1.
Since U.S. stocks changed to decimal pricing, there is little
need for OptionVue to display fractional prices. The only assets
still using fractions are some of the agricultural futures products
and many of the bond futures products. The program has always
displayed bond futures and options prices using an apostrophe
and two digits representing the numerator of a fraction, where
the denominator is “understood” (from the Smallest
Tick field). For example, 4’12 would mean 4 and 12/32 when
the Smallest Tick field is set to 1/32. That won’t change.
However, with this release we are switching the agricultural
products to the same method, but with an understood denominator
of 8.
This
allows us the freedom to stop using a custom OptionVue font.
In recent
years we experienced difficulty making sure the OptionVue
custom font was installed properly on the user’s system.
When not installed properly, the Quotes Display and other screens
looked bad. Quite possibly, many times users went ahead using the
program, unaware that it was supposed to look better.
With MS Sans Serif now the main font used in OptionVue, the font
installation problem is gone. This MS Sans Serif font is universally
available and one of the main fonts that comes with Windows.
2. With the use of a new (standard) font, we were (finally) able
to ad the Euro symbol as one of the available currency symbols
in the program.
3. The Survey function has two new checkboxes to allow users to
indicate whether to include U.S. assets, Australian assets, or
both.
4. Graphic Analysis now shows breakeven(s) for the T+0 line.
5. The program now remembers where you last positioned the TradeFinder
or Survey windows on the screen, and when you open them again,
they come up in the same position. This was mainly to address problems
with multi-monitor applications, where these windows could open
out of view.
6. TradeFinder
no longer recommends the short sale of any option where the current
bid
price is blank and the slippage model is
set to “Hit Bid/Ask”. Previously, the program fell
back to a different slippage model to estimate a possible sale
price when the bid was blank and the slippage model was set to “Hit
Bid/Ask”. So, for example, it could recommend selling an
option short at a price of 0.05 that had a blank bid and an asked
price of 0.10. Now it will not recommend the sale of this option.
7. In receiving quotes from AT Financial or PC Quote / Hyperfeed,
the algorithm for computing the best bid/ask was ignoring prices
from any exchange where the size of the bid or ask was less than
10. (It was thought that orders for less than 10 contracts were
probably customer orders and should be ignored.) However, in a
case where no price from any exchange has a size of 10 or more,
the algorithm now accepts, and uses, all available prices. This
issue came up because many of the SPX options (which only trade
at the CBOE) frequently have a bid size or ask size of only 1.
8. In view
of the fact that securities commissions schedules have been simplified
in
recent years to the point where they can be
modeled using just a few parameters, and in accordance with survey
feedback that this change would be acceptable, we have dropped
all of the named (and mostly, as it so happens, out-dated) brokerage
commission schedules from the program, keeping only what was previously
called the “simple commissions schedule”. There is
now just one user-customizable securities commissions schedule.
It is accessible from the Account Information window, as before.
If you were using one of the named brokerage schedules, you will
probably want to visit this section and enter some appropriate
inputs.
9. Likewise, the Commissions Analysis report, which compared hypothetical
trade commissions from the various named brokerages, has been eliminated
from the Reports section of Portfolio Manager.
10. The NDX Money Flow indicator and display window was removed
from the program due to lack of customer interest (as confirmed
by survey feedback).
11. The M3 data interface was removed from the program due to
lack of customer interest.
12. In the Help menu we added a link to the OptionVue Research
home page.
13. Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V now work in all user-changeable
fields to cut, copy and paste contents. |