V. 12:14 (580-583): ProfitCenter Version 2.217 by John Sweeney

ProfitCenter Version 2.217

by John Sweeney

Obscuring one end of the STOCKS & COMMODITIES functional test group work area in its new quarters are a pair of constantly whirring IBM-compatible computers (one the datafeed and the other ProfitCenter itself) taking data off a satellite feed and stuffing it into a huge database with prices on everything from the price of the shares of the Australian-New Zealand Bank on the Bombay exchange to Tokyo International Financial Futures Exchange Eurodollar interest rate futures. If it's traded somewhere in the world, be it cash, futures or options, a number of systems—Reuters, Bloomberg, Telerate or Knight-Ridder—is likely to have pricing on it. ProfitCenter is Knight-Ridder's package entry in the institutional trading sweepstakes.

What Knight-Ridder offers is a turnkey package that does nearly everything with no installation or support worries. It can't replace custom in-house analytics, especially involving the arcane mathematics of probability and derivative valuation, but should you seek anything other than that it's all here for a single price:

• 24-hour, world-wide datafeed

• Huge historical database on your desk and/or available by download

• Immense variety of quote screen displays with fairly fast switching

• Flexible, vivid charting

• Complete array of publicly available studies

• On-screen formula definition of new symbols.

While Reuters and Telerate are undoubtedly the world's leading datafeeds, they historically have provided "pages" — fixed-format displays with no capability for customization. Both have been slow about using the power of the personal computer to rearrange and display data in a format that customers want. Now all the major data services are also trying to provide hardware and software to reprocess the data they sell you. Count on $1,000 to $2,000 per month per terminal for this level of service.