Introduction
NillaHedge is a set of tools built on a common database that allows you to manage your stock and option holdings, analyze option issues, explore hedging strategies, and compare how interest rate changes affect option issues and your portfolio of option positions. Following is a brief introduction to the capabilities of this Pocket-PC application software, starting with an overview of the main menus.
NillaHedge is not a document-centric application, which means upon invocation all you’ll see is the main menu and a blank screen. Switcher and similar utilities typically only include applications with open document windows in their list of running applications - the blank window gives Switcher something to find. If you don’t have Switcher or it’s equivalent, a tray icon will be available whenever NillaHedge is not the front most application.
The Menus
When you first open NillaHedge,
you’ll see the menu at right.
File Menu
NillaHedge uses a database to store instrument definitions and portfolio positions that you create while using it. All instrument definitions and portfolio positions created are immediately committed to the database, so there’s no need to save at the end of a session. Just quit.
Open Database
Given the personal nature of Pocket-PCs, NillaHedge assumes that there is only one user and one database - it opens a database in a default directory upon invocation so you can get right to work. The only time you’ll need to use Open Database is after you have previously closed the database. This menu item is only enabled when the database is currently closed.
Close Database
If you can’t choose database directories, you might ask why include Open Database and Close Database at all? The answer is that ActiveSync won’t sync open files and an open database will probably have several files open. Therefore, if you ever want your database backed up, you can use Close Database to close it manually and then reopen it after ActiveSync has finished. This menu item is only enabled when the database is currently open.
Edit Menu
The Edit menu is the entry point for creating and subsequently modifying instrument definitions and positions based on those definitions. Supported instruments include stocks and vanilla stock options (i.e. puts and calls). It also provides the entry point to the NillaHedge’s two preferences dialogs. All Edit menu items are always enabled.
Stocks
The Stock Definition Dialog is a structured view of the data that defines a stock to the tools in NillaHedge, including its market price, volatility, and dividends.
Options
The Option Definition Dialog is a structured view of the data that defines a vanilla stock option to the tools in NillaHedge, including its market price, strike price, expiration date, underlying stock symbol, and whether it’s a put or a call option.
Positions
The Positions dialog is your entry point for creating a position in a option or stock issue. It captures the purchase date, number of units in the position, and the cost of the position. It also captures a ‘Note’ field, allowing you to annotate a transaction number or a source of cash for the transaction, etc.
It also displays any positions previously created for the specified option or stock issue, including purchase date, number of shares or options, the original cost of the position, its current market value, the capital gain (loss), any dividend income that would have been generated since the purchase date, the net gain (capital gain plus income), the annualized yield that the net gain represents, and any note you may have entered when you created the position. If the underlying issue is an option, the income column is replaced by the exercise value of the options in the position.