Thank you so much for using my Stock Tiles App! This is the first and currently (May 2014), the only Stock Quote and portfolio management mobile app that displays stock prices in tiles format, with intuitive background colors indicating rise and falls of the stock!
Here is a list of Q&A. Most simply operations such as entering stock symbols and bringing up charts and news are pretty intuitive and do not require explanation. But I get asked a lot about some advanced features such as multiple portfolio management, and Gain / Loss calculations.
Q: Where is the activation / payment view after re-installing / updates?
Usually, activation window only comes up when trial expires or after 300 usages. This becomes a problem if you already paid for a valid license key and want to re-install or install on a new device. There is an Easter Egg feature that lets you bypass this restriction:
Enter "Screenulator is genius!" in the main symbol entry in portfolio view, and Go. this will open up the payment / license activation view. Enter your license there to remove ads.
Q: How to create your own portfolio?
1. Open the app, it should show the tiles view. If not, go to tiles view by pressing back button.
2. Tap on "..." or menu button, and select "New Portfolio". It will warn you about current portfolio will be deleted. It simply means if the currently open portfolio needs to be saved before you overwrite it with a blank new one. So save it if you care about it, then ignore the warning.
3. Now you have a blank slate portfolio, with empty view, no tiles, no symbols. Enter symbols one at a time to populate your new portfolio
4. After you are done entering symbols, do not forget to save it, but "Save portfolio" command from menu. Make sure give it a unique but easy to remember name in case you want to manage multiple portfolios or export to computer.
Q: How to enter positions?
Long press on a tile representing your stock, a menu will popup. Select "Trade"
Q: Where are the portfolios stored?
Each portfolio is saved as a ".ptf" file in your phones external storage (SD card)'s "screenulator" folder or sub-directory. Each device can have a different path. My HTC ONE looks something like "/storage/sdcard0/screenulator"
Q: How to save / manage multiple portfolios?
By using "Open portfolio" and "Save portfolio" commands from the menu.
Q: How to quickly create a large portfolio with lots of symbols
If you want to add a portfolio say over 100 symbols, it could be quite tiresome to enter symbols one at a time on a tap screen keypad. You can export your portfolio into a symbo list in CSV format (each symbol separated by a comma). Please make sure all stock symbols are in lower case letters and uses Yahoo Finance convention. For example, class B shares appends "-b" after the symbol. "brk-b" for Berkshire Hathaway class B. Foreign market shares appends ".xx" where xx is the market abreviation. For example ".to" for TSX, and ".ns" for NSE stocks. The content of the file should look something like:
msf,ibm,brk-b,trp.to,fxc,tsla,aapl,jnj,prta,3mindia.ns,goog
The CSV file containing your symbol name should have file extension .csv and file name should not contain special characters or empty spaces. Connect your device to computer, copy the .csv file to the SD card's "screenulator" folder where all other portfolio files are stored.
After you have copied the .csv file into "screenulator" folder, import into the app via menu - "Import Symbols List" command.
Q: What do alert ball colors represent?
Green - last trade price is greater than alert high price.
Red - last trade price is less than alert low price.
Yellow - days range exceeds either alert low or high prices.
Q: How to auto-refresh quotes?
You can set portfolio view to refresh all of its quote at specified time intervals by long press the refresh button. A dialog will prompts you for number of seconds to auto-refresh. To stop the auto-refresh, enter 0, or press "Stop". You can also change auto-refresh intervals from Settings view.
Q: How to import a large portfolio with positions info
If you want to add a portfolio say over 100 symbols, it could be quite tiresome to enter symbols one at a time on a tap screen keypad. I use Excel program to create the portfolio list and export it to .csv (comma separated file) with double pipes as separator. Then rename the file to .ptf (portfolio file) and connect your device to computer, copy the .ptf file to the SD card's "screenulator" folder where all other portfolio files are stored.
Here is what you need to understand and do, step by step
1. First you have to understand portfolio file format. They have extension ".ptf" and stored in your phone's external storage (SD card)'s screenulator directory.
".ptf" file are formated as follows:
symbol||position size (num. shares)||purchase price||alert low price||alert high price||time added||last trade price||last price change
Each line represents a stock or tile
If you do just want to add symbol and none of the other trading info, just do something like:
ibm||0.0||0.0||0.0||0.0||0||0.0||0.0
If you do just want to add symbol with positions, just do something like:
ibm||200||90.4||0.0||0.0||0||0.0||0.0
Which means you bought 200 shares of IBM at 90.4
2. Open excel, and write the symbols in the first column, and append trading info in the next 5 columns. If nothing, just put 0's
3. I use double pipes "||" as separator because it is cleaner than commas. You have to change Windows settings to allow Excel to export it with double pipes format. You can do this by going to Control Panel –> Region and Language, and then click the Additional settings button on the bottom... Now look very closely at the “List separator” item, which normally has a comma in the field, change it to double pipes "||".
4. Back in Excel, select Save As - select ".csv" in save as type box. This will create your desired file format compatible with .ptf file.
5. Rename the result file from step 4 from .csv to .ptf without altering the content. The name of the file will be your portfolio name
6. Connect your device, copy the file to your SD card's screenulator folder.
If you have questions not answered here, please contact me at yue.j.qi@gmail.com