Lesson Objective:  To show new users a quick start method for finding possible investment opportunities. You will be shown how to use each of the major High Growth Stock Investor software tools to find basic decision making information about the securities in one of our SmartGroups. You will also learn to navigate seamlessly and effortlessly with a group of stocks from one tool to another. Subsequent lessons will go deeper into the features, details and techniques for each of the tools.  At the end of this lesson, watch the Quick Start companion movie.  You should be able to apply what you have learned to any group of stocks.

This lesson uses "Growth Investor", one of many "ready-to-go" SmartGroups found in the HGS Designer Group Database. Stock lists for SmartGroups are refreshed after each end-of-day database update. SmartGroups use criteria entered into HGS filters to discard unwanted securities.  The remaining list is sorted using a combination of weighted rankings to pick off the top 10 stocks(details of filters and rankings will be in another lesson).

If you have questions about this lesson or comments that will help us improve it please contact us at support@highgrowthstock.com.

1. Start High Growth Stock Investor
2. On the toolbar click Designer
   
   
   
   
3. The Designer window opens with the Group Database in the left side.
   
   In the left window panel, click on SmartGroups > HighGrowthStock Picker > Growth Investor. The panel on the right will display a maximum of 10 stocks selected by the default filter used for this group. Your list will be different than the example below.
    
   All groups generated by HGS Investor will have an index. The Growth Investor Index is visible in the panel on the right(more about indexes in a later lesson).
   
   On the Designer toolbar click the Warehouse icon (make sure you still have Growth Investor selected)
   
   
   
   
4. The Warehouse window opens with the Growth Investor group showing in the Group List window.
   
   Select Scorecard from the View window 
   
   Click on the RS Rk column. It will sort the list high to low or low to high. The Warehouse Relative Strength Rank measures a companies price change over the past 12 months compared to all the other companies in the database. A 90 ranking means its 12 month price record out performed 90% of all companies in the database. More weight is applied to the most recent quarter. Descriptions about all the data fields can be found in the Help system under "Warehouse"
   
   In the Warehouse window, select the stock on the top of the list 
   
   Click the Ranking icon on the Warehouse toolbar
   
   
   
   
5. The Ranking window opens with the Growth Investor group showing in the Group List window.
   
   Select Relative Strength from the View window.
   
   Click on the options icon and select Percent Change.  Use 52 for the Number of weeks and click on ok. You will see the Percent Change, 52 Weeks showing in the title bar.
   
   The Ranking tool is interactive, if you change the the options, the group, the view or the filter new computed results will be instantly displayed. The Ranker is considered a power users tool. When you close the Ranking tool the results are not saved. If you immediately restart the tool the results will be recomputed and displayed again.
   
   The first column in the Ranking window is dynamic and changes throughout the week.  Once the week becomes history, the results for the week ending column will be the same week after week assuming nothing is changed.  If price data in the master database changes for one or more of the companies it is reasonable to assume some of the historical ranking will also change.  This tool is best used for insight to assist in near term stock picking.
   
   COMMENTARY: It is important to note the differences in the Warehouse RS Rk and the Ranking tools RS Rk. The Warehouse Relative Strength Rank measures a companies price change over the past 12 months compared to all the other companies in the database. The Ranking tool measures a companies price change for each weekly column using the option settings compared to just the companies in the group. In this example 10 companies are being compared.  When you changed the option to 52 weeks, you are about as close as you can get to the Warehouse RS Rank but they will not be exactly the same..  Trying to compare the RS Rank between the two tools is like comparing apples to oranges.
   
   On the Ranking toolbar click the Charting icon.
   
   
   
   
6. The Charting window opens with the Growth Investor group showing in the Group List window.
   
   Click your mouse pointer inside the View window to select the current view.
   
   Use your keyboard and press the Shift + key to jump to the MACD, Stochastic, DI View.  This is a good basic view showing the price window with a 17, 50 and 200 day moving averages.  Finding stocks riding just above their 17DMA is considered a good stock.  This Chart View has 5 windows, some containing more than one indicator. Indicators are described in the Help system.
   
    Keep the View list selected.  If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, roll the wheel to quickly move up and down through different Chart Views while keeping the same stock in the View.  As an alternative, use the keyboard up/down arrows.
   
   Toggle through the stocks in the group using the Previous/Next buttons on the Chart Window. If you display the list of stocks you will notice they are still in the same sequence that you had them coming from the Ranking tool (see the 2nd image below).
   
   There are 5 window panels containing information about the stock being displayed.  In this example the Scorecard panel is being shown. Here you can immediately see the EPS, RS, GRP and many other pieces of information.  Click the up/down buttons to the right of the panel to move between the 5 panels.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

This completes the Quick Start Lesson. In this lesson you have only touched the surface of the Designer, Warehouse, Ranking and Charting tools. Use what you learned here to checkout some of the other SmartGroups. Other lessons will build on this lesson by going deeper into each tool to give you practical "how-to" knowledge so you can build your own groups, filters views, indexes and reports.

Quick Start Companion Movie

Additional Information

There are 3 types of groups that are used in the HGS Investor software:

1. HGS Reference Groups - These groups are static, i.e. they do not change after each database update. They are shown as yellow folders with the HGS icon located in the lower right hand corner of the folder. Securities contained in these reference groups are predetermined by HGS personnel and may change with a software update.  Some securities may be deleted automatically by the software if they become inactive for 20 trading days.
2. HGS SmartGroups (Ready-to-go) - These groups are dynamic, i.e. the securities can change after each database update.  They are shown as green folders with the HGS icon located in the lower right hand corner of the folder.  Securities in SmartGroups are determined by filters generated by HGS personnel and assigned to the group.  Each time the database is updated the filters will repopulate the groups.
3. User Groups - These groups are created by Users. There are a variety of ways to create User Groups that will be discussed in subsequent lessons  The contents of User Groups can only be changed by the user. If a security becomes inactive for 20 trading days it will be removed.