Raising the stakes

It’s a pretty well-known fact that Americans are living longer than ever. Blame it on medical advances or the organic-food craze, but typical retirement just isn’t going to do it anymore.

And really, what is typical retirement anyway?

Hefty pensions and profit-sharing have gone by the wayside for the most part as companies struggle to survive the recession. So what are workers to do?

The stock market remains a viable option for investing for retirement, but for those who need a hand up in navigating the market, Raymond Dominick of Bigfork and John Kyle of Kalispell have developed Dynamic Investor Pro, a Windows-based PC software that analyzes history and trends to help investors make smart decisions when buying and selling stock shares. MacIntosh computer users can access the program by installing Windows or Window’s emulation software, Dominick said.

“The program is designed to let the average person invest without having to become an expert on investment,” Dominick said.

Dominick and Kyle did a soft launch of the program last summer. After making a few tweaks, they now are launching version two nationwide.

The program deals with stocks, ETFs and mutual funds — the three vehicles Dominick believes are the easiest to invest in.

When using the program, users creates groups of stocks they wants to work with, or choose one of the default groups Dominck and Kyle have set up for them. Users then set some parameters for how they want to proceed. These might include the number of positions held at any one time, the minimum ranking position required or the preferred minimum days before trading after purchase. Linking with the Internet, the program will then give suggestions on what to buy and when to sell.

“The idea is to help the ordinary investor or professional,” Dominick said.

The program relies on technical rather than fundamental analysis. That means it compares market trends and performance history to benchmarks instead of examining a company by way of its officers and products. The analysis can be set on a weekly or monthly basis.

“In a sense, it’s analyzing history to predict the future,” Dominick said.

Dominick is no stranger to investing. He’s been following the stock market since he was 16. He worked for a while as a managing editor for business trade magazines and has also managed some retail stores.

The idea for Dynamic Investment Pro came from another of Dominick’s former jobs. At the time, he managed another Bigfork investment company called Monocle Systems LLC that had developed a similar trading software. It guided users based on relative strength analysis, but it was out of date and not compatible with Windows 7. Kyle, a 40-year programming veteran, did tech support for Monocle. When that company folded in 2008, they decided to create their own program that would be current and wouldn’t rely solely on charts and graphs to help people invest.

Using his experience with Monocle II and the markets in general, Dominick designed the how and why of the program and Kyle did the programming.

They partnered with Michael J. Carr, the Denver-based author of “Smarter Investing in Any Economy,” for guidance on formulas and equations.

“Our goal was to create something that combined power with simplicity,” Kyle said. That means a simple user interface that takes merely 20 minutes a week to manage.

But even though it was designed to be easy to use, Dominick warns there is a learning curve. He estimates it takes a few hours to really learn how the program works. Dynamic Investing LLC offers free help via telephone and e-mail to make sure its customers are able to use the software to their best ability.

And while those customers can use the software to raise money for anything they desire, Dominick said he and Kyle were most motivated to create it in order to help people secure nest eggs for retirement.

“To get what you need to retire, your 401K is not going to get you there unless you manage it,” Dominick said. “That’s part of the reason we did this — so that people can have a financial chance.”

He’s been testing the program since the start of the recession and said he hasn’t lost a dime. That, of course, could be luck, but it could also be based on the purchasing decisions he made from the software’s recommendations.

“I feel that the average person should be able to invest without having to become extremely learned or to risk his life savings,” Dominick said. “This ought to be able to help him do that.”

To learn more about the program, visit www.dynamicinvestorpro.com.

Business reporter Erika Hoefer can be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at ehoefer@dailyinterlake.com.