NAIC Take Stock is an all-in-one beginner's software package that introduces investors to NAIC's investing methodologies with a graphical step-by-step process, enabling new users to start evaluating stocks right away and learn the concepts as they go.

Designed by the developers of the best-selling NAIC Investor's Toolkit, Take Stock was created to make NAIC's stock analysis methods more accessible to investors unfamiliar with NAIC's forms. The software relies on NAIC's Stock Selection Guide (SSG) but enables the user to tackle one just component at a time, mastering the concepts behind each of these before moving on to the SSG form itself. With a built-in connection to up-to-date company and stock data, the Take Stock package includes everything the investor needs to begin investing the NAIC way.

The software walks the user through the three "judgment" decisions NAIC investors must make to complete a stock evaluation, offering conservative suggestions or even, at the user's option, making these decisions automatically. (In all cases, we remind the user that the software is just an aid to, not a replacement for, the investor's judgment.) The software then produces useful summaries of "Reasons to Buy" and "Items to Check," and enables the user to print a completed SSG.

Take Stock provides the investor with an evaluation of the two critical questions to consider:

• Is the company of high enough quality to invest in?
• Is its stock selling for a reasonable price?

Help in answering these questions is presented in a simple and straightforward manner. Quality, for example, is judged on a 1-10 scale and displayed as a "Quality Index," a composite of the items considered in Sections 1 and 2 of the SSG: strength and stability of sales and earnings growth and the trend and quality of profit margins and return on equity. Just by clicking on the Quality Index indicator, the user can explore each of these items in greater detail and can find out how each of them affects the index.

Take $tock even tells the user the price at which both reward (a 15% annual return) and risk (3:1 Upside Downside Ratio) would be satisfied according to NAIC methods. It gives the stock a green light if the current price is below that "buy price" or a red light if above it, and a plain language statement summarizes the evaluation.

With clear descriptions of concepts and the flexibility to grow with the user's skill level, NAIC Take Stock makes the perfect tool for investors seeking to learn and apply NAIC's philosophies. Put another way, it makes investing simple to understand and success easy to achieve.

System requirements: Pentium 200Mhz processor, 32 Mb of memory, and 20-30Mb of disk space. A color display with at least 800x600 resolution and a mouse are also required.