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What's New in Version 8.5
Several new features and miscellaneous enhancements, available now in
our latest release,
are outlined below. Click here to download.
New in 8.5.5 Released
October 12, 2006
New in 8.5.2 Released
September 8, 2006 & 8.5.3 Released Sept. 19, 2006 & 8.5.4 Released Sept.
19, 2006
New in 8.5, Released August 1, 2006
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Sharing
Investor/RT Images via ChartHub.com
Building upon the PNG image capture features of Version 8.4, Version 8.5
introduces a "Share Picture" command throughout Investor/RT than is used
to publish charts and other images for instant viewing by other users
and interested parties. The Share Picture menu item is in the File Menu.
It take a PNG snapshot of the front Investor/RT window and publishes
that image on the web site www.charthub.com. The URL of the published
chart is placed on the clipboard so it may be immediately pasted into a
chat room or an email message. Investor/RT also opens the user's default
web browser to that URL.
Share Picture is also a menu item in the popup menu of every chart and
quotepage window. Right-click inside any chart window and choose Share
Picture to publish the chart PNG image on www.charthub.com. You may also
assign a function key shortcut for "Share Picture" using Setup:
Preferences: Keyboard Shortcuts. Share Picture is in the "Save" section
along with Save As Picture. The selection function key will operate on
the front window.
Charthub.com is operated by ADMG Technology. For more information on
ADMG Technology, see http://www.amdgtechnology.com/about.
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IRC Chat Floating Window
Preference
IRC Chat windows can be floating windows by checking the "Floating
Window" checkbox in Setup: Preferences: Chat. The Floating preference
takes effect with all subsequently opened chat windows, public or
private, as well as chatroom preferences windows. This option allows MS
Windows users to drag the IRC Chat window outside the Investor/RT task
window. Also, double-clicking inside the chat window no longer opens the
preferences. Instead use a right-click inside the chat window, or simply
click the new Preferences toggle button at the lower right corner of the
chat window.
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IQFEED Feed
Support via IQ Connection Manager
For Windows users, connection to DTN IQFEED is now supported via DTN's
IQ Connection Manager software. When configuring Investor/RT for use
with DTN IQ feed, there are two choices for DTN IQ: DTN IQFEED and
DTN.IQ (Legacy). The IQFEED choice configures Investor/RT to connect to
DTN via the IQ Connection Manager software. This enables Investor/RT to
operate with streaming DTN data in parallel with other application using
IQ Connection Manager. At present the IQFEED supports only Level I
streaming data. News and Level II streaming data are supported at
present only in the legacy DTN.IQ configuration. The legacy
configuration requires the Investor/RT be the exclusive application
using the DTN IQ/IQFEED account. Macintosh users will continue to be
supported via the legacy connection method.
If you elect to use the IQFEED configuration, you must download and
install the latest DTN Client software from the DTN web site:
http://www.iqfeed.net/index.cfm?displayaction=support§ion=download
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NYSE Advance/Decline from IB
The NYSE Advancing and Declining Issues are available in the IB
version of Investor/RT using the ticker symbol AD-NYSE. The AD-NYSE
instrument must be setup as an “Index” with Override Exchange code NYSE.
This is an unusual IB symbol. The advancing issue count is transmitted
via the bid and the declining issue count as the ask price. The number
of unchanged NYSE issues is reported in the “Bid Size”. No “Last price”
is transmitted for this symbol.
Changes were made to Investor/RT 8.5.2 for IB to allow the advances, the
declines, or the difference or ratio of the two to be easily tracked
using custom instruments. First, the bid (advances) of AD-NYSE is mapped
by Investor/RT to the last so that a simple line chart of AD-NYSE will
show you how the advancing issues changes over time. To see the
declines, setup a custom instrument (Setup: Custom Instrument), a “sum”
of just one component AD-NSYE using the ask price for that one
component.
To track the advances minus the declines or the advance/decline ratio,
create a custom instrument with two components as a “difference” or a
“ratio”. Both components will specify AD-NYSE with the bid price
specified for the first component and the ask price specified for the
second component.
The IB ticker symbol VOL-NYSE works similarly. The advancing volume is
reported in the bid, the declining volume in the ask, and the unchanged
volume in the bid size. Similar custom instruments can be setup easily
to track the NYSE advance/decline volume spread or ratio.
Historical data for these custom instruments is not available. The
custom instruments will update in real-time for charting or display in
quotepages. Mark the custom instruments for intra-day monitoring to
retain real-time collected historical data for charting.
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Miscellaneous
Fixes and Improvements for 8.5
A bug was fixed in the Intel Mac OS X edition of Investor/RT that was
causing connection attempts to DTN Market Access historical server to
fail. Users of PowerPC Mac OS X and MS Windows editions were not
affected. This bug affected DTN MA Edition users as well as IB/TWS users
that have DTN Market Access accounts.
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Here are some handy shortcuts for using the QP button on the main
toolbar: A Ctrl-Click on the QP button opens the .All Symbols quotepage
(Mac users option-click). Right-click on the QP button to create a new
untitled quotepage (Mac users with a single button mouse use
control-click). Shift-click on the QP button to view the quotepage name
selection list. This list can be used to open several quotepages via its
Apply button. Each of these actions can be done, of course, by clicking
on the QP button to obtain the menu and then making the appropriate menu
selection. These shortcuts, if you can remember them, save you the
trouble of navigating the menu. In general, right-clicking on a button
in the main toolbar gives you the "Create a New One" effect. For
example, to create a new chart, right-click the Chart button; to create
a new RTL object, right-click the RTL button.
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Several bugs were fixed to eliminate fatal errors stemming from deleting
every symbol in Investor/RT. Eliminating every symbol is something a new
Investor/RT user might do to eliminate the sample ticker symbols
provided by the Investor/RT installers.
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The time and sales (view/edit) window was enhanced to refresh the window
when the "Show Trades with Volume..." Preference setting is adjusted.
The resulting time and sales window will show only those trades with
volume equal to or greater than the number specified. In the past,
changing this setting only took effect for new trades arriving into the
window. Also, the volume threshold number can now be entered using k or
m suffix notation, e.g. 5k or 5K is accept as 5000, 1.2m or 1.2M is
accepted as 1,200,000.
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A bug was fixed in the Volume Breakdown Indicator in Version 8.5.1. The
bug caused the indicator to flat line as new bars formed after the
initial display of the indicator.
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Improvements were made to the Setup: Equity and Index Options and to the
IB data feed support to enable suite of stocks options to be generated
with all of the setups necessary for the stock options to begin quoting
immediately.
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New Chart Data Downloading Options for Tick Data
New options were added to Setup: Preferences: Historical, having
to do with tick data downloading. To review details click here or open
the Historical Retention Preferences window and click the "More
Information..." button in that section of the window.
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New Full Download Command
The popup menus for traditional charts, Market Profile and
Footprint charts now have two choices for downloading data: Chart
Download and Full Download. The Chart Download performs a historical
download based on the periodicity requirements of the chart and the
chart's associated ticker symbol (s). See the discussion in item #8 above
concerning new options for when to download tick data vs. minute
interval data. The shortcut a Chart Download is to tap the spacebar when
the chart is the front window. Traditional Charts also have a Download
Data button in the lower right corner that has the same Chart Download
effect.
The new "Full Download" command performs a three-step historical
download of daily bars, intra-day minute bars, and tick data using the
Historical Retention settings for the instrument in the chart to
determine how many days to download. A "Download Data" menu item was
also added to the quotepage popup menu. To perform a Full Download for
any symbol you can thus right-click on the ticker symbol in a quotepage
and choose Download Data. For users who have a mixture of charts, some
of which require tick data and others requiring longer term intra-day
interval data, the Full Download provides a means of initially loading a
full complement of daily, intra-day, and tick data to satisfy diverse
charting requirements. See Setup: Preferences: Historical and press F1
for details on setting up default and instrument specific data retention
settings.
The "+" menu in the upper right corner of any quotepage can be used to
perform a Full Download on all of the symbols in the particular page.
Investor/RT will prompt for an OK before initiating a multi-symbol full
download.
For traditional charts, you can setup a function key shortcut for
performing a Full Download on the symbol in the chart. See Setup:
Preferences: Keyboard Shortcuts. Use "Toolbar" and "Chart" as the
shortcut action and select "Full Download" from the list of chart
toolbar functions. For example, you could setup F2 to mean "Data
Download" and Shift-F2 to mean Full Download. These shortcuts will apply
the current traditional chart, not to Market Profile or Footprint
Charts.
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Time and Sales Improvements
A new checkbox was added to the Time & Sales preferences titled "Show
All Bid/Ask/Size Changes". When checked and when the tick volume filter
if off, the Time and Sales window will show non-trade activity as the
bid, ask, or bid/ask sizes change value. Such lines will have zero
volume. When this checkbox is unchecked or when a tick volume filter is
active, the Time and Sales window shows only trades with volume at or
above the filter limit. A bug was fixed in the time and sales window
that was preventing the column widths and some other setting from being
saved properly when the Save As Default button was clicked.
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Automatic Session Time Zone
Setup
Investor/RT detects your operating system time zone setting at
startup and verifies that your Investor/RT time zone setting is set to
that time zone. For new users who have never setup a time zone, the
computer's time zone is now established automatically as your Investor/RT
time zone and all of the standard session definitions included with
Investor/RT will be time-shifted to reflect the local times of that time
zone. For existing users who have already setup a Investor/RT time zone,
Investor/RT will verify that this setting is correct and if not,
Investor/RT will ask at startup if you wish to adjust your settings to
the correct zone. If you "OK" this prompt your time zone will be set to
the correct time zone for your computer and all session definitions will
be translated from the former time zone to the new correct time zone. If
you cancel this message, no changes will be made. It is recommended that
you okay this message. In order for Investor/RT to correctly translate
date/time values received from various data vendors to your local
computer time zone, Investor/RT must be set to the correct local time
zone.
For the time being, the Setup: Preferences: Sessions window will still
allow you to make adjustments to the time zone, but this should rarely
if ever be necessary. In the past, there have been periods of time when
daylight saving time goes out of effect in some time zones but not in
the U.S. for a week long period. Investor/RT is designed to detect
whether your computer is currently on daylight savings time and to
adjust accordingly. But if you are in a time zone where DST is not in
effect, yet Investor/RT is informed by MS Windows that DST is in effect,
this can confuse the software so it is "off one hour". Should this
problem reoccur, a temporary solution is to set your time zone one zone
over to compensate. If this is necessary, Investor/RT will prompt you at
startup as described above until this work around is no longer
necessary. Just reply cancel to the prompts until you are ready to move
back to your real time zone.
If you move your computer to a different location and decide to change
your computer's time zone to the new time zone, quit Investor/RT, make
your date/time control panel adjustments, and startup Investor/RT again;
the software will detect the new zone and (with your ok) shift all of
your session times to the new time zone automatically.
At present, this new automation is available only under MS Windows.
Support of this feature in Macintosh OS X will follow at a later time.
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Sharing Chart/Quotepage
Definitions
The Share Picture command (see item #4 above) has been enhanced
to enable sharing of chart and quotepage definitions along with the
image. The charthub.com web site now shows a link above the image titled
"Definition" whenever a definition is available for the displayed image.
Click the Definition link and your web browser will show the definition
text in a new window. You can the right-click inside the definition text
page and choose Select All, right-click again to Copy to copy the
selection to the clipboard; then choose File: Import: Definition from
Clipboard to import the chart or quotepage into your Investor/RT
workspace. If you do alot of importing from charthub.com you may want to
setup a fuction keybaord shortcut, e.g. F2 for "Import Definition from
Clipboard". See Setup: Preferences: Keyboard Shortcuts.
Setup: Preferences: Sharing opens a window where you specify whether or
not to include definitions when sharing charts and quotepage images, or
whether Investor/RT should ask you each time a Share Picture command is
issued.
Each image shared with the Share Picture command carries the name of the
"Author" inside the png image file. The Sharing preferences window
provides an entry box for a nickname to identify yourself as the
contributor of the shared image. If the nickname is left blank, the user
name from the Setup: Preferences: Registration window will be used. A
check box is also provided if you wish to share using the nickname
"Anonymous".
You may elect to submit a specific comment or no comment each time you
share a picture, or you may request that Investor/RT ask you to supply a
comment each time you share an image. The comment is saved as the
"Description" inside the png graphic image that is shared on
charthub.com.
Effective with Version 8.5.5, the first time you issue a Share Picture
command, Investor/RT will instead bring up the Sharing Preferences
showing default settings. Once you setup your preferences and Apply or
OK them, you may begin using the Share Picture command with the new
sharing features.
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Miscellaneous
Fixes and Improvements for 8.5.5
eSignal Version of Investor/RT updated to support newly available 2500
symbol limit accounts.
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An obscure bug was fixed that was causing intra-day chart drawing
problems for clients in GMT + 8 and higher timezone (Hong Kong,
Singapore, Tokyo, Australia and New Zealand time zones).
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Improvements and corrections were made to Investor/RT support for
floating windows.
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Setup: Preferences: Mail & Internet has a new checkbox to the right of
the "Check for Updates" checkbox. The new checkbox is titled "Check for
Beta Test Updates". If you check this option along with Check for
Updates, Investor/RT will notify you if there is a beta test version of
the software available that is more current than the version of
Investor/RT that you are running. Investor/RT does not offer to download
beta test releases at this time, but the software displays a
notification message with a reference to the web page where the beta
release may be download. Beta test releases of Investor/RT give you
access to bug fixes and new features before they are made generally
available via a final release version.
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The Download Historical Data event type in the Setup: Schedules window
is normally used to perform a scheduled download daily or intra-day data
for all symbols in a chosen quotepage. An new option has been added by
way of a checkbox titled "Download for Frontmost Chart". When a schedule
runs with this option checked, the download action is performed on only
one symbol, the symbol found is the front chart window.
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