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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: straight life who wrote (35936)	12/4/2000 12:23:52 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

straight life, There is a huge difference between creating your own spreadsheet and using a spreadsheet file created by someone else. Learning how to create a spreadsheet is simple but will be time-consuming the first few times. --Mike Buckley

To: straight life who wrote (35936)	12/4/2000 12:29:50 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 54805

straight life, << I wanted MS WORD, so I had to take MS Excel to get it (through MS Office) >> MS Word can be purchased stand alone, but a real good value is MS Works V6 which contains (I believe) the full edition of Word for $50, or the Works Suite for $95. The Suite includes: - Microsoft Word 2000 - Microsoft Works 6.0 - Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2001 - Microsoft Money 2001 - Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 - Microsoft Streets & Trips 2001 - Microsoft Outlook Express - Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 Works V6 bundles a decent spreadsheet (native Excel file format) as well as a database, calendar, address book, & e-mail tools. My most indispensable MS Office book is "Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2000", by Ed Bott, and Woody Leonhard. amazon.com It is aimed at Office power users but can make a power user out of a beginner quickly. It has 8 chapters on Excel, and a great CD-ROM for Word power users. << good book for the tech and/or math challenged among us >> Being very math (and Excel) challenged myself, my most frequently referenced Excel book is "Teach Yourself Microsoft Excel 2000 VISUALLY". amazon.com << DCF-analysis-through-spreadsheet instruction >> For this you really need either a spreadsheet template or worksheet (with formulas set up) or the formulas. Someone should be able to supply one or the other or provide a link. - Eric -

To: straight life who wrote (35936)	12/4/2000 12:46:14 PM
From: Pirah Naman	Respond to of 54805

Off topic? Starting to use a spreadsheet. This isn't GGing and I don't want to bloat the thread with off topic, but since I have had a few questions by PM and straightlife just asked, I thought I would give people who hadn't used a spreadsheet just enough to get started. Straightlife, and anybody else who has a spreadsheet program but doesn't use it, open that program now. Ready? Find the cell A3 and put your favorite number in it. Move to cell B3 and type in =a35. Hit return. The number you will now have in B3 is your favorite number times 5. Move to cell C3 and type in =b3/10. Hit return. The number you will now have in C3 is B3 divided by 10. Move to cell D3 and type in =c3^2. Hit return. The number you will now have in D3 is C3 squared (C3 times C3). Move to cell A1 and type in your favorite color. Move to cell B1 and type in your favorite food. To summarize these starting basics: 1) To put text in a cell, simply type it in. Hint: it is a good idea to use headers when working with real spreadsheets, so that you know by just looking what is in each row and/or column. 2) To put a number in a cell, simply type it in. 3) To perform a calculation in a cell, in that cell first type the equals symbol (=). After that, you may type in any combination of numbers, variables, and operations you need. 4) Variables are denoted by call locations. Cell C3 is simply written as C3. 5) Here are the operators you need: Plus (+) Minus (-) Times () Divided by (/) To the power of (^) Just try these things and the spreadsheet will seem less alien. Nothing too terrible can happen if you make a mistake. After you do this, it will be easy enough to move on to the things that make a spreadsheet useful, such as repeating calculations for a bunch of numbers. For example, let's bring it back to the gorillas and kings, and your desire to put this month's investment money into the best value. You can have a list of say 10 Gs and Ks (or 30 companies or even more if you wish) with your data, assumptions, and formulas in the spreadsheet. [I won't lie and tell you this is trivial the first time, for if you haven't done it it won't seem trivial the first time. But it is MUCH easier than trigonometry or calculus or statistics.] Let's say you have all that in the spreadsheet, and something happens, and the prices of your companies jump all over, some down, some way down. In the time it takes you to enter the new prices (you simply overwrite the old prices) you can have something telling you which of your companies is now the most fairly valued. I don't know of any spreadsheet tutorials. If you are willing to simply play with it, you probably don't need one - if you make a mistake, so what? But if you would like some hand holding for accelerated progress, there is probably a local community college or extended ed program that offers a one or two session course for about the price of the Gorilla Game. You CAN do it. - Pirah