Automatic MOS Calculator Watchlist for Microsoft Excel --- *Temporarily Offline*

[Justin]

I've been awful quiet as of late, and I feel that I owe you all an explanation for this. I wanted to take a moment to address a few things here that I believe are on the minds of many, so please read on.

First and foremost, just in case anyone is wondering, I have absolutely no intentions of closing this board. I think it would be a crime to disband this collective pool of knowledge from what is now over six thousand individuals - all in just a few short years! I remember when I built the forum it was in hopes of making contact with a handful of folks I met at a Phil Town rally. In less than 2 years we have grown to over 6000 strong. That, to me, is just astounding; and beyond the wildest of my expectations. I am truly grateful to you all for being here today. No matter what, this website, this community is here to stay.

Our earliest members may remember when I mentioned that my primary line of work is in the pest control industry. More to the point, this is a family business that my parents began back in 1990. In this line of work, customers on the lower end of the income spectrum are the lifeblood of the company. Too many are feeling the pressures of our economy in various ways, and have been forced to separate the "haves" from the "have nots" in order to make ends meet. When you've had a customer for fifteen years who is forced to cancel service for no reason other than "financial woes"...well I don't know that I've experienced a feeling quite like it. In light of these facts, and in order to adapt to this new environment, I chose to devote a much larger portion of my time in helping our company continue to grow, so that it can continue to provide for my family.

On the Automatic Margin of Safety Calculator:

I have to admit folks, that maintaining this project is a TON of work. For the uninitiated, this project frequently consumes countless hours of time, which I consider the most valuable of resources. It wasn't long after the donations tapered off and became more of an eyesore than anything else. My exhaustion began to mount and naturally I had to reconsider where my time was most valuable.

Some time last year I had toyed with the idea of migrating the spreadsheet over to a subscription based platform. I chose not to pursue this course of action at that time, due to my primary line of work taking precedence. I am certainly not interested in receiving a payment for services I'm unable to provide and therefore chose to shelf the idea until my these time constraints loosened up. Yet for the sake of planning for the future of ROIC, I am interested to hear your thoughts on the following:

I had considered offering full access to the spreadsheet with prompt support to those who have chosen to sign up for the subscription based service, and offer limited access with little to no support for non subscribers. For me, this would make it much easier to come home from a long days work and devote my personal time to doing more work.

The cost of membership would really hinge on the level of interest generated within the community. The more members who are willing to help defray the cost of maintaining the spreadsheet, the lower the subscription rate should be. I feel somewhat comfortable in initially setting the bar around $10 or $20 dollars per month. Again, the purpose of the subscription to pay for my time in helping ensure that the spreadsheet is running at it's optimal performance.

There are still many things that I don't fully understand with Microsoft Excel. However I want you all to know that I would absolutely pledge to take the time to further educate myself in order to have a more "3 dimensional" understanding of the software and it's capabilities, (and its quirks!), given that I have your support. This means new bugs could be addressed faster, new features could be implemented, and that the spreadsheet could continue to evolve just as it has over the past 2 years.

I need to know what you guys think about this. Please feel free to contact me by private message or leave feedback in this thread for others to see.

Thank you all for your patience, your understanding and your commitment to the community.


Justin

[bfs]

I think what you would like is absolute honesty from someone who has come to really appreciate the time that was put in to the calculator, in other words no B.S.

I would not pay a monthly fee for the calculator in its current form. I feel once a substantial watch list has been created it would not make financial sense to pay a monthly fee when I'm only looking up a handful of companies a month at this point. However a $20-$40 yearly fee I would do.

What I would pay a monthly fee for is if somehow the indicators could be incorporated. That is what consumes most of my time now, besides new company research.

I would suggest perhaps the eTikr excel software model if a yearly fee would not be enough, I'm sure your aware of there software? Perhaps advertising like they use?

[jmcanoy1860]

I agree with several opinions already expressed. I love the idea and it's ease of use. I would be more than willing to pay for it once it were to become completely functional. (I've had several glitches which made my results less trustworthy). I think that there are people out there who would also be willing to pay for this subscription service other than those on this site. Think of everyone who follows Buffett, the time saving you would be making available (sometimes I just use your sheet to look at the information). I would enjoy seeing a MOS screener to find the safest investments.
Keep me informed if you keep going,
thanks again
peace

[mystic]

I have been reading books on the stock market for years and have never been very serious but have always ended the year on a + side.. i was at books a million browsing around and stumbled on Rule #1, i read a few pages and I have literally been stuck to the book ever since. I think I finished it in about 3 days as this stuff made a lot of sense to me and really clicked.. i haven't tested any of this stuff out yet but I am picking up a copy of The Intelligent Investor and hopefully by the time I finish it I will have the confidence to buy some businesses.

Anyhow, I never had a chance to play with your MOS Calculator simply because every stock I put in gives me an error and I have found that is because you took it offline. If I had a chance to play with this excel document than I would possibly be interested in paying for your monthly service but its hard to decide when I haven't been able to try it in the first place

Hope this helps and thanks so much for this community. I am learning so much and hope to take this as far as I can

[stroker70]

If your Automatic Mos Calculator was to allow for Canadian ticker symbols ( ie: BA.UN,REI.UN,FTS, etc.) That would be worth something to myself,and I would be willing to pay a monthly or yearly fee.

[pp4x4]

Originally Posted by Justin

I've been awful quiet as of late, and I feel that I owe you all an explanation for this. I wanted to take a moment to address a few things here that I believe are on the minds of many, so please read on.

First and foremost, just in case anyone is wondering, I have absolutely no intentions of closing this board. I think it would be a crime to disband this collective pool of knowledge from what is now over six thousand individuals - all in just a few short years! I remember when I built the forum it was in hopes of making contact with a handful of folks I met at a Phil Town rally. In less than 2 years we have grown to over 6000 strong. That, to me, is just astounding; and beyond the wildest of my expectations. I am truly grateful to you all for being here today. No matter what, this website, this community is here to stay.

Our earliest members may remember when I mentioned that my primary line of work is in the pest control industry. More to the point, this is a family business that my parents began back in 1990. In this line of work, customers on the lower end of the income spectrum are the lifeblood of the company. Too many are feeling the pressures of our economy in various ways, and have been forced to separate the "haves" from the "have nots" in order to make ends meet. When you've had a customer for fifteen years who is forced to cancel service for no reason other than "financial woes"...well I don't know that I've experienced a feeling quite like it. In light of these facts, and in order to adapt to this new environment, I chose to devote a much larger portion of my time in helping our company continue to grow, so that it can continue to provide for my family.

On the Automatic Margin of Safety Calculator:

I have to admit folks, that maintaining this project is a TON of work. For the uninitiated, this project frequently consumes countless hours of time, which I consider the most valuable of resources. It wasn't long after the donations tapered off and became more of an eyesore than anything else. My exhaustion began to mount and naturally I had to reconsider where my time was most valuable.

Some time last year I had toyed with the idea of migrating the spreadsheet over to a subscription based platform. I chose not to pursue this course of action at that time, due to my primary line of work taking precedence. I am certainly not interested in receiving a payment for services I'm unable to provide and therefore chose to shelf the idea until my these time constraints loosened up. Yet for the sake of planning for the future of ROIC, I am interested to hear your thoughts on the following:

I had considered offering full access to the spreadsheet with prompt support to those who have chosen to sign up for the subscription based service, and offer limited access with little to no support for non subscribers. For me, this would make it much easier to come home from a long days work and devote my personal time to doing more work.

The cost of membership would really hinge on the level of interest generated within the community. The more members who are willing to help defray the cost of maintaining the spreadsheet, the lower the subscription rate should be. I feel somewhat comfortable in initially setting the bar around $10 or $20 dollars per month. Again, the purpose of the subscription to pay for my time in helping ensure that the spreadsheet is running at it's optimal performance.

There are still many things that I don't fully understand with Microsoft Excel. However I want you all to know that I would absolutely pledge to take the time to further educate myself in order to have a more "3 dimensional" understanding of the software and it's capabilities, (and its quirks!), given that I have your support. This means new bugs could be addressed faster, new features could be implemented, and that the spreadsheet could continue to evolve just as it has over the past 2 years.

I need to know what you guys think about this. Please feel free to contact me by private message or leave feedback in this thread for others to see.

Thank you all for your patience, your understanding and your commitment to the community.


Justin

Justin,

I been trying to use your tools for awhile and yet it still is very unstable. I consistently get DIV/O errors everytime I enter quotes such BNI. These errros come the historical P/E errors, which come from the price ratios being NA. I understand your frustration, but at this time its unreasonable to charge a fee for a very unstable product.

[Justin]

Thank you for all your feedback. I may not be able to respond to all of your private messages, but I assure you your comments have been and continue to be taken into careful consideration in preparation for the next phase of the Margin of Safety Calculator. I am working toward a solution that I believe may address the concerns we all share and I’d like to get some feedback to see if I’m heading in the right direction.

I’ve been keeping in contact with a firm who specializes in developing and maintaining highly specialized applications for the web. I’m led to believe that this firm has experience in working with similar projects, and that this experience could be extremely beneficial when considering how to go about streamlining this tool.

The MOS Calculator could be migrated over to a 100% web-based platform. This means that it would no longer matter what version, or even if you have Microsoft Excel. In fact, it is reasonable to believe the tool would work for Mac users as well, so that should make quite a few happy!

Moving the software to a web based platform would require us to rebuild the actual coding of the spreadsheet from the ground up. Though a daunting task, it gives us a unique opportunity to consider additional features not seen in the spreadsheet for Excel. Without the indirect restrictions of the Excel software, really the sky is the limit.

For example, we should be able to analyze a given range of stocks in the market to determine the eligibility of the business as a candidate for a Rule #1 investment. We could then automate the process and perhaps even provide a means of scheduling periodic scans to seek changes in the data at a given time interval.

I’ve also relayed the interest many of you have expressed on including some sort of watchlist similar to one we carried some years back. For the uninitiated, the watchlist was one slick little tool that pretty much brought the Excel spreadsheet to its knees. It was coded to retrieve so much data that sometimes it could take 30 minutes or longer to refresh all the data requested! For obvious reasons we eventually had to pull the plug on the watchlist, but it has not been forgotten.

I will also seek compatibility with stock tickers from markets outside the US, as this certainly shouldn’t be a problem under the new platform. Under this new platform, we could replicate most if not all of the features of what made the spreadsheet so exciting over the years. By liberating ourselves from the clutches of Microsoft Excel, and by getting rid of all the bloated excess code, we can create a fast, flexible and efficient tool designed to provide consistently accurate data with an heavy emphasis on Rule #1 investment principles.

I'm looking for your feedback on this. Are we headed in the right direction with this? Is this a project you can support? Can you think of additional features you’d like to have at your disposal? Once we know how to proceed we can get started right away.

Warmest Regards,

Justin Brand
admin@roicommunity.com

[drsmartz]

Justin - have you ever considered running the MOS calculator as an open source project? I know amongst your 6000 users that some know Excel at a professional level. Probably some of THOSE people would be willing to maintain the XLS as part of a team, posting updates to this site.

The construction of the XLS is crystal clear to me, and I have successfully made adjustments to it to improve my results (adding more sites for alternate sources of data, etc). Perhaps your efforts, whatever you have time for, could be in managing the team and ensuring maintenance and quality control of the XLS rather than doing the grunt work of the XLS itself. That's the beauty of open source - you contribute what you have time for. And when you get in a time crunch, likely someone else from the team will be able to pick up the slack.

All we'd need is a group of folks to sign up, and a collaboration tool we could use to coordinate versions of the XLS. Some people would update the XLS, and others, if they wanted to pitch in but don't know Excel that well, could still contribute by testing the XLS and posting bug reports.

I've never started an open source project before - anyone know of good web-based tools to handle versioning and bug tracking?

[airsoftwisconsin]

Hello Justin
Because I travel a lot I prefer a web based tool as I would not need to update every computer, and load the program or updates to every computer I have the program on.
But that is me.

[Hudman]

Justin,

A web-based tool seems to be the perfect solution. Ease of use and maintenance mean a more successful outcome for everyone.

The cost becomes the larger question though. Any idea how much?

Wayne "The Hudman"