This week our tutorial looks at options relating to News in ShareScope.

Full news
News Filtering
Share’s news
Portfolio’s news
News flags and events
Intraday news alarms
Expert tip

To view a list of all the news stories in your copy of ShareScope, press Shift and \ together (or press the button on your toolbar if you have it). In Plus/Pro, you may like to open a new window first.

To read a news story, double click on it. To read the next story in the list, press the Next>> button or press the Space bar on your keyboard. Press Esc, click Close or click on the cross to close the window when you have finished.

To search for stories that contain certain words, such as ‘announcement’, simply type the word on your keyboard. To search for multiple words such as ‘profit warning’ and ‘takeover’ you can use different search methods to search for any or all words and for certain phrases:

Space (A B) Search for stories containing both words A and B in any order

Comma (A,B) Search for stories containing either word A or word B (or both).

Minus (A-B) Search for stories containing word A but not word B

Inverted commas (‘A B’ or 'A B') Search for stories containing text exactly as it appears between the inverted commas

To return to the full list of stories after searching, press Esc on your keyboard.

Besides searching for specific words within stories, you can also filter the news to show stories from certain regions, regarding certain sectors or about certain subjects. Right click to display the context menu, go to Filter news and then select Filter news from the sub-menu. The following dialog is displayed:

You can select any number of options in each category to display, then click on OK.

Notice the summary bar will advise you which filters have been applied to the news table.

As with searching, to return to the full list after filtering, press Esc. Alternatively, right click to display the context menu, go to Filter news on the menu and click on Filter news in the sub-menu to remove the tick and so deactivate the filter.

ShareScope Plus/Pro users – you receive news throughout the day, either real time in Pro or delayed by 15 minutes in Plus. If you do a search or apply a filter to a news window, then as new stories are received that match the restriction(s) they will appear in the list.

To access news about a certain share, press the \ (backslash) key on your keyboard. You can access Share’s News from a List/Portfolio view, Historical or Intraday Graph screen, Details page, Data Mining filter, Director’s Dealings screen or Trade List. To return to the screen you came from, press \ again.

You are able to use the Filter news feature when viewing stories about a specific share, however the Search facility does not work here.

You may find that when using Share’s News (\) the stories that are displayed may not match completely the share you had selected. An example of this is with the company Hunting PLC. Find Hunting PLC in ShareScope and press \ to view news stories about Hunting. You may find that your list of news stories contains one similar to this:

ShareScope looks for the company name within the news story. In this instance it is only searching on the word ‘hunting’, so finds stories that include this word in different contexts. In order to make this facility more flexible and powerful, you are able to edit the search text being used.

In a list view, right click to display the context menu and select Edit share’s news search.

This dialog will be displayed:

Remove the tick from ‘Use default search’ and you can then edit the search text as illustrated below:

Click on OK to save the new search text. Press \ again to access news for Hunting PLC and all the stories now should relate correctly to the company.

To save time when reviewing news for a group of shares you are following, you can view all the news for all the shares within a portfolio at once. This is achieved by first selecting the portfolio you wish to use, then right click to display the context menu and select Portfolio news:

Alternatively, from the Full news list, right click to display the context menu and select Current list or portfolio only.

To quickly check if any new news stories have come in for the shares you are interested in, you can add a column to your list views that will display a flag if there is a new story. To add this column, right click on a column heading, go to Add General Column and click on Flags. The following dialog is displayed:

Unread stories today – a flag in the colour selected will be displayed if there any new stories for the share today.

Unread stories in period – select this and specify the flag colour to be informed if there are any stories you have not yet read for a share within the selected ‘Check back period’.

Any news in period – displays a flag if there are any stories in the ‘Check back period’.

Once you have made your selection, click on OK. You may see flags like this appear in the column:

Hovering your mouse pointer over the flags will display a tool-tip listing the news stories identified. Double click the flag to view the latest story, then use the Previous button on the dialog to view the preceding story.

The flags can also be displayed on the graphs (both Historical and Intraday in ShareScope Plus and Pro). In the graph screen, right click and select Graph Design. Go to the Lines & Text tab and click the Edit.. button to display the Flag dialog (as above). The flag appears next to the share name at the top of the graph:

Notice the icons along the bottom of the graph. These also represent news stories about this company. To add these news markers, right click in the graph and select Events (Plus/Pro: go to Other main graph features and select Events).

To receive alerts on incoming news stories for shares, go to the Edit menu, then to Intraday alarms and click on Edit alarms for (the selected share). Tick the News alarm on incoming stories option:

You can also use these alarms on search terms you may have added as new shares to the program:

Let’s pull a number of these tools together to highlight news on significant macro-economic events and corporate actions.

For example, you could automate the search for terms such as “merger”, “bid”, “takeover”, “base rate” and “inflation”.

Remember how we can Edit share’s news search?

If you often perform searches for terms such as these, you might consider creating a new share in ShareScope and adding this text as the Share’s news search text.

Let’s take the Bank of England announcements on base rate changes as an example. First, you could create a share in ShareScope called “Base rate changes”. To do this, go to the Edit menu and select Add new data. Next to name, type in “Base rate changes” and click on OK.

To find this new share (in Gold), go to the View menu and select Imported data; (in Plus/Pro) go to the View menu, then to Change List and select Imported data. Find and highlight Base rate changes in the list. Right-click and select Edit Share's News search. Change search text to "Base rate" and click on OK. Press \ to view stories that contain the text “base rate”.

Repeat this for any macro-economic or corporate action terms that you are interested in.

You could then add these new shares to a portfolio and use the Portfolio news option to view all stories containing these keywords. With ShareScope Plus and Pro, if you leave this window open then any new stories that come in during the day will be added to the window.

Alternatively, in ShareScope Plus & Pro, set intraday news alarms for the new shares you have created:

Remember, if you have any trouble finding or using any of these features, please don’t hesitate to call our Customer Support team. They will be delighted to help.