Are they worth the money? Most are, yes. And this insight is probably a better example of why - half of the software out there is excellent charting software, which in order to use, you MUST fill in values on indicators if you want them analyses in any way (even manually). So the question here is, 'do i have the knowledge of what values go where and for what indicator to make my charts accurate?' If not, buying a raw charting package to learn how to read things, is a self defeating purpose - you lose from the moment you buy it if learning was the point to buying it...what indicators will you use? Answer: the ones you've learned to use, which you would have definitely back tested for accuracy and usefulness (then you would have to go and do the same thing for all your stocks and indicators on each stock would have differing values.
It does sound like what you are looking for is: a) preset and changeable indicator and analysis data values b) advanced drawing/plotting capabilities for manual visual analysis (head and shoulder patterns etc) c) you probably wont regret getting something which also lets you download and see ASX announcments as a main feature in your software, incase you want to have the tool to be alerted to say every company that gets a 3B announcemnt today...so fundamental analysis will be delivered to you as well. d) most of the software is excel based and you will be able to transfer/shadow/parallel your real trading acount within your software - but you will have to enter you trades manually, as the software will never ever be linked to your trading account in a 'stand alone' tool like this. For eg, you buy 1000 AMP shares, the software has no idea unless you enter the exact details. (Some sotware can also then generate a graph or bar of your portfolio and let you go macro for taxation simplicity). e) You may want something which you can assimilate into your life, beyond the pc. Ie, for eg a program which will alert you via mobile phone sms of say, letting you know when your stop loss trigger realises its 12% loss. Or when you los 20% of any clear profit you are making...
And Paritech have a good name for a good reason and i think they even offer (at a separate cost) different sets of data values for indicators and various other things, which you then transfer accross to your software files. -In a situation like this, you would have obviously purchased some 'virgin' grade software and you would be adding the data that you need right from the start and as you find whats relevant to your intentions. And to iillustrate further, many of the software wont even let you touch the data value for say MACD lines or exponential moving averages on AMP -you get what they prgrammed it with and thats it (B;lack box, non transparent, non variable).
You are welcome and I will revisit this thread in case i can offer any more ideas, because it really is impotrtant to get it right and minimse workload. In the mid of the DotCon boom, i read something like this: information is power and more access to free flowing information is more power. Aim to get your info fast, accurately and without having to do so much work as to have missed utilising the m,ost useful features the software has. In other words, spending time doing things manually on software must be time managed, or you will become a slave to the software, which your family will definitely not appreciate you for. These things will smother your routines (and time travel will become possible, you will know what i mean when isay its easy to miss a days sleep when you are really tearing back thorugh layers of info because you have it there and you are not searching seaching searching - some software is good enough to do secretarial collation work in this regard with its fundamental analysis capabilities being very advanced at pigeon holing for you) for the first 6 months, so get a book on time management lol ;-)
