Investing 101

Quicken Deluxe5, $59.99 (Windows)

Intuit, (800) 816-8025

Quicken Deluxe 5, available on floppy disk or CD-ROM, adds investment management to Quicken's standard financial management capabilities. Using a modem, Quicken Quotes lets users look up prices for more than 100,000 stocks and mutual funds and update their portfolios automatically, while a Mutual Fund Finder helps users choose funds that fit their financial profiles.

Managing Your Money Plus CD-ROM, $50 (Windows)

Meca Software, (800) 288-MECA, (203) 255-1441

CD-ROM-based Managing Your Money (MYM) Plus integrates bestselling financial management program Managing Your Money for Windows with additional financial information modules. It includes advice from Andrew Tobias, one of the original creators of MYM, on topics ranging from buying a home to investing in mutual funds. There's also a library of more than 150 personal finance articles.

MYM Plus includes software to access CompuServe's extensive financial resources. QuoteLink automatically downloads current stock, bond and mutual fund prices from CompuServe and posts them to your portfolio.

WealthBuilder 4, $99.95 (Windows)

Reality Online, (800) 521-2475, (610) 277-7600

Reality Online's WealthBuilder takes you through data-gathering, goal-setting, decision-making and, finally, investing to help create a portfolio that will let you retire in comfort. After asking a series of questions, WealthBuilder determines your financial blueprint, then advises you accordingly.

WealthBuilder's integration with Reuters Money Network gives users access to this huge online financial database, and WealthBuilder and Reuters Money Network jointly track your investment performance. (Reuters also works with Quicken and Microsoft Money.)

CompuServe

(800) 848-8199

CompuServe has numerous sources for researching stocks, mutual funds, bonds and commodities, and even gives users a chance to chat with other investors in the Investors' Forum. An extensive list of newspapers and publications, such as Fitch Investors Service's Bond Reader and IBM/Donoghue's MoneyLetter, gives CompuServe users an edge in planning finances.

In addition to getting the information needed to make informed decisions, you can access discount brokers Quick & Reilly and E*Trade Securities 24 hours a day.

America Online

(703) 448-8700

For up-to-the-minute information on stock prices, America Online's (AOL) StockLink is an extensive, easy-to-use resource. Information on more than 30,000 securities can be downloaded to track your investments.

Plenty of investment companies can be found on AOL, including Vanguard, a no-load mutual fund company, and Morningstar, which provides detailed information on more than 4,000 mutual funds. The Fidelity Investor Center includes a mutual fund library, brokerage services, investment and retirement planning, and more. Fidelity can also be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.fid-inv.com.

Networth Galt Technologies

(412) 681-6100, http://networth.galt.com

Galt Technologies' Networth is the place to be for mutual fund information and financial newsletters. This World Wide Web page is easy to use and has a great graphical interface.

After opening a free account on Networth, users can access mutual fund profiles and performance reports from the Mutual Fund Market Manager, research articles from financial and business newsletters, find market analyses on mutual funds, and more. The system protects you by withholding investment applications until you have read the fund's online prospectus. -Cassandra Cavanah

This article was originally published in the January 1996 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Investing 101.