BackTrader is a separately priced module at $400.00. Speak with your service rep about getting started. Note that BackTrader uses actual stored option prices; not simulated prices.

2. OptionVue can now collect and store historical option volume information from DataVue, and display it in the Price Chart window. To collect historical option volume information, just check the new check box named “Collect Put/Call Volumes” associated with updating historical price files. (Note that historical option volume files kept in a new subfolder off C:\OpVue5 called PCVol.)

In the Price Chart window, there are two new buttons in the tool bar along the top. Clicking the button labeled “P/C” causes a section to open up at the bottom of the Price Chart window. In this section, up to three user-defined lines may be displayed representing dollar volume, contract volume, or open interest for puts, calls, both, or a ratio (puts/calls), shown as either daily data or using a plain or exponential running average of the previous 2-40 days. The settings for these lines are accessible by clicking the other new button in the top section of the Price Chart window (the one with a hand pointing left). Users may adjust the proportionate sizes of the upper section (bar chart) and the lower section (put/call volumes) by dragging the separator between the sections. DataVue has historical put/call volume data available back to November 20, 2000.

3. The Account Status window has received a complete makeover. It has four new fields in the summary section at the top: Today’s Change in Account Value, Buying Power (Stock), Portfolio Beta, and Portfolio Delta. The old field named “Available Cash” was changed to “Buying Power (Options)”, while the way it was calculated remained the same. Note that Buying Power (Options) also applies to trading futures contracts. (Sorry, but there simply wasn’t room to put “Buying Power (Options and Futures)”.)

Notice the new drop-down field in the right-hand part of the summary section called Beta/Delta Base. This contains a list of several of the most popular indexes that users might find appropriate for hedging a portfolio of stocks. You should set this to the index that most closely matches your stock holdings. For example, the QQQ would undoubtedly go best with a portfolio of tech stocks. If unsure, you may try each index until you find the one where Portfolio Beta comes closest to 1.00.

Portfolio Delta is the delta of open positions in terms of the currently selected Beta/Delta Base. For example, say you’re long 1000 shares of a stock with a beta of 1.10, and the QQQ is your selected Beta/Delta Base. The program starts with the 1000 delta units of the stock, adjusts this to 1100 because of the beta, then multiplies by the price of the stock and divides by the price of the QQQ. The result may be a portfolio beta of, say, +308 – meaning that your stock position is equivalent to 308 deltas of the QQQ. To hedge this using QQQ options, you would need to find a position in the QQQ options that gives you delta of approximately -308.

Portfolio Beta is a weighted average of the open position betas, with Portfolio Delta used as the weighting factor. Note that Portfolio Beta and Portfolio Delta are only relevant to stocks and stock indexes. They are blank for other asset types.

Important: A current price for the selected Beta/Delta Base index must be present in the Quotes Display in order for Portfolio Beta and Portfolio Delta to be computed.

4. Also in Account Status, the lower section (open positions) has user-customizable column assignments, and there are six new parameters to choose from: Beta, Delta, Open Date, Percent Gain/Loss, Underlying Price, and Percent of Account Utilization (more on these below). To change a column’s parameter, right-click on the column heading and make your choice from the pull-down menu. To insert an extra column, click in the display where you want the new column and press the [Insert] key. To delete a column, press the [Delete] key.

As before, columns may be re-sized by hovering the mouse in the column header section and dragging the column boundaries. The overall size of the Account Status window may also be changed by dragging its outer boundaries. All changes are automatically saved (separately by account).

Beta is the standard beta as used in the industry to describe the usual movement of a stock or index relative to a base index in percentage terms. It is measured by correlating a stock or index with each of the available Beta/Delta Base indexes over the most recent two-year period. Current betas for all stocks and stock indexes are sent to users in a new file that goes with the BDB. They are updated with every BDB update.

Delta is as described above. Note that delta in the Account Status window will rarely agree with delta as seen in the Matrix, because delta in the Account Status has been translated in terms of the selected Beta/Delta Base index.

Percent of Account Utilization is the percentage of your account that is being put to use for each of your open positions. For simple long positions, this is based on the size of each position. For example, if you have an account worth $10,000 and one of your positions is long $4,000 worth of a particular stock, the Percent of Account Utilization associated with that position is 40%. However, when shorting stock, options, or futures, Percent of Account Utilization is based on margin requirements as well as the current value of the position. For example, if you have an account worth $10,000 and you are short naked options where the margin requirements are $6,000 and the options are worth ($1,000), the Percent of Account Utilization is 50%. (Think of it this way: If you closed the option position, $5,000 worth of resources, or half of your account, would be freed up.)

5. Users may be interested in a new stock timing feature, available in the View menu, called the Yates Break Search. This searches all the stocks indicated in your Quotes Display for ones exhibiting a unique price chart formation that often presages a sharp drop. No results are guaranteed, of course, but Len Yates believes that when a stock has recently sold off sharply, and then rebounded somewhat, and then starts down again, it very often sells off further. The Yates Break Search looks for, and lists, all stocks exhibiting this pattern. Price charts may be browsed directly off of this list.

6. An OpScan button has been added to the button row in the main form, to make it easier to get into OpScan. From the new form that comes up when you click this button, the user can select one or more OpScan formulas to run, and click Connect right from there. Note that the Print button (for printing a snapshot of the current window) was moved to the right and made smaller. (It’s just a printer icon now, just under the blue ‘N’.)

7. The main menu item “Window” was extended to include a list of all open windows, so that the user may click one to bring it instantly to the top. (This feature used to be in OptionVue long ago but was lost when our Microsoft or our development software (we don’t know which) made a change. Now we re-created the feature ourselves.)

8. Three new column parameters are available in the Quotes Display. They are Percent Change, Off Extreme (Price), and Off Extreme (Time). Off Extreme (Price) is how far above the day’s Low, or how far below the day’s High, the Last trade was. Off Extreme (Price) automatically switches to display whichever extreme Last is closer to. If the Last is closer to Low than to High, Off Extreme (Price) shows a positive number indicating how far off the day’s Low Last is. If the Last is closer to High than to Low, Off Extreme (Price) shows a negative number indicating how far off the day’s High Last is. Off Extreme (Time) shows how much time has transpired since a new low or a new high was set today. Also in the Quotes Display, clicking the ‘A’ to sort a section now automatically removes duplicates.

9. In the List of Accounts report, the column named Available Cash was changed to show pure idle cash, rather than option buying power. It was guessed that this is the way most users would like it to work. If not, as always, we welcome feedback.

10. Also in the Portfolio Manager, when starting a new account, the program prompts the user for an initial deposit amount and date. If entered, these go into the Transaction Log as the first entry. Also, in the Transaction Log, the capacity of the Net field was increased to accept up to $999 million (formerly $99 million). Also, in the Capital Gains/Losses Tax Report, totals were added at the bottom of the Proceeds and Cost columns.

11. When receiving real-time quotes from AT Financial, OptionVue attaches a time stamp from the user’s own PC now rather than using the time stamp that comes with the data, because the time stamp that comes with the data is the time of last trade. We felt it was better to display the time of the last price update rather than the time of the last trade.

12. One or more symbols can be pasted from the clipboard (outside OptionVue) into OptionVue’s Quotes Display by using the new Edit | Paste Symbol(s) item in the main menu. New symbol(s) will be inserted at the current cursor position.

13. OptionVue now remembers your favorite printer orientation (portrait v. landscape). Also, you may indicate whether you want snapshot prints to invoke the printer dialog before printing. This is done using a new checkbox in User Preferences, under the Miscellaneous Tab.

14. More frequently used items in the NetVue menu were moved closer to the top within the menu, and a Comm Settings choice was added. Coincidently, the Comm Settings buttons were removed for each of the NetVue related dialogs.

15. OptionVue can now export the contents of the Transaction Log, Account Status, Survey, TradeFinder, and any of the Portfolio Manager Reports except the Performance Graph to a comma-delimited file (suitable for Excel and many other programs). This is done by clicking the Print button on the Transaction Log, etc. window itself and checking the “Print To File” checkbox. The program will ask what you would like to name the file and what folder you would like to place it in.

Note that “Print To File” was previously used to output a formatted text file. We are guessing that no one uses this feature any more. If we are mistaken, and you need the old, formatted “Print To File” output, please contact us. (We can tell you how you can still access the old functionality.)

16. The User's and Getting Started Guides will now be included as .pdf files (Adobe Acrobat) on every shipped program CD. The files can be accessed directly from the CD or downloaded onto the owner's hard drive. Hard copies of these guides will continue to be provided with each trial.