To further explain, most stock options are “multiply-listed”. That is, they trade on two or more of the five options exchanges – the CBOE, AMEX, ISE, PHLX and PCX. Each exchange that lists an option posts a bid/asked. Say, for instance, an option is listed on three exchanges and its current bid/asked on each exchange is as follows:

The highest bid available is 1.80, and the lowest ask available is 1.90. So OptionVue will display this option’s bid/asked as 1.80/1.90.

2. A new options parameter is available in the Matrix to display the exchanges where each option’s bid, asked, and last prices came from. This single field displays three letters representing the bid, asked and last exchanges in that order. The letter codes are ‘c’ for CBOE, ‘s’ for ISE, ‘a’ for AMEX, ‘x’ for PHLX, and ‘p’ for PCX. So, for example, if the exchange field is showing ‘c s p’, that means the bid came from the CBOE, the ask from the ISE, and the last trade occurred at the PCX. Note: The new Exch field only works with eSignal, AT Financial, and PC Quote/Hyperfeed at this time. (DataVue does not contain exchange information in detail, so there are no plans to make the new Exch field work with DataVue.)

Other new parameters in the Matrix are Bid Size and Ask Size. Again these only work with eSignal, AT Financial, and PC Quote/Hyperfeed.

3. Owners of the Professional edition may tell OptionVue 5 which of the five options exchanges they wish to see quotes from when using AT Financial. This is controlled using a set of five new checkboxes in the Quotes Retrieval settings dialog (opened by clicking the program icon in the upper right). Initially all five checkboxes are checked. However, if the user wishes to exclude one or more of the exchanges he may do so by un-checking the appropriate boxes.

4. A new Slippage setting is available, called “Hit Bid/Ask”. When Slippage is set on “Hit Bid/Ask”, the program sets At Price equal to the Ask when buying and to the Bid when selling.

5. The Manual Volatility Skew model (Professional edition) now takes into account projected changes in the price of the underlying, effectively scooting the user’s skew curve and producing appropriate volatilities at different price levels. In addition, CEV modeling is now active in Manual Skew mode.

6. In the Professional edition, the program now displays theoretical value in the Matrix, Expand window, and Detailed Analysis using the same smallest tick as the underlying, regardless of the Smallest Tick settings in Define Options, to provide the higher precision that professional traders need. This only applies to stock and index options. Note that all other displays of option prices still use the Smallest Tick settings in Define Options.

7. The Matrix has a new button, next to the Print button, for allowing you to hide the Matrix’s tool bar, freeing up space to show more option strikes. To show the tool bar again, click the same button.

8. A restricted level of BackTrader is now enabled in the Trial program, so that Trial users can have a look at it. In the Quotes Display, only IBM and MSFT will update, and prices will update only in the matrixes of IBM and MSFT. Other features of BackTrader mode (e.g. Survey and Volty Charts) will work normally in the Trial.

9. OptionVue’s Trade button can send spread orders to OptionsXpress now. If you have staged up a spread order in the Trade dialog, OptionVue automatically recognizes it as a spread and sends the appropriate order over to the OptionsXpress web site.

10. With eSignal now always installing its DLL’s in its own program folder (usually C:\Program Files\eSignal), OptionVue has been programmed to find the eSignal interface DLL in that folder (rather than asking Windows to locate the DLL among its own DLL’s). If eSignal is installed in an unusual folder, you can tell OptionVue where eSignal is located using the Program Folder field in the Quotes Reception dialog.