1. These days many options trades take place at odd prices “in between the nickels”. As a result, we decided it’s time to stop rounding options prices to the nickel prior to displaying them. So options prices are displayed to the penny now. This includes the program’s market price field – a single representative price that is computed from bid, ask, and last. Theoretical value and At Price are displayed to the penny as well. Note that the stepper keys (the left and right bracket keys on your keyboard) change the price of an option by a penny at a time now, or by intervals of a dime if you hold the Shift key down.

2. A new feature was added to the Matrix that should be helpful to traders who like to open and maintain naked strangles or iron condors at one to two standard deviations away from the current price of the underlying. The program can display all strikes that are within two standard deviations using a pastel background color. If a strike is within one standard deviation the program uses light fuchsia; otherwise it uses light aqua. These are lighter versions of the same two colors used in Graphic Analysis in the colored bars along the bottom to represent the 1st and 2nd standard deviations of price movement.

In the Matrix, you toggle this mode on and off by clicking the new “S” button (“S” is for shading). The 1st and 2nd standard deviations are computed using the volatility number that is displayed in the new field right next to the “S” button. When you open the Matrix, this number is picked up as follows: If you have a bell type of target set up for this asset, the program uses the volatility entered with this target. Otherwise the program uses a current SV calculation if available; otherwise it uses the current grand average IV. Note that this is the same way the program has, for many years, derived a volatility number to use for the colored bars in the Graphic Analysis.

Now that you have access to this number you may change it and see the shading change. For consistency, this number carries into Graphic Analysis as well and is used for the colored bars, as well as in computing the Expected Return and Probability of Profit figures displayed in the lower left. Note that your changes to this number are not permanently saved, and if you close and re-open the Matrix the number is once again derived as described above.

3. In the Matrix, we have changed the Legend button so that clicking it toggles the legend on and off. The Matrix Legend is on or off as a mode now, and a new checkbox in File | Preferences determines whether the Legend is on or off by default when you first open a Matrix. We also made it so the state of the Legend at the time that you close a Matrix is copied into this checkbox.

We also changed the placement of the Legend so that it does not overwrite any more information than it has to. This was accomplished by making the Legend for each Matrix section appear on the right as far as possible. The only exception is when you select a 1x? cell format for the options, in which case the Legend for the options section repeats across the whole row. Pressing the ‘L’ key toggles the legend on and off the same as clicking the Legend button.

4. The relatively new Matrix hot key Ctrl-M (for copying current prices into the original price fields for an existing position) was only designed to work for the options. Now we have it working for the actuals and futures as well.

5. Some time ago we changed the margin requirements calculation so that the requirement for a perfectly balanced butterfly spread would be zero. This was in response to changes in the official rules in which certain strategies were recognized as having absolutely limited risk. In this release we have extended this kind of favorable treatment to condors and iron condors where each wing uses equidistant strikes. Condors now have zero requirement, while iron condors have a requirement that is equal to the standard requirement for a credit spread on just one of their wings (it doesn’t matter which one, as both are the same).

6. On startup, the program will look up and fill in any blank asset names in the Quotes Display.