The new features and miscellaneous enhancements outlined below were introduced in the 5.0 Version.

Product Enhancements for Version 5.0.4
Release Date: October 25, 2001

• Point & Figure, Three Line Break Enhancement
• Scanning Weekly/Monthly Data Improved
• Editing Alarms Levels In QuotePages
• Scan Error Reporting Improved
• Charting Instruments Not Marked For Intraday Data Retention
• New Pricing Option For Candle Body Midpoint: (OP + CL)/2
• Setup Scan Added To Setup Menu
• Backtesting Using REVERSE Rules
• Fibonacci Retracements Improvements
• Trendline Improvements
• Slide Show Toolbar Addition
• QQQ Options Setup Feature Added
• Maintenance and Fixes
• RTL Syntax Improvements
• New Statistics Indicators
• Horizontal Reference Line Improvements
• Custom Indicator Charting Enhancement
• Scan/Signal Marker Enhancement
• PNF/TLB Reversal Price Added To RTL
• Making Color Selections
• Web Research Menu and Control Panel (more)
• Backtesting Enhancements
• Quote Page/Portfolio Formats enhanced
• New Quote Page Column for Trading Notes
• Scan setup enhancements
• Import/Export Preferences panels added
• Trendlines on indicators
• Pivot Point Enhancements: Use Weekly or Monthly Data and More Support and Resistance Levels
• New Scheduler Action: Send Quote Page to ChatRoom
• Vertical reference line enhancement
• Technical Indicator Presets Feature added
• eSignal Pre/Post Market charting
• International time zone issues resolved
• Changing Scan/Signal Markers, Custom Indicators, Paint Bars
• New Data Editing Tool for Traditional Charts
• Charting tools cursors enhanced
• User Variables enhancements
• New Technical Indicator: Rate of Change Summation
• New Technical Indicator: Aroon
• New Technical Indicator: ZigZag
• Fibonacci Retracement Enhancements
• New RTL Functions: SMIN and SMAX
• Import Enhancement: European Date Format
• Chart Annotation Text Increased
• Tracking up tick volume and down tick volume
• Time and Sales tick volume filter
• Oscillator drawing options expanded
• Pivot Point Enhancements
• New method of positioning rows in quote pages
• Linear Regression Indicator enhancement
• Trendline enhancements
• Andrew's Pitchfork Enhanced
• Custom Instrument Enhanced
• Backtesting Output controls
• Main toolbar quote feature enhanced
• Traditional chart pane resizing shortcuts added
• Multi-Link option when typing tickers into charts
• New Scan Tokens: NUM, SEQ, HITS
• Crosshairs fixed
• What's New in Version 4.9 (June 18, 2001)
  

  ---

• Point & Figure, Three Line Break Enhancement
  PNF and TLB charts can now be setup to use a variety of price values to produce the chart. Formerly, the close price was the used. Computed price points such as HI+LO/2 or HI+LO+CL/3 can now be used to compute PNF and TLB charts.
• Scanning Weekly/Monthly Data Improved
  Scans using weekly and monthly periodicity are now possible even if weekly or monthly data retention is off for an instrument. If weekly or monthly retention if off, then running a scan will derive the necessary weekly or monthly bars from the daily data on file for the instrument at the time the scan is run.
• Editing Alarms Levels In QuotePages
  When changing the value of the high or low alarm level in a quote page, Investor/RT now automatically updates any chart windows for the affected instrument that happen to contain a reference line associated with the alarm level.
• Scan Error Reporting Improved
  Occasionally a technical indicator calculation will fail during a scan even though the instrument appears to have enough data to calculate the indicator. Such errors used to stop the scan process altogether. Now Investor/RT has been improved to skip the offending instrument and continue with the scan. Upon completion, Investor/RT will display the number of instruments scanned, the number of instruments not tested at all due to insufficient data, and the number of instruments with data that reported failures in calculation.
• Charting Instruments Not Marked For Intra-day Data Retention
  When attempting to open an intra-day periodicity chart of an instrument that is not marked for intra-day data retention, Investor/RT used to present a dialog box warning you of this fact and giving you the opportunity to switch the chart to daily or proceed. In version 5.0 Rev 4, this dialog warning box has been eliminated and a warning message appears in the status message area of the main toolbar. The chart will open to the desired intra-day periodicity and the instrument in question will remain unmarked for intra-day retention. The instrument's live data will be collected in the chart window and will be discarded when you close the chart window or change to a different periodicity.
• New Price Option (OP + CL)/2 Candle Body Midpoint
  A new calculated price point, the average of the open and close, sometimes called the candle body midpoint, has been added as a standard price selection in various technical indicators, line charts, point & figure, three line break charts, etc.
• Setup Scan added to Setup Menu
  The Setup Menu now has a Scan menu item for completeness. Setup: Scan, Setup: Custom Indicator, and Setup: Trading Signal are now all available from the Setup Menu.
• Backtesting Using REVERSE Rules
  REVERSE rules in trading systems are now tested if the backtest is aside the market, i.e. a trading signal to buy could either initiate a new long position or reverse a short and go long. Similarly a reverse and go short reverse rule can now initiate a new short position. Prior to version 5.0 Rev 4, Investor/RT only considered a REVERSE and go short rule if the trading system was already long. A REVERSE and go long rule was considered only when the trading system was already short. If you include a REVERSE (and go long) in your trading system and you do not want the rule to initiate new long position then add the expression (POS_STATE = POS_SHORT) AND... to the beginning of the rules' trading signal. This will ensure that the REVERSE rule will trigger an action only when you are already short. Similarly use (POS_STATE = POS_LONG) AND ... in trading signals if you do not want the rule to initiate new positions.
• Fibonacci Retracements Improvements
  Recently, Fibonacci Retracements were enhanced to allow the use of "Specific Prices", "Specific Bars", "User Variables", or "Automation" in determining the price levels of the begin and end points of the base trendline. The limitation was that when you choose one of those four settings, both the begin and end points were forced to use that setting. Now, the interface has been enhanced to allow the end point to use its own choice of "Specific Prices", "Specific Bars", or "User Variables", while the begin point has its own choice and group of settings. This allows an even greater degree of flexibility when determining the price levels of the Retracement study.
• Trendline Improvements
  The trendline study now has an additional option to "Extend to Past". This option causes the trendline to be extended to the left of the beginning point of the trendline. This options is in addition to the current "Project to Present" option for extending the trendline to the right.
• Slide Show Toolbar Addition
  A new toggle button has been added to the slide show toolbar to make it more convenient to switch between single chart and multi-chart slide shows. The new button appears at the right end of the toolbar and displays the letter M or S. M is shown when multi-chart slide show mode is in effect. Clicking the M button changes the button to S and vice versa (S means single chart slide show). When multi-chart slide show is in effect, advancing the slide show to the next ticker causes all open unlocked charts to be updated with the new symbol. When single chart slide show mode is in effect, only the front (active) chart window advances.
• QQQ Option Setup Feature Added
  The "Setup Equity and Index Options" window has been improved to facilitate generation of QQQ options. In the past, since QQQ was a special case with strike prices at every $1 increment, Investor/RT was not capable of generating QQQ option symbols. Now, the strike prices are handled correctly and the option prefix is determined dynamically based on the value of each options strike price. Investor/RT will determine the correct prefix regardless of the prefix entered into the setup window. This window also handles QQQ strike price range specifications, 30-50 for example, to generate options instruments with strikes or 30, 31, 32,..., 50.
• Maintenance and Fixes
  Several problems, including a few fatal error bugs, were corrected in this release. Editing or deleting ticks or bars in the View/Edit window no longer produces a fatal error. Using a custom indicator as the basis for a horizontal reference line no longer leaks memory. Renaming custom indicators no longer causes fatal errors saving charts that reference the indicator under the former name. Using the Next Window (ctrl-tab) command while editing the properties of a technical indicator no longer produces a fatal error. The Send E-Mail window can be used again to subscribe/unsubscribe or send email to the Linn Software Discussion Group. New Chat windows no longer open partially "off screen".
• RTL Syntax Improvements
  RTL has been enhanced to enable any technical indicator token to operate on a fixed instrument's price data. For example, if you wish to compare the performance of a list of NASD stocks over some period with the performance of QQQ over the same period you could use the DSV (Date Specific Value) token in a scan as follows:
  
  CL/DSV > CL(QQQ)/DSV(CL(QQQ))
  
  Where DSV is setup to get the closing price on a particular date in the past. The expression CL/DSV calculates the ratio of the current close of each instrument with the close on that specific date. Similarly CL(QQQ) gives the current last price of QQQ while DSV(CL(QQQ)) gives the value of QQQ on the specific date. Expression like DSV(CL(QQQQ)) were not possible prior to 5.0 Rev 2 Investor/RT.
• New Statistics Indicators
  Four new statistical functions have been added to the STAT (Statistics) token in RTL. These are Skew, Kurtosis, Higher and Lower. Skew and Kurtosis are similar to standard deviation statistical measures. Higher and Lower are functions that calculate the previous Higher price (higher open, higher close, higher high, etc.) or calculate the number of bars back to a previous higher price in the past. Lower does the analogous computation, looking for lower prices in the past for any bar. The Statistic indicator can be graphed directly on charts or used in scans under the STAT token.
• Horizontal Reference Line Improvements
  The power of the horizontal reference line tool has been increased markedly by allowing a reference line's value to be the result of any custom indicator calculation. As price changes occur, the custom indicator value is recalculated and the resulting value for the current (most recent) bar is used to adjust the vertical position of the reference line. A "Compact" option has been added. It affects the way the reference line is drawn. When the Compact checkbox is checked, the reference line is drawn only to the right of the last bar in the chart. This option, when combined with the "look ahead" view period option for charts, has the effect of adding a price display box to the right of the last bar that moves according to some price value or custom indicator value.
• Custom Indicator Charting Enhancement
  Drawing options have been extended to custom indicators to enable CI's to be draws as lines, connected lines, solid or hollow histograms. In addition, the Custom Indicator Technical Indicator setup window now shows the syntax of the indicator. When a Custom Indicator is added to a chart, Investor/RT now allows the indicator to be changed on the fly to another custom indicator using the setup window. Finally, two reference line values have been added to the setup window to make it convenience to add reference lines when the CI is added to a chart.
• Scan/Signal Marker Enhancement
  Scan/Signal Marker Technical Indicator setup window has also been enhanced to show the syntax of the scan. Like Custom Indicators, Scan/Signal Markers can be switched on the fly to another scan or trading signal suing the setup window.
• PNF/TLB Reversal Price Added To RTL
  The PNF and TLB tokens in the RTL language have been enhanced to allow scanning on "Reversal Price". When Reversal Price is selected as the Column Data Element, the token (PNF of TLB) is evaluated as the reversal price level for each bar. This enables scans and trading signal to consider the reversal price in PNF and TLB analysis.
• Making Color Selections
  Clicking on a color control in Investor/RT now brings up the "native" Windows or Macintosh color selection dialog. If you prefer to former color pallet window showing a 16 by 16 array of color choices, then right click on the color control instead (control-click on Macintosh).
• Web Research Menu and Control Panel (more)
  Investor/RT's Web Resource feature has been greatly enhanced in version 5.0 Rev 1. Now, users can create as many customized links as they want, and access them using the quotepage popup menu, keyboard shortcuts, schedules, and a new Web Research Control Panel window (discussed below). Scheduled web research gives the user the ability to popup as many ticker symbol specific web pages as desired (each in their own browser window) by simply clicking a ticker symbol in a quotepage, then hitting a shortcut key. This feature is discussed further below.
  
  Custom links can be created by going to "Setup Prefs: Web Research". Links can be created, edited, deleted or tested at the bottom of this page. Each link has a name and a URL, or web address. In the URL field, specify the web address that you would like to access when clicking on the corresponding name. Many web sites have ticker symbol specific information. If you access one of these pages, and closely inspect the web address, you will notice that in many cases, the ticker symbols in imbedded somewhere in the address. And by simply editing that ticker to another one, you can access ticker specific information on any ticker. If your Internet address requires the specification of a ticker symbol, then insert three asterisks (***) in the URL where the ticker symbol is to go. Then, the ticker symbol that you right click on will automatically be inserted into the address when accessed.
  
  For example, if you go to the Island site http://htmlgritch.island.com and enter the ticker symbol INTC, and click "Get Quote", you will get the following web address...
  
  http://htmlgritch.island.com/SERVICE/QUOTE?STOCK=INTC 
  
  And the result is a level II page for INTC. In order to access level II on any other stock, you would simply substitute the ticker symbol in for INTC. Therefore, in order to create your custom link in Investor/RT, you would just insert *** in place of INTC, and Investor/RT will automatically plug in the ticker symbol when appropriate. The Link preferences would look like this...
  
  Name: Island Level II
  URL: http://htmlgritch.island.com/SERVICE/QUOTE?STOCK=**** 
  
  Once you've created your link, it can be used in a variety of ways: Web Research Popup Menus, Web Research Control Pane, Shortcut Keys, and Schedules.
  
  Web Research Popup Menus
  One way to access your links is through the popup menu accessible by right-clicking (control-click on Mac) on a ticker symbol in quotepage. The menu item is titled "Web Research". The first element in the Web Research menu is titled "Control Panel", which we will discuss below. The next two items are user customizable submenus. The titles of these submenus and the elements in each submenu can be configured using the "Setup Preferences: Web Research" window. This window is also accessible by choosing the "Setup" choice at the end of either custom submenu list. When an link is chosen from the submenu, the web browser will come up and access the appropriate web site. If a *** was involved in the link, then the ticker symbol will be substituted in the URL and the resulting web page will be ticker symbol specific. Unfortunately, this feature is not yet fully implemented on the Mac due to limitations we are encountering with the number of popup menu levels. We hope to have that resolved by next release.
  
  Web Research Control Panel
  This window can be accessed by clicking on the "Control Panel" button on the Web Resource Preferences window, or by choose "Control Panel" from the quotepage Web Research menu of the quotepage popup menu, or by "Web Research" from the chart popup menu. This window is setup identical to the custom menus, and can be edited by clicking the "Setup" button at the bottom of the window. If the link related to the button involves a ticker symbol, the ticker symbol should be inserted in the field labeled "Ticker" at the top.
  
  Web Research Keyboard Shortcut
  A new keyboard shortcut has been added titled "Web Research". When selected, the available custom links are listed below. The selected link will be opened when the shortcut key is activated. The ticker symbol will be pulled from whatever object is front most in Investor/RT. If a chart in the front, the ticker symbol will be pulled from the chart. If a quotepage or portfolio is in front, then the selected ticker symbol will be used in the link.
  
  Scheduling Web Research
  Web Research has also been added as a new action for schedules. The action is similar to the way web research keyboard shortcuts work. By providing the ability to open web links as scheduled actions, the user can now open as many ticker symbol specific web pages (all in separate browser windows) as desired with one click. Simply create a schedule that is activated by say the F4 key. Then add as many web research actions as you like, each one opening up a new web research link. Then, for example, click on INTC in a quotepage, press the F4 key, and many distinct web pages relating to INTC will appear.

• Backtesting Enhancements
  Trading system development has been enhanced with the addition of two new rule "Actions". A "NONE" action (no action) rule is a rule whose signal is evaluated for each bar during the backtest, but no action is taken. Such rules typically will be used for housekeeping work such as setting stops, displaying values using the SHOW token, or setting V# variables. Note that the signal associated with a NONE action may take into account the state of the backtest (long, short, out of market). For example, if you wanted to set a STOP if you are long but not when short, then the signal might be something like:
  
  IF (POS_STATE = POS_LONG) THEN SET(STOP, ENTRY - 3)
  
  or
  
  IF (POS_STATE = POS_LONG) THEN (SET(V#1, expression1) AND SET(V#2, expression2))
  
  The second new rule type is called TEST. A TEST rule is very similar to a NONE rule in that no action is taken after the signal is evaluated. TEST rules will often be used for SHOW statements and other diagnostic work. TEST rules will be ignored during the backtest unless the user has designated to run the backtest in "TEST Mode". This is accomplished in the Backtest Setup dialog. Once a trading system is debugged and working properly, the TEST rules can be turned off by unchecking the "TEST Mode" checkbox. This way, SHOW statements and other diagnostic calculations you may have put into your trading system during the development phase can be isolated from the actual trading signals themselves. The diagnostic output produced by the SHOW statements can then be turned on or off at will by checking a single checkbox, without having the edit the text of any rules.
  
  TEST and NONE no action rules will often contain SHOW statements used to display the numeric value of any technical indicators or market data items as the backtest proceeds from bar to bar. For example, the signal:
  
  SHOW(OP) and SHOW(HI) and SHOW(LO) and SHOW(CL)
  
  would produce four lines of diagnostic output for each bar tested during the backtest. To enable more powerful diagnostic messaging during backtesting, the Annotation indicator (from IRT's charting system) has been added to the RTL language. The token is NOTE. The NOTE token is simply a way to output instrument specific values to the backtesting detail report. Typically, the NOTE token ( considered a "logical" token not an arithmetic one) could be added to an existing rule's signal, e.g.
  
  NOTE and MACD.1 < 0 and MACD > 0
  
  Or, the NOTE can be isolated into a NONE or TEST rule as simply:
  
  NOTE = TRUE
  
  The NOTE token always evaluated as TRUE. The NOTE token, like any other technical token can be qualified, e.g. a TEST rule may look like:
  
  NOTE.1 and NOTE.2 and NOTE.0
  
  The NOTE can be setup as a string of text plus instrument specific RTL tokens preceded by the % percent sign. For example, the NOTE text of:
  
  %TICKER at %CL, HI=%HI LO=%LO
  
  displays messages like the following in the backtesting detail report:
  
  IBM at 104.50, HI=105.75 LO=104.00
  
  When you qualify a NOTE, e.g. NOTE.1, the values displayed will be for the preceding bar. This applies to historical tokens like %OP, %HI, %LO, %CL, %VO, %OI. It does not apply to V# variables. A NOTE text that contains "%V#1" for example will display the current value of V#1 for the instrument regardless of the qualifier.
  
  Using SHOW and NOTE tokens inside signals that are used to form TEST or NONE action rules provides the user with a powerful diagnostic capability to see step-by-step for each bar why the trading system is performing the way it is.

• Quote Page/Portfolio Formats enhanced
  The Setup: Preferences: Formats window has been enhanced. The use of "Notebook" tabs has been eliminated because this feature did not work properly on the Macintosh platform. Radio buttons appear at the top of the window for choosing between quote page and portfolio formats. Multiple columns can be moved or removed now. Single date columns can now be moved up one, down one, to the top or to the bottom of the list by clicking the appropriate buttons. The overall window has been enlarged somewhat so you can see more data columns at one time.

• New Quote Page Column for Trading Notes
  Add the column named "Notes" to a quotepage and it will show the number of trading notes on file for each instrument. The "Notes" cell will be blank if there are no trading notes for the symbol in that quote page row. Double-clicking on the Notes cell for some row in the quote page opens the trading notes window for the instrument in that row. A new RTL token, TNC (Trading Note Count) has been added so you can scan for instruments having some number of trading notes. For example the scan "TNC > 0" would find all instruments having at least one trading note.

• Scan setup enhancements
  The row of buttons that appears above the entry area in the setup window for scans, custom indicators, and trading signals has a slightly new look and three new buttons. There is a menu button titled "N" for adding digits into the formula, a V# button for inserting the characters V# into the formula, and finally, a new "Templates" button titled "T". Clicking the T button pops up a short menu of templates you can insert into your formula. For example, you can choose "Break Above", the following text will be inserted into the formula at the current insertion point:
  
  (token.1 < VAR and token >= VAR)
  
  This is a template for the condition that some indicator moves from below a value to above that value. You must, of course, change the text "token" to be the actual token (e.g. RSI) that you want to test. You can do this manually by typing in the text or you can select the word "token" in the text then choose RSI (or whatever) from the Tokens menu. The selected token (e.g. RSI) will replace the formerly selected text. VAR is the token of a variable whose value is set in token list in the upper right part of the window, or if you want to hard-code the value right into the formula, simply edit VAR changing it to 70 or whatever value you wish. Here is a complete list of the templates available in the templates menu followed by the text that will be inserted into the formula at the insertion point:
  
  Break Above
  (token.1 < VAR and token >= VAR)
  
  Break Below
  (token.1 > VAR and token <= VAR)
  
  Cross Above
  (tokenA.1 < tokenB.1 and tokenA >= tokenB)
  
  Cross Below
  (tokenA.1 > tokenB.1 and tokenA <= tokenB)
  
  IF-THEN-ELSE
  IF ( exp ) THEN ( exp ) ELSE ( exp )
  
  SET
  SET( property , exp )
  
  SHOW
  SHOW( exp )
  
  These buttons/menus are designed to enable you to quickly express a formula using only the mouse. Suppose, for example, you wanted to add the text "AND SHOW(V#1)" to the end of some scan:
  
  1. click the & button
  2. choose SHOW from the templates menu button
  3. double-click on "exp" to select it.
  4. click the V# button to change exp to "V#"
  5. choose 1 from the N number button menu.
  
  Note that all of the buttons in the setup window now have button help. If the button help becomes bothersome, right click in the main toolbar message area and choose the check marked "Button Help" menu item to turn off the help feedback.

• Import/Export Preferences panels added
  Setup: Preferences: Import gives the user the option to turn on/off data validation when importing historical data.
• Trendlines on indicators
  In earlier releases of Investor/RT, trendlines had to be drawn inside window panes that contained instrument data. This restriction has been relaxed so that trendlines can now be drawn inside panes containing a technical indicator. Note that trendline alerts are supported ONLY on trendlines drawn in panes with an instrument graph alerting you to price movements of the instrument relative to the trendline. Drawing trendline on indicators, at present, if for visualization purposes only. Further enhancement may change this, of course. Note also that when a trendline is drawn in a pane with one or more indicators, multiple scales cannot be used. Only a single scale can be used since the trendline must use the same scale as the indicator(s) to be of any use.
• Pivot Point Enhancements
  Options have been added for using weekly or monthly historical data to calculate the pivot points, support, and resistence levels. Intermediate support and resistance levels have been added. These are called R0.5, R1.5, R2.5, S0.5, S1.5, and S2.5. These levels are simply the midpoints of the normal support and resistance lines. There are now a total of six support levels and six resistence levels in the pivot point indicator. Each new midpoint support/resistance line is drawn in the same color as the level above it, for example. The S1.5 line which is the midpoint of the S1 and S2 support level, is drawn in the same color as the S2 line.
• New Scheduler Action: Send Quote Page to ChatRoom
  The list of ticker symbols in a quote page, typically produced by a periodically running scan, can now be sent as text to a chatroom using a schedule. If the quotepage is empty, nothing is sent. If a scan inside a schedule produces some "hits", the next step in the schedule could be to Send the quote page to a designed chatroom.
• Vertical reference line enhancement
  Vertical Reference Lines now have an option to "Draw Every Day at Specified Time". This option applies to the line when drawn in an intraday chart. When checked, the line is drawn multiple times as the specified time for each trading session thereafter in the chart.
• Technical Indicator Presets Feature added
  Prior to Version 5.0, default preferences for technical indicator were limited to one set of default settings per indicator. Setup: Preferences: Charts: Traditional Charts: Technical Indicators was (and still is) the place to specify your favorite settings for each of the indicators you utilize. Often it is desirable to have several sets of preferences per indicator, especially with some of the more complex indicators where there may be many useful combinations of settings that are often used. The only way to "save" such combinations, prior to Version 5.0, was to create different chart windows each have the indicator configured in a different fashion, thus changing to an alternate set of preferences in such cases would involve opening a different chart windows.
  
  Version 5.0 introduces the concept of technical indicator "presets". A preset is a named set of preference settings for a particular indicator. In general, you may create as many presets per indicator as you wish. Once an indicator is added to chart, the "edit" dialog for changing the preferences for the indicator will provide a list of all of the presets you have created for the indicator, thus enabling you to configure the indicator quickly to another set of preferences.
  
  For more information on Presets, click here.
• eSignal Pre/Post Market charting
  eSignal users can now chart pre and post market (FormT) trading activity. To activate this feature in your charts, simply adjust the session start and stop times for the US Stocks session using Setup: Preferences: Sessions. During the pre and post market hours included in your session setup, incoming FormT trades will be reported in any open chart windows and time and sales windows.
• International time zone issues resolved
  Investor/RT users in Australia and Singapore have found it necessary to run their computers set to New York time to avoid confusing Investor/RT. The reason for the confusion is that the US Stock market in such local time zones begins trading for the week very late Monday evening. The Monday session in New York closes at 5:00 a.m. or so Tuesday morning. In local time, the US Stocks session appears to Investor/RT as an overnight session with posting days Tuesday to Saturday (no posting on Sundays and Mondays). Much of Investor/RT time management software was originally built with a bias toward US and European times zones where the US Markets open and close on the same calendar day and the non-posting (weekend) days are considered to be Saturday and Sunday. 
  
  This issue has been addressed in Version 5.0. Users in time zones of GMT+8 or higher (Beijing and eastward to New Zealand) can now operate Investor/RT with their local time zone specified in Setup: Preferences: Sessions. The computer clock must be set to local time. When setting up session preferences, indicate the start and stop times expressed in local time, e.g. US Stocks start at 10:30 p.m. and stop 5:00 a.m., and choose Tuesday through Saturday as the "Posting Days". The choice of posting days is very important since in essence this setting is used by Investor/RT to detect whether you are in the GMT+8 part of the world.
• Changing Scan/Signal Markers, Custom Indicators, Paint Bars
  Scan/Signal markers, Custom Indicators, and Paint Bars are all technical indicators that have setting to indicate which scan, signal or custom indicator is to be used in the chart window. Prior to Version 5.0 adjusting the preferences of an existing indicator of this kind did not allow you to change the name of the scan or indicator, just the markers or other preferences for the indicator. For example, to revise a "paint bars" to use a different scan or custom indicator to paint the bars, it was necessary to remove the paint bars indicator from the chart and add a new one with the new criteria. This has been addressed in Version 5. You can access the settings for any of these indicators and change the choice of scan or custom indicator, at any time and the chart updates immediately.
• New Data Editing Tool for Traditional Charts
  A new tool has been added to the charting toolbar. Located next to Andrew's Pitchfork, the tool button looks like a candlestick with a red X through it. Pointing at the button shows the tool tip "Edit/Delete Bar/Tick Data". Select the tool by clicking on it. The button to appear depressed while the tool is active. Like the zoom tool you can use this one to lasso a group of bars or ticks you wish to edit, or simply click on any specific tick or bar to edit the data for that one tick or bar. The resulting bar or tick data appears in a standard "View/Edit (Time and Sales)" spreadsheet window. Unlike normal time and sales windows, view/edit windows opened using the editing tool do not update to reflect incoming ticks.
• Charting tools cursors enhanced
  When traditional chart tools are activated, moving the mouse inside the chart window now shows a cursor shape that is specific to the particular tool that is being used.
• User Variables enhancements
  Prior to version 5.0, there were a limited number of V# variables (user variables) for use in scans and trading signals, and some technical indicators. The number of user variables in Version 5.0 is now a user preference in Setup: Preferences: User Variables. The minimum number of user variables is six, V#1 through V#6. The maximum number is 512, V#1 through V#512. Each user variable can be given a name (used in quote page column titles) and a display format. It is recommended that you quit Investor/RT and start again when you increase the number of user variables. Memory usage for user variables is now dynamic. This means, for example, if you specify 100 user variables and you are tracking say 300 symbols, the memory space used to hold the V# data is allocated only as needed. User variables can be set by editing the variable's cell in a quote page or by using a SET statement in a scan. So if you run a scan to SET(V#100, ...) and the scan looks at 50 of your 300 symbols, memory for user variables is allocated only for those 50 symbols. Note that V#1 thru V#6 are always allocated for every symbol. These first six user variables are "persistent", that is, they retain their values after quitting and starting Investor/RT again. Various menus and lists in Investor/RT that display V# variable choices have all been enhanced to show the V# variables called for in Setup: Preferences: User Variables.
• New Technical Indicator: Rate of Change Summation
  Rate of change is a price momentum indicator. It is a simple calculation of the current price divided by the price some number of periods ago. For example, if the current price is 50 and the price 30 days ago was 40, then the 30-day rate of change is 50/40 or 1.25. The result is multiplied 100 and the resulting line oscillates around the 100 reference line. 
  
  The Rate of Change Summation is a summation of the rate of change for each bar calculated as follows: 
  
  The summation begins at zero. For each bar, the rate of change is calculated and added to the summation. Whenever the summation is positive (above 100) and the next bar is also positive, the summation increases, but when a negative rate of change is encountered, the summation is zeroed and we begin accumulating successive negative (below 100) rates of change. When the summation is negative (below 100) and a positive rate of change is encountered, the summation is zeroed and we begin accumulating positive rates of change again. The result is an oscillator that is above 100 and rising during periods of successive positive rates of change. The oscillator immediately goes below 100 and continues falling during periods of successive negative rates of change. 
  
  See also Momentum Indicator
• New Technical Indicator Aroon
  Click here for more information.
• New Technical Indicator: ZigZag
  Click here for more information.
• Fibonacci Retracement Enhancements
  Click here for more information.
• New RTL Functions: SMIN and SMAX
  Two new functions, SMIN and SMAX (scalar min and max) have been added to RTL to facilitate evaluating the minimum or maximum of two values. Unlike MIN(expression, period) which finds the minumum value of the array of values specified by expression, the SMIN and SMAX functions take two expressions as parameters and returns the the lessor or greater of the two. For example the expression SMAX(CL.1, HI) evaluates to the greater of the previous bar's close and the high of the current bar.
• Import Enhancement: European Date Format
  The File: Import window has been enhanced with a new checkbox for specifying "Euro Date Format". When this checkbox is checked, imported dates included in current quotes, tick data or historical bar data will be processed in day/month/year format rather than the month/day/year format. This new option gives our international Investor/RT users the ability to import market data from other sources that use day-month-year order. Note that the year can be a two-digit or four-digit number. Note that if no slashes are present in the date and the "Euro Date" option is checked, the date will be interpreted as yyddmm (six digit dates) or yyyyddmm (eight digit dates). When the "Euro Date" check box is not checked, slash-less dates are interpreted as yymmdd or yyyymmdd.
• Chart Annotation Text Increased
  Chart annotation text was formerly limited to only 40 characters of text. In Version 5, textual comments (or RTL formulas) of up to 256 characters are permitted. Chart annotations are "one line" text displays. Therefore the amount of actual text that will fit in a chart window depends on the width of the chart window and the font and size used for the annotation. This enhancement gives you more flexibility when adding detailed notes to chart windows.
• Tracking uptick volume and downtick volume
  Investor/RT has long had the ability to display tick count, up ticks, down ticks, the up minus down ticks, and the up/down tick ratio. Version 5.0 adds "Up Tick Volume" and "Down Tick Volume" data columns. For equities, these data values update in real-time. Each time an up or down tick occurs, the tick volume (no. of shares traded) for that trade is added to the up tick volume or down tick volume respectively. New tokens have been added to the RTL (scan) language. UPTV and DNTV are "primitive" tokens that represent the current value of "Up Tick Volume" and "Down Tick Volume". If you want to track, say the ratio of UPTV to DNTV over time, simply use a periodically scheduled scan with the formula: SET(V#1, UPTV/DNTV). Run the scan every minute or every 30 seconds or whatever. Then to see a historical chart of the tick volume ratio simply create special tickers of the form XXXX(V#1) for each ticker you wish to monitor historically where XXXX is the ticker of the underlying stock.
  
  Like, "Up Ticks" and "Down Ticks", the up and down tick volume counters are set to zero automatically at the open of each trading system. Alternatively, you can set these counters to zero using a scan. The formula would be SET(UPTV, 0) AND SET(DNTV,0).
• Time and Sales tick volume filter
  The time and sales preferences window now has an entry box where you can specify the minimum trade volume for a trade to be displayed in the time and sales spreadsheet. A related improvement is that attempting to open a time and sales window when there are no ticks available to display, now asks if you would like to download ticks. Response choices are "Yes", "No", and "Cancel". "Yes" downloads tick data and "No" opens an empty time and sales window that will begin showing trades as the arrive.
• Oscillator drawing options expanded
  Improvements have been made to certain oscillator type indicators to provide four choices for drawing the oscillator: (1) Continuous Line, (2) Connected Line, (3) Solid Histogram, and (4) Hollow Histogram. Initially these drawing modes are available in four indicators: Volume, Open Interest, MACD, and Mesa Adaptive MA (MAMA). Additional indicators will have these drawing choices in futures releases of Investor/RT.
• Pivot Point Enhancements
  Click here for more information.
• New method of positioning rows in quote pages
  When a row is selected in a quote page the arrow keys on the keyboard can be used to move the focus to the next row above or below the selected row. The symbols remain in the same order, only the selected row changes. 
  
  However, if you use the shift or ctrl key (option key on Macintosh) then the focus stays on the same row but the row itself is moved up or down. The shift key in combination with the arrow keys moves the selected row up one or down one position just like clicking on the up arrow toolbar button. The row remains selected so you can press the arrow key repeatedly to move the selected symbol several positions up or down. The ctrl key (option key if Macintosh) has the effect of moving the selected row immediately to the top position or bottom position. These new keyboard commands now make it very easy to arrange the order of symbols in a quote page. Before this enhancement, repetitive clicking on the toolbar buttons was required to accomplish this.
• Linear Regression Indicator enhancement
  You can now request multiple standard deviation lines offset above and below the linear regression line by entering a comma delimited list of standard deviation numbers into the appropriate edit boxes in the setup dialog. For example, in the "Standard Deviation Above" entry box, enter 1.5, 1.75, and 2.0 to see three lines offset above the regression line at the specified number of standard deviations.
• Trendline Enhancements
  Multiple parallel trendlines lines can now be specified. The parallel trendline drawing tool now adds the parallel lines to the base trendline, thus moving the base trendline causes all parallel trendlines to move in tandem. Click here for more information.
• Andrew's Pitchfork Enhanced
  Additional tines may be added to the Pitchfork by checking the "Draw Additional Tines" checkbox and by specifying the multiple(s) in the "Tine Multiple(s)" checkbox. Each multiple represents a multiple of the distance from the base trendline to the standard tines. By definition, the standard tines will be drawn at a multiple of 1. If you would like to add two additional tines on each side, equally spaced, then you would specify "2, 3" as the tine multiples. The multiples can be separated by a comma or a space and they may be whole or decimal numbers.  Click here for more information.
• Custom Instrument Enhanced
  Components of custom instruments can now make reference to several new data fields, plus any V# variable. Choices for the "Price" value used in a custom instrument component now include:
  
  Up Ticks
  Up Tick Volume (see item #9 above)
  Dn Ticks
  Dn Tick Volume (see item #9 above)
  All V# variables
  
  Using this new feature is it possible, for example, to define a custom instrument that tracks the ratio of Up Tick Volume to Down Tick Volume during the trading session. The resulting instrument can then be further analyzed using any of the Investor/RT technical indicators. Similarly, this enhancement opens up literally any user defined computation to tracking as an instrument using references to V# variables. By setting up a scan to periodically calculate some V# variable for one or more instruments, you can then define a custom instrument that sums the V# values for the instrument(s) and track the resulting summation.
• Backtesting Output controls
  Checkboxes have been added to the Backtest Setup window to enable the user to specify which reports/chart to produce when a backtest in run. Each trading system has it's own independent settings for outputs.
• Main toolbar quote feature enhanced
  Investor/RT has a feature that periodically displays the change for the day in the Dow Jones Industrials Avg, the NASD Combined Composite, and the S&P 500 Index in the main toolbar status message area. The tickers for these indexes must, of course, be defined to Investor/RT, and these tickers vary depending on the data service. Here is a list, by data service, of the three tickers that must be defined in order to activate this feature:
  
  DataFeed: Industrials NASD Composite S&P 500
  
  BMI: INDU @CCO SPX 
  Dial/Data: *DWI X *OTC *SPX 
  DTN: INDU COMPX INX 
  Esignal: $INDU $COMPQ $SPX 
  DTN.IQ: INDU.X COMPX.X INX.X0 
  MyTrack: DJI COMPX SPX 
  QFeed: INDU COMPX SPX.X 
  Signal: $INDU $COMPQ $SPX
  
  In version 5.0 this feature has been enhanced by introducing a preferences window (Setup: Preferences: Main Toolbar) where you scan override these default symbols by defining up to four tickers of your choice.
• Traditional chart pane resizing shortcuts added
  Prior to Investor/RT version 5.0 double-clicking on any pane title in a traditional chart would maximize that pane, but the only way to easily make all panes visible again was to ctrl-click in a pane title to redraw all panes equally sized. This was sometimes inconvenient, for example, if you preferred to have one of your panes larger than the others. To address this we have improved the pane resizing shortcuts as follows:
  
  1. Double-clicking on any pane title maximizes that pane.
  
  2. Double-clicking on the maximized pane title bar, restores all window panes to the proportions that existed before the maximization(s).
  
  3. Holding down the ctrl key (option key for Macintosh) while double-clicking on any pane title sizes all panes equally (same as before 5.0).
  
  4. Holding down the shift key while double-clicking on any pane title sizes the panes so the two thirds of the window is devoted to the pane(s) that contain instrument graphs and one third is devoted to pane(s) containing technical indicators only.
  
  5. Holding down both the shift and ctrl (shift + option for Macintosh) while double-clicking on a pane title sizes the panes so that half of the window is devoted to the pane(s) that contain instrument graphs and half is devoted to pane(s) containing technical indicators only.
  
  Pane sizing commands have also been added to the chart popup menu to make these features more visible and to enable panes to be easily resize without using the keyboard. This enhancement makes it very easy to quickly maximize any pane in a chart by simply double-clicking on its title bar and then restore the chart quickly to its former state by double-clicking again on the same title bar.
• Multi-Link option when typing tickers into charts
  When a traditional chart window is in front, typing characters brings up a dialog for identifying a new instrument to insert into the current chart. This window has been enhanced to offer a "multi-link" option. If the "Multi-link" checkbox in the lower left corer of the window is checked, the identified ticker symbol is inserted into all open charts, time & sales, and Level II windows. The state of this multi-link option is remembered so that once checked, all you have to do to multi-link a new ticker is to type the ticker (with a chart in front) and press the enter key.
• New Scan Tokens: NUM, SEQ, HITS
  New scan tokens have been added to allow a scan to access the number of instruments being scanned (NUM), the sequence number of the instrument being scanned (SEQ), and the number of instruments so far that have passed the scan (HITS). When scanning a quote page containing N instruments, NUM will be the number N, SEQ will be 1 for the first instrument scanned, 2 for the second instrument, and N for the last instrument scanned. HITS will start with a value of zero and will increment by one each time some instrument's data yields a TRUE for the scan formula. HITS and SEQ can never exceed the value of NUM. Thus SEQ/NUM tells you the percentage of the quote page that has been processed. A simple scan like:
  
  SEQ/NUM < .33
  
  Will produce a new quote page containing the first third of the source quote page. Similarly:
  
  (any scan formula) AND HITS <= 10
  
  will always return the first 10 (or fewer) instruments that meet the scan formula criteria specified.
• Crosshairs fixed
  Traditional chart crosshairs now function properly regardless of the chart's background color. Prior to Version 5.0, some color combination, especially black backgrounds, made the crosshairs invisible or hard to see.