At the heart of Grism lies the YahooFinance Ruby module, which enables Grism to draw stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance.
Grism has an extensive dependency list that includes Ruby, GTK+ 2.8,
ruby-gtk2, and ruby-libglade2. Once you've installed these, download
the latest tarball and run the command: tar zxvf grism-0.9.0.tar.gz. Browse into the newly created grism-0.9.0 directory and run the setup.rb script: ruby setup.rb.
You can then launch Grism from the terminal with the command grism, or, depending on your distribution, access it from Applications -> Office menu.
When you launch Grism, you'll see empty Watchlists and Portfolios on
the left-hand sidebar. You can create as many watchlists as you want,
and each watchlist can have any number of entries. You can create a new
watchlist by clicking File -> New Watchlist.
There's too much red here.... Click to enlarge.
After providing a name and brief description for your watchlist, you
can begin to populate it with stock or mutual fund symbols. To create a
new entry, click Stock -> Add Item. In the Watch List Entry
dialog-box, type in the stock symbol and then specify the price of the
stock. If you click the Use current market price check-box, Grism will
draw the latest quote from Yahoo! Finance and use that for the entry.
Unfortunately, this is where I find Grism slightly lacking, since it
doesn't inform users of stock symbols. So, to create an entry for
Google or Yahoo! or Apple Inc., you have to go to the Yahoo! Finance
Web site and look up the stock symbols before you can create new
entries in your watchlist.
If you wish to monitor the progress of Apple's stock, type AAPL in
the Symbol field and click OK. When the market's open, you'll be able
to see the change, previous close, and other details for this stock. If
you want more details, such as the MarketCap and Dividend, click the
magnifying glass icon to switch to the extended view.
Creating new portfolios is just as easy. Click New -> Portfolios
and specify a name in the Portfolio Properties dialog-box. As with
watchlists, Grism allows for multiple portfolios, and you can have any
number of entries in each. To create a new entry, click Stock -> Add
Item. After typing in the symbol for the stock, you'd have to specify
whether you wish to buy or sell, so click on the appropriate radio
button. Next, specify the number of shares you wish to trade. Click the
"use current market price" check-box if you wish to buy or sell your
shares at the market price, or type in the amount of your choice in the
Price field. You can also enter the Transaction Cost in the Add to
Portfolio dialog box.
When the markets are open, click Folder -> Refresh to get the
latest quotes. Grism will show the change in the stock price for the
current day, and the overall change from the time you created the new
entry.
To check the performance of your stock, click Stock -> Chart. By
default, Grism draws the chart for a one-year time period, but you can
select a time period anywhere from a week to 10 years by clicking the
drop-down list. Grism draws only two items on the charts, the stock
price and its volume. To export the chart, click the icon on the top
right of the window. Unfortunately, Grism exports the charts only to a
PNG image, but it allows you to specify the dimension for the image.
Apple is doing good here.... Click to enlarge.
You can move entries from one portfolio or watchlist to another.
Once you've selected an entry in your watchlist or portfolio, click
Stock -> Move to, and select where you wish to move it from the
list. Grism also keeps a record of all your transactions, so you can
click the Portfolio History icon for details of what shares you've
bought and sold, at what prices and on what dates. Grism records all
data in the ~/.grism directory.
As of now, Grism can only draw quotes from Yahoo! Finance, and
there's no easy way to change this, since, according to developer
Nicholas Rahn, "the yahoofinance module is 'hardwired' into the Grism
code."
Conclusion
Grism is a great tool to familiarize yourself with the market before
you take the plunge, and also to keep track of your actual investments,
but it does have some minor quirks. These include its inability to
suggest symbol names for stocks, and the fact that when you click Stock
-> Refresh, Grism doesn't draw the latest quotes for all your
portfolios and watchlists, but just the one that you have selected.
Also, the quotes Grism draws from Yahoo! Finance are delayed 15-20
minutes. Despite these issues, I find Grism a useful tool for anyone
interested in financial markets.
