What's New in Version 8.7
Several new features and miscellaneous enhancements, available now in
our latest release,
are outlined below. Click here to download.
New
in 8.7.2 Released
June 12, 2007
New
in 8.7.1 Released
June 8, 2007
New
in 8.7 Released
May 29, 2007
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Mac OS X Improved Sound
Support
The Mac OS X Edition of Investor/RT was improved to utilize the
latest Apple Core Audio methods for playing alert and custom sounds. OS
X users may now place files encoded in any of a wide variety of audio
formats into the Sounds folder within the installation folder. These
files then become available in the Setup: Preferences: Sounds window for
preview and assignment to various sound events within Investor/RT, or
they may be used in Signal Actions. Supported audio file types include:
.aif, .aiff, .mp3, .mp4, .acc, .wav, and many more. Investor/RT users
can easily create their own custom alert sounds using Apple's Quicktime
Pro ($30) or a 3rd party recorder such as Recorder/Xhead ($15) (www.xheadsoftware.com).
Once in the Investor/RT sounds folder, custom sounds may be played by
schedules, or assigned to play via a Signal Action when a reference line
or trendline is broken in a chart, or when a signal marker triggers a
signal action in real-time. Windows users have similar capabilities;
Investor/RT for Windows supports only the .wav file format.
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Setup: Instruments Window
Improved
The Setup: Instruments window has been substantially improved in
Version 8.7. Click
here for
details.
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Improved Preferences for Market Profile and Footprint Charts
The Preferences windows for Market Profile and Footprint Charts now
feature a compact multi-tab user interface. There are five tabs in the
Market Profile preferences:
Profiles Tab: Here you specify the number of days to profile, optional
special profile duration, session override, and volume bars/trade bars
overlay options.
Letters Tab: All Letter related preferences are
specified here including letter size, color, and font, letter spacing,
etc.
Price Levels Tab: Line color, style, and thickness
are specified here for POC, VA, and IB lines.
Reference Lines Tab: Line color, style, and
thickness for each of twelve optional reference lines are specified
here. Individual color controls for each line is a new feature in
Investor/RT 8.7.
Options Tab: Miscellaneous preferences are set
here, including chart playback settings, info box size, grid lines,
split letter setting, and others.
The Footprint Chart Preferences are similarly
organized into five tabs:
General Tab: The nature of the chart
(Time/Volume/Trades at each price) and the Footprint type is specified
here along with other general options.
View Period Tab: The time period to be analysed in
the Footprint is specified here along with session override.
Columns Tab: Optional columnar data to be shown for
each bar in the Footprint are requested here.
Color Tab: All color settings are presented here.
Options Tab: Miscellaneous preferences are set
here, including row height, chart playback settings, grid lines,
borders, and others.
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Session Override for Scans
Investor/RT Scans normally run under the session of the
instrument(s) for evaluation. A session override option is now available
that will use the same override session times to evaluate the scan. This
option is applicable only to scans with intra-day periodicity of course.
It may be useful in situations where a collection of symbols that have
differing session assignments are scanned. The override session will
cause all symbol to be evaluated using the specified session times
instead of the individual instrument session. This option is in the
extended setup window accessed by clicking the Setup button at the
bottom of the RTL setup window for scans.
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Chart Scrolling Improvements
Scrolling in traditional chart windows was improved. The
scrollbar thumb size shows the proportion of time or bars represented by
the visible bars relative to the number of bars or amount of time in the
charts overall view period. While using the scroll bar thumb to scroll
the chart, the chart redraws as you slide the control left and right.
The horizontal time scale starting and ending date/times are shown as
feedback as you slide the thumb, making positioning to a specific time
easy. Related changes were made to improve the overall performance and
accuracy of the horizontal scrollbar. The use of the up/down keyboard
arrow keys (or the mouse scroll wheel) to adjust a chart's "pixels per
bar" spacing was improved to keep the current rightmost bar at the
rightmost position of the chart as the chart is refreshed. This enables
you to now scroll back in time to an earlier date/time and adjust the
bar spacing to zoom in/out while staying anchored at that time in the
past. Note that as pixel spacing increases bars at the left edge may be
pushed out of view since it is the rightmost bar that is anchored. Prior
versions of Investor/RT did not allow such adjustments while scrolled
back; each adjustment would auto-scroll back to the present. The
traditional chart window now makes more effective use of the available
chart window width to show the maximum number of bars that will fit
based on the present pixels per bar setting. For some charts this may
result in the current bar being close to right side price axis. If you
wish to have some margin to the right of the last updating bar in your
charts, set the right margin preference for the chart accordingly. For
live charts, the chart does not respond to incoming realtime data while
the scrollbar is not at the far right position. Incoming data is
recorded, of course. Live updating of the chart resumes when you scroll
to the present. The chart window may be resized while scrolled back and
the larger or smaller window size maintains the same relative position
at the right side of the chart with more or fewer bars shown off to the
left. Formerly, resizing the chart would reposition the chart to the
present regardless of where the window was scrolled before resizing.
In a related improvement, the chart panning tool
has been revised. Panning the chart no longer affects the "Lookahead
Bars" setting of the chart. The lookahead bars setting has been
superceded by the right margin pixels setting as the means for
specifying white space at the right side of the chart for labels and
annotations. Lookahead Period (in bars) is independent of the right
margin setting (in pixels). The Lookahead Period (bars in the future) is
seen in the chart only when the chart is scrolled "to present". The
purpose of the Lookahead Period preference is to establish a fixed
number of bars beyond the most current bar so you can see visually how a
trendline projects forward a known period of time into the future. By
expressing this distance in bars, the trendline extension will be
mathematically correct as the pixels per bar setting is revised (by
arrow keys or mouse wheel) so it intersects the price axis at the price
predicted by the trendline N bars out. In the past, the lookahead bars
feature was utilitized by many who simply wanted some white space to the
right of the current bar for a variety of reasons: reference line
labels, annotations, etc. The disadvantage of using lookahead bars for
white space is that the amount of white space varies as the chart is
zoomed in and out (varying pixels per bar). For this reason, we recently
introduced a new Right Margin setting in pixels, a constant number of
pixels reserved at the right side of the chart window that does not vary
with pixels per bar.
The traditional chart preferences for a particular
chart (view period tab) now has a choice for either Right Margin or
Lookahead Period. The two settings are mutually exclusive. Both cannot
be in effect simultaneously. The right margin is expressed in pixels. If
you simply want whitespace for labels and annotations, then use the
Right Margin Pixels setting, and specify the precise number of pixels
you want to be available at the right side of the chart window. This
margin will then be present whether you are scrolled to present or
scrolled to some period in the past. The right margin applies to every
chart type regardless of periodicity.
If you want a Lookahead Period in your chart for
projecting trendlines or regression lines a fixed number of bars into
the future, then setup the preference to Lookahead Period and specify
the number of future bars you want. The Lookahead Period, expressed in
bars, has nothing to do with margin. The Lookahead Period feature is
applicable only to charts having a periodicity expressed in units of
time. This includes Daily, Weekly, Monthly interval charts, and well as
intraday charts having a fixed number of minutes (or seconds) per bar. A
Lookahead Period is not applicable to charts having time-independent
periodicity; thus you may not use lookahead bars when a chart has a
periodicity of tick, or N ticks per bar, or range bars, change bars,
volume bars, etc. When you specify a Lookahead Period, the chart will be
setup with a fixed period of time in the future beyond the last real
bar. You can then rely of the mathematical precision of trendline
projections that intersect the price axis. The Lookahead Period
expressed in bars can only be adjusted by entering the number of bars
you want in the preferences for the chart. The right margin in pixels
can be adjusted using the mouse. Each chart pane containing an
instrument has a vertical line with a triangular marker at the bottom of
the pane just past the last real bar in the chart. The white space to
the right of this marker line, between it and the vertical price axis,
represents the chart's right margin pixel setting. When you hover the
mouse pointer above the marker or on the vertical line extending through
it, the cursor will change to a left-right resize cursor. You may
mouse-down and drag the marker and line to the left or right to increase
or decrease the right margin pixels setting. Note that you can drag the
right margin whether you are scrolled to present or to some period in
the past without affecting the scroll position.
There is a global default setting for right margin
pixels in the View Period tab of Setup: Preferences: Charts: Traditional
Charts. Setting a default value for right margin there ensures that
every new chart will be created with that right margin. The right margin
white space is present in a chart regardless of how the chart is
scrolled. If you want all of your charts to have a particular pixel
setting for right margin, then revise the default preferences. Investor/RT
will ask if you wish to apply appearance settings to all charts or all
open charts. If you respond All or Open, the default margin setting is
applied to the charts you designate.
Many Investor/RT users have used the Lookahead Bars
feature in prior versions for the purpose of adding some white space to
charts for annotations, reference line labels and such. The changes in
this release have repositioned the Lookahead Period back to its original
purpose: enabling time-based projections of trendlines and regression
lines. The right margin pixels setting is preferable for white space
since the amount of white space does not change as your expand and
contract the spacing of the bars in your charts. When you drag the
diamond as described above, if your chart happens to have a lookahead
period, the chart will be auto-converted to right margin pixels as you
drag the mouse. There is no need to access the chart's preferences.
Similarly, all charts that are not time based, e.g. range bars, change
bars, etc. will be converted to right margin pixels automatically when
you upgrade to version 8.7.
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Automatic Labeling
for Technical Indicators
Each indicator now has an option to "Label Current Value of
Indicator". To access this option, double-click on any indicator in a
traditional chart to bring up the indicators preference window. This
options can be found at the bottom of the update indicator window. When
this option is turned on, the current value of the indicator will be
labelled, with a horizontal line drawn from the label to the indicator's
last plotted value. This chart demonstrates the feature:
http://www.charthub.com/images/2007/05/04/Labels.png
The label will only be printed if there is room to
do so (ample right margin setting). To adjust the right margin, drag the
small triangular control marker in any instrument pane to the left or
right. As you scroll back in time, the selected right margin will be
present for prior time periods. The indicators labels will update in the
margin area as you scroll back to show the value of the indicator(s) at
the right-most bar.
Normally, the display format of the indicator is
determined automatically by Investor/RT, however, if you wish to
override the automatic display format, edit the technical indicator and
checkmark the "Format" checkbox and specify the desired numeric display
format for the technical indicator values.
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Chart Setup Wizard Periodicity
A periodicity menu for traditional chart setup is available in
the Chart Setup Wizard window. The menu of common choices includes 100
ticks/bar, 1, 5, and 30 minutes, 30 seconds, .025 range bar, .25 change
bar, 1000 volume bar, daily, weekly, and monthly. You may revise (edit)
the numeric portion of the selected periodicity to create a traditional
chart of literally any periodicity desired. For example, select "1
minute" from the menu, then change the 1 to 13 and click ok to create a
13 minute chart. Similarly, you can select range, change, or volume bar
menu items then revise the number. If "Default" is chosen from the
periodicity menu, the periodicity that has been specified in Setup:
Preferences: Charts: Traditional Charts (View Period tab) is used by the
wizard to create traditional charts. This enhancement essentially makes
it easy to specify any desired periodicity in advance rather than having
the revise the periodicity after the wizard has created the new chart.
The Chart Setup Wizard creates charts using the session of the
instrument to be charted. Sometimes, you may wish to create a chart that
uses a different session (a session override). This can be accomplished
by appending a colon and the desired override session number to the
ticker symbol in the setup wizard entry box. For example, if ES #F is
the instrument in the entry box, add :2 tot he symbol (ES #F:2) and
click OK to produce a chart with session #2 as the override session.
Override sessions can be specified for traditional charts, market
profile charts, and Footprint Charts. This is a shortcut that saves time
by eliminating the additional step of accessing the resulting chart's
preferences to adjust the override session setup.
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Miscellaneous 8.7
Fixes and Improvements
A bug was corrected in the myTrack version having to do with trade times
being 1 hour later than expected. This bug affected users of myTrack
Investor/RT in time zones East of GMT. When the user time zone is not
yet on DST while the US is on DST, time zones are now adjusted
automatically to account for the one hour difference.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the myTrack version that was causing Investor/RT
to incorrectly report that the computer clock was 23 hours off when the
date in the user's locale was different that the date in New York. For
example, users in the Pacific time zone between 9 pm and midnight local
time would see this erroneous message.
-----------------------------------------
The trading order executions via AutoTrader or NinjaTrader were blocked
in the new IQFEED Edition. Trading orders submitted to these
destinations now work properly in the IQFEED (Windows only) Edition.
-----------------------------------------
When sharing chart images, if you include an annotation in the chart
with annotation like "%FEED %TICKER %NAME". Investor/RT will substitute
the name of the data feed in use for %FEED, and the ticker and name of
the instrument in the chart for the other tokens. This might be useful
if you use multiple data feeds to remind you of which feed you are
running on when you view a chart with such an annotation.
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Daily Historical data importing from Metastock format files functions
correctly on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. A bug was corrected that was
causing such importing to fail on Intel Macs.
----------------------------------------
IB users tracking Cocoa and other futures traded with exchange code
LIFFE_NF can now track those instruments in Investor/RT. The LIFFE_NF
exchange code is now available for selection in the Setup: Instruments
window.
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The DATE token is RTL now provides a "date number" of the form yyymmdd
where yyy is the number of years since 1900, mm is the month, and dd is
day of the month. A bar for April 15, 2007 would have a DATE of 1070415.
Formerly this token yielded larger numbers like 20070415.
-----------------------------------------
Floating chart windows are always exported and imported as non-floating
charts. If the recipient running Windows wishes to float the chart and
move it outside the Investor/RT task window, right-click in the chart
and choose Floating Window
-----------------------------------------
DTN IQ users and DTN Market Access Historical users in locales that are
not on daylight savings time will now receive historical data time
shifted correctly to their standard time zone.
-----------------------------------------
Investor/RT text windows can contain as many as 65,525 displayed lines
of text. The scrollbar work properly when viewing files this large.
Formerly, scrolling was effective only for files with up to 32,767
lines. This improvement affects all text display windows in Investor/RT
including the message log, alarm log, backtesting reports, etc.
-----------------------------------------
The File: Import: Chart Definition command determines if a definition is
present on the clipboard. If so, Investor/RT will prompt "Do you want to
import the definition on the clipboard?". Press enter or click Yes to
import that definition. Click "No" and Investor/RT will prompt you to
select a definition file to import. If you issue the Import: Chart
Definition command with the shift-key down, Investor/RT will import
unconditionally from the clipboard. This revision is designed make it
more convenient to importing of a chart from charthub.com. When viewing
a chart definition in your web browser, select all of the text and copy
it to the clipboard. Then issue the File: Import: Chart Definition
command. There is also a File: Import: Definition from Clipboard menu
item further down in the menu, but the top menu item is more convenient
and will do the appropriate thing whether a definition on the clipboard
or not.
-----------------------------------------
Traditional chart windows are designed to enable a double-click on an
instrument or an indicator to edit the preferences of the element in the
chart. If you double-click in an area of the chart that Investor/RT does
not recognize as being "on" an indicator or instrument element,
Investor/RT present a list of preferences you can edit, including all of
the instruments and indicators in the pane which received the
double-click. Select the preferences you wish to edit and click OK.
Preferences for the specific chart, the paneclicking inside the body of
the chart is the method used in Market Profile Charts, Footprint Charts,
and other non-traditional charts to access preferences.
-----------------------------------------
A bug that prevented Level II windows from updating properly in the
eSignal and myTrack editions of Investor/RT has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
Backup Preferences has a checkbox for requesting a warning if any
datafile file reaches a user-specified size, expressed in megabytes
(MB). Most database files are small with sizes under a megabytes, but a
few files, most notably the tick.d01 and hist.d01 files can grow large
since they contain intra-day and daily/weekly/monthly historical data
for each symbol. This checkbox is off by default. We recommend turning
this option on with a warning level of 1500 MB. The database system
Investor/RT employs supports file sizes up to 2 GB (2048 MB).
-----------------------------------------
The Database Wizard has a button in the top section for calling up the
Backup Preferences windows.
-----------------------------------------
The Hull Moving Average indicator was corrected. Prior versions of
Investor/RT were incorrectly calculating this low-lag moving average.
-----------------------------------------
Setup: Preferences: User Variables has a checkbox for specifying whether
the V# number should always be appended to quotepage column titles for
V# columns. This is a global option; it pertains to all V# variables.
For example if you have V#13's title set to "Support" and V#14's title
to "Resistance", checking this box will result in quotepage columns
"Support (V#13)" and "Resistance (V#14)" respectively. If you check or
uncheck the checkbox and press the Apply button, all open quotepages
that contain V# variable will adjust titles dynamically.
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Chart Buttons
for Drawing Line-based Indicators
Traditional Chart Buttons can now be created for activating
drawings tools of various kinds. The Button Purpose is titled "Activate
Drawing Tool Preset". This button purpose works similarly to the
Add/Remove Preset Indicator button purpose. The difference is that the
Activate purpose considers only indicator presets for line-based
indicators, e.g. Trendlines, Horizontal and Vertical Reference Lines,
Regression Lines, Fibonacci Retracements, Projections, Arcs, Rectangle,
Annotations, and others. Unlike the Add/Remove purpose, the Activate
Drawing Tool purpose never removes a preset indicator; it always
activates the drawing tool for the indicator preset whose name is part
of the setup for the button. For example, suppose you wanted to have
three trendline drawing buttons in a chart window: one for drawing red
trendlines, another for green lines, the 3rd for blue lines. First go to
Setup: Preferences: Technical Indicator, pick the Trendline indicator
and setup the preferences for a red trendline. Then use the Preset menu
at the bottom to create a new Preset. Name it Red Trendline. Repeat the
process to create trendline presets named Blue Trendline, and Green
Trendline. Now add three buttons to the chart, each one uses "Activate
Drawing Tool Preset" as the purpose, and each one specifies one of the
three trendline presets you created. Each of the buttons has a default
title of TLINE. You could specify a different text time for each one
and/or use a color for each button so that each button's title color
matches the color of the trendline to be drawn. When you click on any of
these buttons, the cursor will change to the trendline drawing cursor
and the message "TLINE Drawing Tool Activated" will appear in the
message area of the main toolbar. Mouse down and drag the mouse to trace
the slope of the line; when you release the mouse, the trendline will be
drawn in the color specified in the button's trendline preset.
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Miscellaneous
8.7.1 Fixes and Improvements
Traditional Chart definitions now include the session override if
specified. When importing a chart definition having a session override,
Investor/RT will verify that the override session number is a defined
session in your setup. If so, the chart will be imported with that
session number specified. Ensuring that the session hours are
appropriate is beyond the scope of the import/export mechanism. This
must be done manually. If the session override specifies a non-existent
session then the chart session override is discarded and a message
informing you of that is presented.
-----------------------------------------
A Mac OS X specific bug was fixed in the Instrument dialog that appears
when replacing a symbol in a traditional chart with another. Typing
letters into the dialog would sometimes activate the periodicity
control. This has been fixed. The instrument selector will now receive
all input when typing into the window.
-----------------------------------------
Quotepages setup to sort by user variable V#46 and higher, or any of the
user text variables T#1 - T#32 were not properly retaining the sort
column specifier. Thus when the quotepage was saved, closed, and
reopened, the quotepage sort column setting was erroneously set to some
other column. This has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
Clicking in a traditional chart to select a trendline was not detecting
clicks on the line when the trendline slope was steep. This has been
corrected. For steep trendlines, clicking on the trendline with the
horizontal position of the mouse to the left of the bar/candle works
best.
-----------------------------------------
Importing Market Profile and Footprint Chart definitions, now properly
saves the imported chart. Prior to 8.7.1, the imported chart would
appear but would be discarded if you closed the window without making an
modifications to it.
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Miscellaneous 8.7.2
Fixes and Improvements
A bug was fixed in the "Check for Updates" process that was
causing failures at startup.
-----------------------------------------
The Info Box indicator now properly excludes various indicators for
which a display value for each bar is not applicable. The botton edge of
the Info Box was clipped off when the traditional chart contained
certain combinations of indicators. This has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
A Macintosh-specific bug was fixed in the dialog box that appears when
the user begins typing a ticker symbol into a traditional chart window.
The keyboard focus now stays properly on the instrument selector rather
than shifting inappropriately to the periodicity control.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was fixed in the myTrack edition of the software that was
adversely affecting the time stamps of incoming data. Symptoms of this
problem included messages in the message log and status message area
reporting a clock offset of 6 or 12 hours randomly. The problem has been
resolved.
-----------------------------------------
Indicator drawn as histograms would not "select" when clicked upon. This
bug was been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
Traditional chart time interval charts now update in realtime "flush
right" without adding any white space. If you wish to maintain some
white space between the live updating bar and the vertical price axis,
then set the right-margin setting accordingly. You can do this by simply
dragging the small triangle at the bottom right of the pane to the left
the desired distance.
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