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Getting Started

The Basics

Licensing

Licences may be granted to:

  • Entities licensed by any Canadian Securities Commission to provide investment advice.
  • Any entity legally resident in Ontario.

A licence for such entities other than those who are also IDA members may be downloaded by clicking here. Once the license has been completed and signed (initialling each page), the license (all pages) may be faxed to Hymas Investment Management Inc. at its normal fax number. Upon receipt and acceptance, a password and user-name will be sent to you. Please feel free to contact us regarding any questions or concerns.

Please note that HIMIPref™ is intended for institutional use and is priced accordingly. A "retail" product is in development, but is not yet available.

Installation

There are two elements which need to be installed on client computers in order to run the programme: the ASP.NET framework, supplied by Microsoft® and the programme itself, supplied by Hymas Investment Management Inc.. Please review the System Requirements and the download instructions for instruction.

The programme is now ready to run.

Back-up

As a security measure, client-specific information (other than user-name and password information required for access to the Web Services) is not maintained on the servers, but is transmitted to the servers on and if, as and when needed basis. All such client-specific information is stored on the client machine in the userDirectory.

Hymas Investment Management strongly recommends that:

  • the userDirectory be moved from its default location on the client hard-drive to a user-specified directory, using the "Reset User Data Directory" selection of the mainMenu|File popup menu. This ensures that the data are not overwritten when new versions of the programme are installed and makes back-up more convenient.
  • that the information in the userDirectory be backed up by the client on a regular and frequent basis, which will allow for full restoration of the system in the event of a system-crash, hard-drive failure or other unpleasantness on the client machine.

Patience

The server takes roughly 5 minutes to perform the calculations required for analysis of a given day. In this period, a temporary file of roughly 80MB is written to disk and roughly 25MB of data is transferred over the Internet to the Client Programme (according to the connection status box). This data transfer may take 30 minutes using a dial-up connection - note also that the glossary used in the course of using the programme is another download of over 1MB.

Efforts are continually in progress at Hymas Investment Management Inc. to decrease computation time - but precision and documentation are paramount!.

Sample Accounts

Sample accounts are included in the downloaded set-up package. These accounts may be treated in the same manner as an actual account and used for practice with the system:

  • View the list of accounts via the portfolioListReport
  • Enter transactions via the tradeInputProcess
  • View the portfolio evaluation via the portfolioEvaluationReport
  • Examine recommended trades for the portfolio on the tradeReport ["normal" settings are "View|Weighted Trade Desirability" with "Sorting|Descending Desirability Average"]
  • Compare the account's holdings with other analyzed preferred shares via the reportSummary
  • And, when you're ready - create your own portfolio via the "File|Add New Portfolio" selection on the portfolioListReportMenu

Understanding HIMIPref™

A very cursory inspection will reveal that HIMIPref™ contains a wealth of analytics that will not be instantly assimilated by a new user. However, the intent of Hymas Investment Management throughout development of the software was to produce an analytical engine that, while providing sufficient detail to be useful for research purposes, would also be useful to a non-specialist with some knowledge of fixed income investing.

The User Manual has been developed to assist users to understand the system.

"Help" is liberally available throughout the system, on the menus and context-menus that control the Major Reports and via buttons on Report Boxes. Most of these will link to the relevent section of the Glossary and considerable effort has been made both to ensure that the purpose of all reported numbers has been made clear and that the actual calculations are transparent.

And always feel free to contact us.