Born-Again Stockfacts From Salomon Brothers

Salomon Brothers is rolling out a substantially upgraded version of Stockfacts, its online research and portfolio management system for institutional clients.

In addition to morning notes and research reports, Stockfacts II provides access to a portfolio management system with several new tools for quantitative analysis.

Salomon's morning notes and equity research reports have long been sought by International Thomson's First Call, the satellite-delivered equity research service. Regardless of its intentions vis-a-vis First Call, the Stockfacts upgrade signals Salomon's plan to maintain close touch with its clients though its own systems.

A team of Salomon programmers and systems engineers labored over a year and a half on the new software for Stockfacts II. In an unusual step, the group developed its own programming language, which was used to write a proprietary database management system, according to Anne-Marie Sasdi, project manager for Stockfacts. The only off-the- shelf software used in Stockfacts II is the asset allocation module -- DART -- from Real Decisions Corp.

Response time and processing efficiency of the new Stockfacts are expected to be substantially improved, not only by a more powerful processor, but by the more elegant programming language used to develop applications for the system.

Stockfacts is not a distributed system, so users are required to store and process information about their portfolios on Salomon's host -- a Prime 6350 minicomputer. The decision to maintain a centralized architecture in the face of increasingly distrustful institutional clients shows remarkable optimism.

Terminal equipment requirements for users of the new system include a 80286 or 80386-based microcomputer running DOS 3.0 or higher. An EGA card, high-resolution monitor, mouse (keyboard not an option), and 2400 baud Microcom modem are also required.

Modems produced by Microcom of Norwood, Mass. employ an error- correcting transmission protocol capable of transforming even the most polluted downtown Manhattan dial-up circuit into an effective telecom carrier.

Stockfacts II has access to real-time market data from Salomon's in-house ticker plant. Users may also choose from a menu of databases for historical pricing, fundamental data, and earnings estimates: Compustat, Zacks, and I/B/E/S are all available.

These databases, as well as Salomon's in-house price feed, can be integrated with the user's portfolios for valuation, asset allocation, portfolio optimization, total return analysis, and factor analysis.

Not all of Salomon's institutional clients will be switched over to the new Stockfacts at once. Sasdi expects that the first clients to be upgraded will be those with the heaviest current usage of I/O and CPU time.