I am running spearman coefficients and coef matrixs on financial factors vs price return...I do alot of this with excel but my data base is growing and the job is getting to be cumbersome. Is there software out there that could speed up the process. I would like to spend around $500 USD. My friends tell me that there is alot of shareware that could handle this. I also heard great things about SPSS, but it is now priced around $1600 which is ok, but i dont think i need all that power for my little projects...and thoughts of other venders or ideas?

thx,

J

How big are your datasets in observations? One option is to get the Learner edition for SAS...but the problem with this software is that you cannot read in more than 1500 cases. SAS is a programming language but the learner edition includes Enterprise Guide which is much like SPSS (point and click) but as you get better with it can include coding as well.

I do know other people use R that is free but I don't know much about how to use or how easy it would be to get started.

You could look to Gretl (http://gretl.sourceforge.net/) which stands for Gnu Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library.