaces and selected punctuation characters*, up to 20 characters. Get creative! Have fun! Or be serious-call them anything you like. "Dad's Dog House Fund," "My Future Millions" or "Bill's Acme 401(k)."

*Characters that you can use are -, *, $, /,.,( ),: and '.

If you used our Portfolio or Stock List before (and we bet you have!), you can rename your new portfolios any time you like and as often as you like. Click on the Edit Portfolio link not only to add or remove tickers but also to change the name of the Portfolio.

Analyze Your Portfolios
Just like now, you will be able to run powerful analysis on the tickers in your Portfolio using the Telescan rating system, providing over/undersold information as well as Telescan rankings.

Don't Know the Ticker?
We have always a ticker lookup, and we're not about to drop that. While the LOOKUP links have always taken you to our ticker lookup system, the new Portfolio adds a new twist by providing a pop-up ticker lookup system built into the portfolio edit page. So if you're building a new portfolio but don't know a ticker, one click will pop up an easy system to provide you with the ticker.

1. Enter the Keyword "Portfolio" in your CompuServe software to go there.
2. In the Money & Business Channel, you can click on the Portfolio link on the right side.
3. Click on the Stock Quotes button in your client software.

The next time you access your Portfolio, it will show you the last one that you were viewing, the last time you accessed your portfolio. So if you decide to view a Portfolio named "My 401(k) Plan" and then leave the system, the next time you go back to your Portfolio, it will once again show you "My 401(k) Plan" with updated pricing information based on the activity in the stock market.

First is via the Portfolio Edit page:

1. Once in the Portfolio area, simply click on the "Create New Portfolio" link. Or click on the drop-down box titled "Select a Portfolio" and choose "Create New Portfolio." Both will take you to the Create a Portfolio area.
2. Enter the name for that portfolio at the top in the Portfolio Name box. You can name a portfolio using any combination of numbers, letters, spaces and selected characters, up to 20 characters total. In addition to basic alphabetical letters and numbers, special characters that you can use are -, *, $, /,.,( ),:, ' and (space).
3. Add up to 10 additional tickers of your choice and click on Save.
4. You can add up to 10 additional tickers at a time using the Edit Portfolio function as described below under "How to Add Tickers to a Portfolio,"

You can also build a new portfolio from a single stock or fund quote:

1. Get a stock or fund quote.
2. Once you have a single stock or fund price quote, click on the "Add to Portfolio" link and select "Add to New Portfolio" in the Select a Portfolio drop-down box.
3. Enter the additional information, if you wish, and click on Save.

While not required, you can also add number of shares, price per share and the date. Naturally, if you're just setting up a list of stocks or funds to watch, this optional information is unnecessary.

1. Select the Portfolio that you want to delete and load it into view.
2. Click on Edit Portfolio.
3. Once on the Portfolio Edit Page, simply click on the red link titled "Delete Portfolio." It will confirm that you really want to delete the portfolio. If you select "Yes," that portfolio is gone forever.

Please note that you can delete all of the stock and fund tickers from of a portfolio, but that portfolio will remain on the system and will not be deleted. It will just be an empty portfolio.

1. Select the Portfolio that you want to manipulate and load it into view.
2. Click on Edit Portfolio.
3. Click the Sort button to launch the sorting pop-up control.
4. On the Sorting pop-up, select a ticker and click the up or down arrows to move the tickers into the order of your own choosing.
5. When you're finished, click the Save button on the sorting pop-up to save your changes to the edit page.
6. Click the Save button on the Edit page to complete your changes.

Note that if you have tickers in different currencies in the same portfolio (such as U.S. and Canadian dollars), the portfolio items will always stay sorted by their currency first. Then they will be sorted in the relative order that you have selected within their respective currencies.

1. Select the Portfolio that you want to rename.
2. Click on the "Edit Portfolio" link.
3. Once on the Portfolio Edit Page, edit the name in the Portfolio Name box at the top. You can use letters, numbers, spaces and these characters: -, *, $, /,.,( ),: and '.
4. Click the Save button to save the new name.

The first way is to use the Portfolio Edit page:

1. Select the Portfolio that you want to add tickers to.
2. Click on the "Edit Portfolio" link.
3. Once on the Portfolio Edit Page, simply enter more tickers into the ticker boxes.
4. Click Save to save them into that portfolio. You can enter 10 tickers at a time.

The second way is via the detailed quote page:

1. Get a price quote on the ticker you're interested in by using the quote box found throughout the Personal Finance channel.
2. Once you have that quote, simply click on the "Add to Portfolio" link to add them to your portfolio.
3. Select which portfolio you want the ticker added to, then click the Add button to save it in that portfolio.

The final way appears at the bottom of any Portfolio:

1. At the bottom of the Portfolio, add tickers into the "Add Ticker Symbols" box, separated by commas.
2. Click the Add button to add them to the current Portfolio. This is a fast way to add a string of tickers into a stock watch list. Note that this will only add stock or fund tickers - it will not add information such as number of shares or purchase price. You can, of course, add that information via the Edit Portfolio function.

1. First, select the Portfolio that you want to edit using the Select a Portfolio drop-down selector.
   
2. Click on the "Edit Portfolio" link.
   
   • To edit an item once you are in the Portfolio Edit Page, simply edit the information on the ticker that interests you-change the price, number of shares or date purchased.
     
   • To delete a ticker (and its shares, if any) from that portfolio, click on the Delete checkbox on the right-hand side of the Edit Portfolio page for that ticker.
     

3. Once you've made all your changes, click the Save button to save your changes.

Note that the portfolio system can track multiple purchases of stocks at different prices. For example, you could buy 25 shares of IBM at $95 a share on 11/15/99 and another 10 shares of IBM at $110 a share on 6/1/00. The Portfolio system can track both entries as separate items for you, but will subtotal them as well.

1. Select the Portfolio that you want to edit.
2. Click on the link titled Edit Portfolio.
3. Once on the Portfolio Edit Page, edit the purchase price field for that ticker.
4. Click the Save button to save your changes.

The fundamental thing to know about a split is that it results in no change whatsoever in the overall value or in the original purchase amount of your holding when it occurs. Naturally, once trading begins after the split, the value of your holding will move with the market.

For example, say that Intel (INTC) plans to have a 2-for-1 split. For every share you had before the split, you would have two shares after the split. At the same time, your purchase price would be cut in half. If you had 25 shares of Intel purchased at $60 per share before a 2-for-1 split, you would have 50 shares of Intel with a purchase price of $30 per share after the split. Either way, you still have $1,500 invested in Intel.

With a 2-for-1 split, take the number of shares and multiply by 2, then take the purchase price you paid and divide by 2.

With a 3-for-1 split, you would triple your shares but divide your original purchase price by 3.

The math works the same for all other splits-and your cost basis: The total you spent buying the stock remains the same.

If you previously used the ticker symbol $CASH or $$CASH in our older system, that entry has already been moved into the cash entry box for you.

Note that most Money Market Funds have valid ticker symbols that you can enter, and most of them end with "XX". If you know the symbol for your money market fund, simply enter that and the number of shares and it will be tracked for you with the correct $1.00 per share value.

From any Portfolio, click on the "Select a Portfolio:" drop-down selector, choose "Summary-All Portfolios." and click the Go button to the side. Note that this report performs a great deal of number-crunching and may take longer than a single portfolio, depending on how many portfolios you have and how many tickers are in them.

1. Click the red Remove link to take out a portfolio from the summary.
2. You'll then find that removed portfolio at the bottom, out of the summary.

If you want to put a portfolio back into the Summary, select the portfolio at the bottom of the page and click the Add link next to it to put it back into the report.

Here's how to harmlessly clear out your cache for AOL and CompuServe 2000 (version 4-6) users:

1. Click Access and Preferences at the top of the software.
2. Then click on the "WWW" icon [or "Internet Properties (www)" depending on your software] to view your Internet properties.
3. On the General tab, in Temporary Internet Files area, click the Delete Files button in the center of the window. This clears the cache in your browser and nothing else.
4. Click OK.

Here's how to harmlessly clear out your Internet Explorer cache:

1. Click Tools and Internet Options at the top of the software.
2. On the General tab, in Temporary Internet Files area, click the Delete Files button in the center of the window. This clears the cache in your browser and nothing else.
3. Click OK.

Something else to check - the size of your internet explorer cache. We have discovered a situation in many computers that had installed a few versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer where the browser cache was set to a huge size that the software doesn't seem to handle well. While you have the Internet Properties window open, click on the Settings button for the Temporary Internet Files to see the size allocated for your cache. The amount of space you allocate is up to you, but the Personal Finance team recommends a setting between 14 and 28 MB. If you discover that yours is set at a very large number, such as 400 or 800 MB, setting the cache to a smaller size will not only improve performance but also free up an enormous amount of hard drive on your computer. Once you've made your adjustment(s), click OK.