ABOUT THE COMPANY. Ronin Software publishes useful,
timely, and authoritative business information with a tax, legal
and financial emphasis. We author and publish software programs
with business-oriented content, as well as authoring (by Michael
D. Jenkins) a million-selling series of small business self-help
books for each of the 50 states, which were published by Oasis
Press until 1998, and republished in 1999 as a single book with
state tax and legal information for all 50 states and D.C. chapter
on CD-ROM, entitled Starting and Operating a Business in the
U.S., through Running 'R' Media Group. The print versions of
the books have long since been out of print, but we fully updated
and revised the entire series constantly in 2005, in e-book and
software formats, published under the Ronin Software imprint, and
updated all 50 each year until 2013. We began publishing all of the
e-books as Kindle books in 2011, and since
2013 we have continued to publish and update 33 of the state editions.
Depending on the state, all 33 state editions have been fully
updated in one of the years from 2018 through 2024. The software
version of the book series, Small Business Advisor, is no longer
published since 2020.
We also publish the highly sophisticated (and addictive)
stock market and corporate financial simulations called
Wall Street Raider and
Speculator: The Stock Trading Simulation.
We began publishing the Wall Street Raider program (through our
former book publisher, Oasis Press/PSI Research) way back in 1986,
and have continued to develop and enhance it ever since, as a
Windows program in recent years. It has become somewhat of a
"cult favorite" over the years, with registered (paid) users in
119 countries, ranging from Greenland to Paraguay to Angola to the
Sultanate of Brunei to Malta, and even Antarctica. Version 9.75
of Wall Street Raider was released in 2023.
"Speculator" is a recent spin-off from Wall Street
Raider, and is focused on trading any of up to 1500+ stocks,
or bonds (including convertibles), options, or commodity
futures, as a small or "middle-class" investor with only
$100,000 to start with -- unlike Raider, in which you start
off rich, with up to a billion dollars, and use that wealth
to take over and manage companies (and try to increase their
stock price), building your corporate empire like a Carl
Icahn or Warren Buffett. Speculator 4.11 is the most recent
release (April, 2024).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. The author of the Wall
Street Raider and Speculator financial/stock market games, Michael D.
Jenkins, is a graduate of Louisiana State University, who earned a
bachelor's (B.A.) degree in Government, and received his doctorate (J.D.)
at the Harvard Law School in 1969. His background includes several
years practicing as an economics and financial consultant in D.C.
and L.A. with Economics Research Associates, a national consulting
firm; then as a CPA and tax manager in Los Angeles and Newport Beach
with Peat, Marwick and Mitchell (now "KPMG") and later as a senior tax
attorney in San Francisco with the large law firm of Cooley, Godward,
Castro, Huddleson and Tatum (now the "Cooley" firm of some 800 lawyers).
He went on to become a tax partner for several years in the large
regional (San Francisco Bay Area) CPA firm of Kimbell, McKenna and von
Kaschnitz, in Alameda, California, but retired from law and CPA
practices to devote full-time to his writing career in 1986, the
year in which he also published his first software program, Wall
Street Raider, for MS-DOS computers.
Along the way, he wrote and published his first book, Starting and
Operating a Business in California, during a sabbatical in 1980,
initially just as an adjunct to his law practice, but when the California
book edition and similar editions for Texas and Florida became highly
successful, he created a partnership with the global CPA firm of Ernst &
Young to develop similar book editions for each of the 50 states and D.C.,
which in the aggregate sold over 1.2 million copies in the 1980s and 1990s,
as noted above.
Mr. Jenkins has continued to publish the "Starting and Operating a Business"
ebook series, with 33 state editions, updating several of the state editions
each year. He temporarily ceased updating the Kindle
ebook series in 2020, but resumed updating the series in 2023, with 18 editions
fully updated so far, from May 2023 and through May 2024.
Jenkins also has developed and publishes two software programs,
Wall Street Raider (a corporate financial game
and stock market simulation), and Speculator:
The Stock Trading Simulation (a stock, bonds, options and futures
trading game). From 1989 to 2020 he published a sophisticated software
program, Small Business Advisor, in MS-DOS and Windows versions. The MS-DOS
editions of the Small Business Advisor were licensed to and used by every
Small Business Administration office and SCORE chapter in the United States
for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
An incorrigible bachelor, Mr. Jenkins now resides in a scenic
area of Southern Utah, near Zion and Bryce Canyons and has engaged
regularly in adrenalin-secreting, slightly insane activities
such as sea kayaking, white-water rafting, mountain biking
and the occasional parachute jump or paragliding misadventure,
for relaxation, terror, and inspiration. However, he has drawn
the line and refuses to engage in certain riskier activities,
such as bungee-jumping, alligator wrestling, or slandering the
Koran.
(Oh -- In case you're wondering about our company name,
"Ronin", it's an old Japanese term used to
describe feudal Samurai warriors whose masters had been
killed, and who thus became renegades or mercenaries. We
thought the name aptly described our company, when we began
self-publishing our software as shareware back in 1991. Not
that we are that mercenary, of course....)
Ronin Software relocated in 1998 to the beautiful red
rock canyon country of Southern Utah. ("Utah -- It's
a great place to hide out.")
Click on the e-mail link below to contact us by e-mail.
Or click here to see the owner (the good guy in the white hat), hard at work....(7/98,
in the Taos Box Canyon of the Rio Grande)
For a few mind-altering pictures of some of our local Utah/Arizona
landscape (plus a dash of a few islands: Tahiti (Moorea), Iceland, the
Faroe Islands, Kauai, and the Shetlands), click on any of the following image
links below:
-
- Are we still in Utah, Dorothy? (Almost...It's Arizona) (3/99)
- Swirly View, at "The Wave" (Arizona) (3/99) (No hallucinogens required)
- This here's mine... all mine....
- Uh, what happened to the horses?
- OK... So I go behind a bush 2 minutes, and my bike's gone...? (Snow Canyon, Ivins, Utah)
- Trail through idyllic Echo Park (Colorado, 2006)
- Steamboat Rock, Green River, in Echo Park (2019)
- Waist deep in the Big Muddy (Moorea, Tahiti, 2001)
- The far north of Iceland (Seydisfjordhur), in summer
- Braving the elements, at the Guilfoss, Iceland
- A church on the bustling (Nordic) Faroe Island of Sandoy
- My Viking boat, on Unst, in the Shetlands (not
really -- I took a ferry across the Atlantic)
- View from the Princeville (Kauai) condo balcony
- On the trail, with passenger, near Moab
- Is this Mars? (With friend Shelley; notice who's got the heavy backpack) Beam us up, Scotty!
- A quiet, bucolic place... Capitol Reef Park
- The good ol' days....Taking a beer break between volleyball matches (Cancun, Mexico, 1987)
- Cajun-style birthday (Louisiana, 2017) -- a "boudin birthday cake"
- Life below the big red cliffs, in southern Utah