What's New in Version 8.8
Several new features and miscellaneous enhancements, available now in
our latest release,
are outlined below. Click here to download. New
in 8.8.6 Released
September 7, 2007
New
in 8.8.5 Released
August 24, 2007
New
in 8.8.3 Released
August 8, 2007
New in 8.8.1
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New Historical RTL Token:
PNF_HEIGHT
The PNF_HEIGHT token provides historical reference to the number
of X's and O's in any column of PNF bar data. This token can be used in
scans, signals, and custom indicators, the only requirement being that
the scan, or chart, or custom column where the RTL formulas is being
evaluated have periodicity set to Point and Figure. This token can be
used in conjunction with PNF_STATE to easily create trading signals that
consider the number of X's or O's in the current or any previous Point
and Figure bar/column.
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Performance Related Change re Indicator Recalculation Frequency
During period of extremely high trading volume, technical
indicators having a recalculation preference of "Every Price Change" can
result in rapid indicator recalculation that can delay the processing of
incoming market data. Under normal trading conditions, this setting
serves well, in fact, this is the default setting for indicators setup
in the "Futures Installers". We have revised the algorithm that governs
indicator calculation for cases where "Every Price Change" is the user
preference for the indicator. If a trade occurs and it has been one
second or more since the last change in price, the indicator is
recalculated; if a change in price occurs in under a second, the
indicator will be recalculated only if the current price differs from
the last price and the price before that. This revision will reduce
indicator recalculation under heavy volume trading conditions when price
may be oscillating rapidly between two prices.
The technical indicator recalculation preference "Every 1 Tick" is no
longer permitted as the default setting for new indicators. This
preference setting can be found in Setup: Preferences: Charts: General.
Setting a particular indicator to calculate every tick is permissible,
but users are cautioned not to use this setting excessively because it
can result in unnecessary indicator calculation that delays the
processing of incoming market data.
The System Status window, accessible by clicking the System Status
button on the main toolbar, now shows a summary of the workspace. This
gives you an idea of how much load is being placed on the system with
the present set of open windows. The summary shows the number of symbols
tracked, charts and quotepages open, how many technical indicators are
present, how many indicators are being recalculated every tick, how many
every 5 ticks or less, how many are being calculated every price change,
and how many are being recalculated once per second. In you are
unfamiliar with the recalculation preference, take a look at the
workspace summary to see how your indicator calculations are setup for
your typical workspace.
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New Chart
Menu Item: Scrub Data. Traditional Charts
Market Profile and Footprint Charts have a Scrub Data menu item
in the right-click menu. This command examines the intra-day tick data
for the instrument in question and removes bad ticks and/or
out-of-sequence ticks from the data, then refreshes the chart. The Scrub
Data command also invokes the Verify/Repair Historical Data function for
the symbol in question. This new feature essentially automates what
Investor/RT clients have done in the past using the "Edit/Delete Tick
Data" tool for traditional charts to remove bad ticks in the charts, and
makes this functionality available to Market Profile and Footprint
charts as well. If a bad tick gets into your chart, choose Scrub Data
and the in most cases the chart will refresh quickly with the anomalous
data eliminated.
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New User Preference for
Drawing Order
When Adding Indicators to Charts. Investor/RT Tradtional Charts were
revised recently so that most indicators are added at the top of the
element order. Thus when adding indicators, reference lines, trendlines,
etc. these are drawn on top of the instrument data bars or candles. A
number of users have expressed a desire to always have their indicators
drawn behind the instrument. If this is your preference, you can elect
this option in the Setup: Preferences: Charts: General window. Check the
box titled "Add Indicators Behind Bars". Note that when adding
indicators to panes that do not contain an instrument, the newly added
indicator will be drawn above any existing indicators in the pane. You
may adjust the pane order of any traditional chart pane by
double-clicking inside the pane and choosing Pane Order, or you can
right-click in the pane title to access the Pane Ordering window.
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MB Trading
Investor/RT is now available to clients using MB Trading (MBT) (www.mbtrading.com)
as a realtime data source. MB Trading streams realtime data for
equities, futures, options, and indices. Up to 100 symbols can be
watched realtime. Investor/RT supports MBT Level 1 and Level II data.
Investor/RT MBT users have built-in access to all Yahoo Finance data
retrieval services, including historical data backfill of daily, weekly,
monthly charts for stocks, indices, funds. DTN Market Access historical
services for intra-day chart backfill (tick data and one-minute interval
data) are available (monthly fee $12). MBT plans to offer historical
data services directly in the future; Investor/RT will be updated to
access those services when they become available. Trade execution
through MBT is accomplished via the MBT Navigator software (http://www.mbtrading.com/navigator.asp)
which runs in parallel with Investor/RT. Investor/RT users can also
utilize trading orders setup for with NinjaTrader destination to submit
orders to MBT. Direct integration of Investor/RT with MB Trading order
execution platform is planned for future releases of Investor/RT.
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Point & Figure
Traditional Charts
Point and Figure is now supported in traditional charts as a
periodicity (and a drawing style). This significant enhancement marries
the powerful features of the traditional chart window (indicators,
buttons, multi-panes, etc) with this unique drawing style. More written
documentation will be added before 8.8 goes final. Interested users
should watch the video on this subject:
http://www.linnsoft.com/videos/pnfbeta. The Chart Setup Wizard was
revised to create Point and Figure charts with user selected indicators
and moving averages. The wizard creates the Point and Figure chart with
default reversal criteria of 3 boxes and boxsize determined
automatically from the instrument setup. You can also use the
periodicity menu to specify a specific box size and reversal criteria.
Choose the .25x3 PNF sample periodicity from the periodicity menu and
adjust the numbers if you wish. Note that the entered text must be
followed by a space and the letter P, e.g. ".1x3 PNF" to be recognized
as a point and figure periodicity.
Tokens have been added to RTL to support the PNF Periodicity. Scans,
signals, and custom indicators operating with PNF periodic data can use
these token to inspect the state of the PNF column for any PNF bar, the
box size and the reversal criteria. To test the state of the PNF use the
PNF_STATE token. Constants PNF_UP and PNF_DOWN were added to enable
expressions such as "PNF_STATE == PNF_UP" or "PNF_STATE == PNF_DOWN".
The PNF_BOX token gives you the box size of the PNF data for the
instrument, PNF_REV gives you the reversal criteria (the number of
boxes).
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New Technical Indicator: Volatility Profit Indicator (RTL: VPI, VPIL)
The VPI indicator can be added directly to traditional charts, or
its upper and lower lines can be accessed via the RTL language using the
VPI and VPIL tokens. More documentation will be added before 8.8 goes
final. (more info)
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Sharing Pictures of Market Profile and Footprint Charts
The Share Picture command is now available on the Market Profile
and Footprint Chart toolbars. Just click the "camera" icon to share the
associated chart on charthub.com. The camera icon/share picture button
replaces the "Export Chart Definition" button.
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Exchange Codes
The list of exchanges in Investor/RT was expanded to include all valid
exchange codes used by the IB version. Exchanges are stored on the
Investor/RT database. At startup a text file named exchanges.txt is
loaded. Further additions to the exchange codes will be accomplished by
updating this text file for time to time as new versions of Investor/RT
are installed.
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Investor/RT Default Windows
Font
Investor/RT Version 8.8 for Windows adopts Tahoma 8 point font as
the standard for all controls (buttons, list boxes, radio buttons, etc.)
Tahoma 8 is the font Microsoft uses as the default display font for
Windows. See item #7 below. We recommend using Tahoma 8 or 9 as your
default quotepage font. This will cause instrument selection lists
throughout Investor/RT to be presented with a consistent font
appearance. Tacoma 8 will be the default font specified in Investor/RT
installers for new customers. Existing customers can adjust their font
settings manually using the appropriate Setup: Preferences windows.
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Instrument
Selector Font and Size Preference
Instrument selection windows will now appear using the default
font and size the user has specified in Setup: Preferences: Quotepage.
The font and point size of the instrument selector was formerly not
adjustable. Helvetica 10 was formerly used on the Windows platform;
Lucida Grande 12 was used on Macintosh OS X. For Windows users, we
suggest you use Tahoma 8 or 9 point font for quotepages and instrument
selectors.
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Trendline Alert Improvement
Several users have requested the ability to have trendline alerts
trigger when price nears the trendline instead of waiting for price to
actually touch or cross the trendline. In version 8.8, any trendline
with a parallel line turned on above or below the trendline, can
consider those parallel lines when evaluating the alert. This allows the
user to be alerted as price nears the trendline, through the use of
parallel trendlines positioned close to the actual trendline. To
activate this new feature, put the letter "a" for alert just after the
number representing the %distance above or below the trendline for your
parallel line. For example, a parallel trendline specified as 3a % above
the trendline would give you an alert if price falls to within 3% of the
trendline from above.
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RTL Context (CTX) Token
The RTL CTX token can be used to determine within an RTL formula
whether the formula is being evaluated in the context of a Quotepage
Scan, a backtest, or an optimization, using built in constants
CTX_QPSCAN, CTX_BKTST, CTX_OPTI. An additional token CTX_REAL was added
recently but not documented. CTX = CTX_REAL is true when the formula is
being evaluated as part of the realization process. A new constant token
CTX_TSYS can be used in version 8.8 and higher to test for formulas
running in a trading system deployment inside a chart via the TSYS
Indicator. The constant token CTX_OTHER (CTX = 0) will be true if none
of the others are, e.g. a formula running inside a custom indicator
assigned to a custom column in a quotepage. The new CTX_TSYS makes it
easier to write signals for a trading system that work differently
depending on whether the signal is operating under a deployed trading
system (in a chart) vs. backtesting. For example, a formula of the form:
SET(V#99, CTX = CTX_TSYS ? <expression1> : <expression2>;
will set the V#99 user variable using the expression1 formula during
deployment, but use the expression2 formula during backtesting.
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Chart Cross Hairs Improvements
Prior to Version 8.8 traditional chart cross hairs were a
"global" setting. If you turned on cross hairs for one chart and later
moved the mouse over to a different chart, cross hairs would appear
there too. While this may be a preference of some users, the global
nature of cross hairs is undesirable to others. Further, the methods
used to keep track of the mouse pointer while cross hairs are on
globally, were causing internal problems for some users, especially
those with multiple monitors with chart windows galore. While cross
hairs are active, opening a preferences window above the chart and
clicking inside the preferences window would send the preferences behind
the chart, sometimes hiding the window fully behind the chart. This
problem was traced to the methods used to track the mouse while cross
hairs are active. To address these issues and to make the use of cross
hairs more customizable for individual preferences, the cross hairs
feature has been overhauled.
From a user interface perspective the most important change is that
cross hairs is now a chart-specific setting. You can turn them on for
one chart but leave cross hairs off for others. The cross hairs option,
just like grid lines for example, is saved with the chart definition on
the database. Thus when you save a chart that has cross hairs on, and
open it again later, the cross hairs will appear automatically as you
move the mouse within the window; there is no need to activate cross
hairs from the toolbar. To provide a visual cue for the cross hair state
as you activate chart windows, the chart toolbar now shows the cross
hair tool button with a green color when the current chart window has
cross hairs "on" and with a red color (as before) when cross hairs are
"off". When you click the cross hairs button it changes color to
indicate the on/off (green/red) state for that particular chart.
Some users may wish to have cross hairs "on" for every new chart they
create. This can now be accomplished by setting the "default" cross hair
preference in Setup: Preferences: Charts: Traditional Charts. In the
Options tab, check the "Crosshairs" check box if you want cross hairs on
for each newly created chart. When you modify the default preferences,
Investor/RT gives you an opportunity to apply the new cross hair default
setting to all open charts, or all charts. If you confirm when prompted,
the Crosshairs setting will be applied to the charts you specify. Thus
you can turn cross hairs on or off for every one of your traditional
charts by adjusting the default Crosshairs check box and applying to
"All Charts".
Investor/RT now uses a new method internally to keep track of which
charts need cross hairs and which chart presently has the mouse pointer.
The new method eliminates the anomalies mentioned above. When cross
hairs are on and you right-click, for example, you'll notice that the
standard arrow cursor appears over the popup menu and the cross hairs
stay fixed where you right-clicked until you are finished making your
popup selection. Preferences windows no longer disappear behind the
chart when you click on them, etc.
The keyboard shortcut for viewing cross hairs temporarily is to hold
down the Shift and + Ctrl keys while moving the mouse inside the
traditional chart. The toolbar button is not revised while using this
shortcut. The first mouse movement after releasing Shift+Ctrl keys will
turn off the cross hairs. Macintosh users hold down Shift + Option keys
for this effect.
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IB Trading Orders Improvement
Trading Orders with Destination "Interactive Brokers" can specify
a V# variable that will be updated with the IB assigned Order ID number
when the trading order is submitted. The same V# specification can then
be used in Cancel or Revise Order trading orders to specify which order
id is to be cancelled or revised. If no order id V# is specified in a
cancel or revise order, Investor/RT will cancel or revise the most
recently submitted trading order. The user variable specification
enables multiple orders to be placed and cancelled/revised independently
using the V# order id specifier.
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Info Box Multi-Valued
Indicator Display
The InfoBox Indicator was improved for selected indicators having
multiple result values to show more than one line in the InfoBox
display. For example, the Bollinger Bands indicator will feedback two
lines in the InfoBox, the upper and low band values. If the "Use
Indicators Color" checkbox is checked in the Info Box setup, each line
of the display is color coded with the color used to draw the
corresponding indicator line. The RTL Tokens for each line are shown.
For example, if you have the Stochastics indicator in the chart, the
Info Box may show up to three lines labelled RAWK, FASTD, SLOWD.
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Tick Data Loading Efficiency
Internal improvements were made to significantly speed up the
loading of tick data for charts and other purposes. This improvement
will be especially noticeable to users of multiple day Market Profile
Charts and Footprint Charts, Volume Breakdown users, and multiple day
tick periodicity charts.
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Database Maintenance
Startup Wizard
An emergency startup wizard has been added to Investor/RT to
provide step-by-step assistance in resolving database problems at
startup. Starting Investor/RT with the shift key down is a long standing
method of starting the software with no data feed connection and no
windows open. This method will avoid fatal errors at startup related to
a particular chart window for example. In some cases however,
Investor/RT may issue a fatal error at startup due to database problems.
The database maintenance wizard is designed to help you resolve such
problems quickly.
The wizard is triggered by holding down the M key (think M for
Maintenance) during Investor/RT startup. You can hold down Shift and M
together to invoke the database maintenance wizard and the "no
windows/no datafeed" startup option combined, or hold down M alone. The
M key triggers the running of the database maintenance utility before
Investor/RT accesses the database at startup. In some cases, this
utility will repair minor problems with the database, allowing
Investor/RT to continue starting up normally with the problem resolved.
Investor/RT will show a message box informing you whether errors were
detected in the database. Next you will see a three choice prompt to:
"Continue", "Quit", or "Report". The "Report" option is recommended when
errors have been detected. Clicking "Report" produces a detailed
diagnostic report showing the status of the Investor/RT database and
providing details of any errors found. You can email this report to
support for assistance; copy/paste the report text into an email
message. After closing the report window, Investor/RT will prompt you to
"Continue", "Quit", or "Restore". If errors were reported you can
quickly Restore your backup database and continue with startup by
clicking "Restore". If you elect to continue without restoring,
Investor/RT will resume its normal startup sequence until it has
successfully loaded all of the symbols you are tracking from the
database. At this point, Investor/RT will perform a "Full Maintenance".
This is a four step process that verifies all of the historical data on
file for all symbols, compresses the historical data and eliminates
errors in the historical section of the database. This process will
often eliminate common problems with the historical data that can be the
root cause of startup failures. When the Full Maintenance completes you
will again be informed whether the database is now okay and be prompted
one final time to "Continue", "Quit" or "Restore" the backup database.
If errors persist and you elect to Restore at this phase of startup,
Investor/RT will restore the backup and relaunch itself automatically
using the newly restored backup database. Otherwise Investor/RT
completes its normal startup. Finally, the Database Wizard window opens
automatically in case you wish to perform other database utility
functions based on the errors detected.
This database maintenance startup wizard is rarely needed but if you
encounter any kind of fatal error attempting to start Investor/RT,
starting again with the M key or Shift + M held down is an easy way to
get past most problems quickly. The "Report" option is a convenient way
to notify support when problems are detected in your database; the
report gives us the information we need to advise you further how to
repair the database if you elect not to restore your backup immediately.
If errors do persist after the maintenance or full maintenance steps,
the "Restore" option will eliminate them by replacing the damaged
database with the verified backup so Investor/RT startup can continue.
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Quality Assurance Improvement
A feature has been added to provide feedback to Investor/RT
software developers in the event that the software issues a fatal error.
Information about the error, the version of the software in use, and the
user (email address) who encountered the problem is reported to the
developers automatically via the internet. This information will help us
monitor and respond quickly to any problem in the software, and will
also improve the effectiveness of our quality assurance testing during
pre-release beta testing periods.
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Miscellaneous 8.8
Fixes and Improvements
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected that caused the last bar in an intra-day
time-interval chart to draw to the right of the right margin line in
cases where the number of seconds in the periodicity does not divide
evenly into the number of seconds in the trading session.
-----------------------------------------
Traditional chart cross hair feedback was made bold with a larger font
to improve readability.
-----------------------------------------
Using the Add Button command in a traditional chart to add a button for
an indicator now uses the button purpose "Activate Drawing Tool"
automatically if the subject indicator has a drawing tool, otherwise the
button purpose will be "Add/Remove Preset Indicator" as has been the
case before.
-----------------------------------------
When multiple instruments are varying periodicities are resident in the
same traditional chart window, a bug was causing the last bar of some
instruments to disappear. This defect only pertains to fixed time
interval intra-day charts. The bug has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected that caused the mouse to be locked in panning mode.
The bug surfaced when cross hairs were turned on and the user clicked on
a chart button embedded in the chart to activate a drawing tool.
Pressing the mouse down inside a chart window no longer turns on the
panning cursor immediately if a pan delay is specified in Chart General
Preferences. Instead the hand cursor appears only after the user
specified delay, when the panning operation is ready to begin. Other
qualitative improvements were made to ensure that when cross hairs are
on and drawing tools are activated, the cursor shows the tool that is
active instead of the small cross hair cursor.
-----------------------------------------
Groups of type "Chart" will now correctly accept charts of all types as
members of the group. The File-->Add to Group menu commands now function
properly when charts of different kinds are in use (Traditional, Market
Profile, Footprint charts, etc.).
-----------------------------------------
Investor/RT IB users without DTN Market Access historical services rely
exclusively on IB historical backfills. Investor/RT has been improved to
pace IB download requests no faster than every 6 seconds to comply with
IB imposed pacing rules. This improvement will eliminate failed download
requests due the "Pacing Violation" errors.
-----------------------------------------
A rare but serious memory leak was eliminated. The process of producing
monthly bars from daily bars was the source of the leak. Memory loss
from viewing an occasional monthly chart was negligible. The problem
could be serious, however, if some repetitive process was underlying the
reference to monthly historical data, e.g. a scan running frequently on
a large number of symbols with a formula referencing monthly data. The
problem was actually discovered when a pivot point indicator was added
to an intraday chart where the setup for the pivots called for using
monthly data. An intraday chart including an MPD (mixed periodicity)
indicator referencing monthly data would also magnify the effects of the
memory leak.
-----------------------------------------
The main menu bar Edit menu was augmented with a Copy All menu item,
useful for copying all of the text in a text window to the clipboard
with one command. The command is equivalent to a Select All followed by
a Copy. The Copy All command is also available text windows in the pull
down menu at the upper left corner.
-----------------------------------------
The System Status window was improved to provide some workspace
statistics. Buttons at the bottom of the window provide access to other
windows with status information, e.g. the message log, alarm log, and
the feed status window. Click the OK button to close the window.
-----------------------------------------
Keyboard shortcuts were added to Traditional Charts, Market Profile and
Footprint Charts. The spacebar is the shortcut for refreshing
(downloading) data for the chart. For tick based charts, the spacebar
alone will download the current session ticks; shift+space will download
the current and previous session ticks; ctrl+spacebar performs a Full
Downloading in accordance with the user's Historical Data preference
settings.
-----------------------------------------
When creating new quotepages, Investor/RT uses the column format named
"Default Format". This format can contain both built-in and custom
columns now. Prior to this release, only built-in columns could be
included in newly created quotepages.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the Full Download function that was causing
redundant historical download requests to be issued. The Full Download
command typically issues three historical requests per symbol, one for
daily data, one for one-minute bars, and a final request for tick data
based on the settings in the Historical Data preferences window. After
completing the Full Download, an unnecessary request was being issued
depending upon the periodicity of the chart in question. The effect of
this bug was magnified for traditional charts containing multiple
instruments. A two symbol traditional chart would cause 8 download
requests rather than 6, a three symbol traditional chart full download
would issue 12 requests rather than 9. The additional downloads were not
issued if the Full Download command was done explicitly from the popup
menu in the chart window. The bug only affected full downloads issued
using the new Ctrl + Spacebar chart window shortcut.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the IB version of Investor/RT that caused fatal
errors for clients tracking equity and index options. This bug was
introduced in version 8.8 and fixed in 8.8 Rev 1.
-----------------------------------------
A minor bug was corrected in the Mac OS X version user profile that
caused the OS X release in use to appear in the profile as 10.4.9 even
after upgrade to OS X 10.4.10.
-----------------------------------------
Exports of multi-chart layouts having one more Footprint charts
intermixed with other chart types were not imported completely (some
charts were missed). This defect has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
Performance improvements were made to the Verify/Repair Historical Data
utility function. This utility now runs considerably faster than before,
especially when processing futures contracts setup to retain only day
session historical tick data.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was fixed in traditional charting Pane Size commands. When
adjusting the sizes of panes in the traditional chart, the software was
not taking into account the presence of a Button pane at the top of the
chart window. This caused the relative percentages of the other panes to
be different than intended. Charts not having a button pane did not have
the problem.
-----------------------------------------
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New RTL Token: EVAL
The EVAL token is used within an RTL formula to evaluate another RTL
formula for a single bar. This new token is designed for use primarily
in backtesting trading signals. The SIGNAL, SCAN, and CI tokens can also
be used in a formula to accomplished the same thing, but these tokens
typically calculate an array of values instead of just a single bar. The
distinction between EVAL and the others has to do with how trading
signals formulas are evaluated during backtesting. When a trading signal
used in a trading rule includes SIGNAL or CI tokens to reference other
RTL formulas, the subordinate SIGNAL(s) or CI(s) are evaluated as an
array of values before the backtesting begins. For example, if a trading
rule signal includes a SIGNAL token to reference the formula CL > MA;
the Investor/RT backtester will evaluate whether the close is greater
than the moving average for the entire backtesting period before the
actual backtest begins to go through the historical data testing the
rules of the trading system. Sometimes it is desirable to perform a
series of actions in a subordinate signal, a series of actions that
includes setting of user variables that needs to be done for each bar
during the backtesting process. Consider a simple example, a trading
rule that references a subordinate SIGNAL having the formula:
SET(V#33, LO + HLR/2);
CL > V#33
This signal puts the midpoint of the high - low range for the bar into
user variable V#33 and returns TRUE if the close of the bar is greater
than this value. The trading rule signal that references is signal might
look like this:
SIGNAL AND MA > V#33
This example illustrate the need for the EVAL token. The SIGNAL token in
this example is evaluated in advance for the entire set of data to be
backtested, as is the MA token, both represented as an array of values
used to test each bar during the backtest. However, the parent signal is
here relying on V#33 being set by SIGNAL for each bar as the backtest
proceeds. V#33 is not set at all after the backtest begins, only during
the precalculation phase. Thus, this formulation will not give the
desired results because V#33 will not be the expected value. If instead
the trading rule signal were written:
EVAL AND MA > V#33;
where EVAL is setup to evaluate the same trading signal as SIGNAL was,
will produce the desired results. The reason is that EVAL will not be
pre-evaluated for all bars to be backtested. It will be evaluated for
each bar individually as the backtesting proceeds bar to bar through the
historical data. Thus when using EVAL you can rely on (make reference
to) user variables that are set by the subordinate signal to have the
current bar's value as the backtest proceeds.
In summary, the EVAL token should be used to evaluate other RTL formulas
within a trading system rule IF the subordinate signal or custom
indicator sets user variables that you wish to reference during the
backtest. If there are no user variables or other static properties
being set (via the SET function) within the subordinate signal, it can
just as easily and probably more efficiently be referenced using the
SIGNAL to CI token instead.
The EFLAG token can be used to inspect or modify certain instrument
flags (extra flags) that are not accessible via the FLAG or MON RTL
tokens. In particular the flag for the instrument setting "No Tick Data
Filtering for this Instrument" can be turned on or off using an RTL SET
statement. SET(EFLAG, 64) turns on this setting, i.e. the instrument is
exempted from tick data filtering, while SET(EFLAG, -64); turns this
setting off, i.e. the instrument will participate in tick filtering. The
expression:
((EFLAG – (EFLAG%64))/64)/2 > 0
is true when the "No Tick Data Filtering" option is on for the
instrument.
((EFLAG – (EFLAG%64))/64)/2 == 0
is true when the option is off.
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Feed
Performance Monitoring using $FEED Symbol
The ticker symbol $FEED is available to users of the DTN IQFEED and
eSignal Versions of Investor/RT for Windows to monitor the performance
of the software in handling incoming data. Add the $FEED symbol as a
"cash" type symbol. It will update ten times per minute with a price
value indicating the amount of time in seconds on average that incoming
data is waiting for processing once received by Investor/RT. Typical
values should be .50 seconds or less; this indicates little or no delay
once data was been received by Investor/RT and queued for processing
into the charts and other workspace windows.
The tick volume of each update will reflect the number of data packets
that were processed by Investor/RT since the previous update of $FEED.
The $FEED symbol will be available in other real-time data feed contexts
in future updates. The intent in introducing this performance
measurement tool is to give Investor/RT and the user a way to detect
abnormally high data waiting conditions. The software can respond to
such conditions by giving more priority to data feed reception. The user
could respond by closing non-essential charts and quotepages to reduce
the load on the system. The $FEED can be monitored just like any other
symbol in a quotepage or a chart. A small chart with periodicity "Tick"
displaying $FEED as price and volume histograms gives a good picture of
how much data is being processed and the average latency. For eSignal
the number of packets that are awaiting processing is updated tick by
tick as the $FEED open interest value. Thus you can add an "Annotation"
indicator to a chart with the text "%OI" to watch this number update
change value. For IQFEED, the open interest reflects the amount of data
measured in K bytes that is awaiting processing by Investor/RT. It can
be similarly view in an annotation or directly in a quotepage that shows
the Open Interest column. At present, $FEED updates every six seconds;
its price value is an average latency value computed over the preceding
5 ticks, i.e. it is a measure of average latency time for the
immediately preceding 30 seconds.
The latency will vary from user to user based on the number of symbols
monitored intra-day, the type, number, and complexity of charts that are
open, the number of technical indicators being calculated real-time and
their recalculation frequency, the number of quotepages open, etc. If
you use this new facility to monitor performance, please send feedback
on the average levels you are experiencing to support. This will help in
our continuing efforts to offer our clients the highest performance
real-time trading platform.
-
Opentick
A beta testing release of Investor/RT for opentick is now available.
Clients interested in this data service contact info@linnsoft.com to
request a registration code. Supply your opentick login id. For more
information on opentick, see
http://www.opentick.com.
-
Automatic Restart Feature
The Windows edition of Investor/RT will now automatically restart
the application in the event of a fatal error. When you click the OK
button in the error message dialog, the application will terminate and
start up again quickly. Fatal error messages also have a Quit button you
can use if you do not wish to restart Investor/RT.
-
Application Font Size
User Preference
IRT Version 8.8 for Windows adopted Tahoma 8 point font as the
standard for all controls (buttons, list boxes, radio buttons, etc.).
See here for details.
For those who prefer larger text in Investor/RT windows and controls,
there is an Application Font preference in Setup: Preferences: General.
Tahoma 8 is the default; Tahoma 9 and Tahoma 10 are offered as
alternatives. Changing this preference takes full effect the next time
Investor/RT starts up. A good way to compare the choices is to examine
the Setup: Preferences: Technical Indicators window. The list of
indicator names at the left side shows the effect of changing to a
larger size font; the text is larger; there are fewer names displayed at
one time. Use the up/down arrow keys to move though the list to see how
the various controls appear for a variety of indicators. The main menu
bar and various pop-up menus in Investor/RT continue to use Windows XP
standard Tahoma 8 font size.
-
Setup Futures Improvements
Investor/RT has been improved to better handle default session setups
when the user adds new futures contract instruments. In the past, newly
defined futures were assigned to the default session, a user setting in
Setup: Preferences: Instruments. This default session was often set to
session 0, the US Stocks session, so this resulted in futures contracts
collecting data only for the day session hours. Setup: Preferences:
Instruments has been extended to provide two default sessions, one for
futures contracts, the other for all other security types. The default
for futures is Session 31, commonly setup for overnight traded futures
contracts. The database of futures contact types now includes a default
session for each future type. Each type (ES, YM, BP, etc.) can have its
own default session. The Setup: Futures window, used to define futures
contract symbols and edit future type setups, shows the default session
number for each type of future. Whether you use Setup: Futures, Setup:
Instruments, or simply type a new symbol into a quotepage or dialog box
to add a new symbol, Investor/RT will ensure that the newly defined
futures contract is assigned to the correct session for any known future
type.
-
New Drawing
Options for True Range Indicator
The True Range Indicator now has multiple drawing options, including
histogram, stepped line, connected line, and several more. In past
versions, the True Range indicator could only be drawn as a line.
-
New Band Options for VWAP
The VWAP Indicator now has options to draw one or two bands around the
VWAP, as well as a variety of options for computing those bands. The
options for Band Basis include:
- Variance(CL vs VWAP) - The variance between the closing price and the
VWAP line, computed on a cumulative basis from the start of the session.
- 1/4 Days Range - One quarter of the range to that point in the
day/session.
- 3 x Avg Bar Range - Three times the average range (hi - lo) of last 20
bars..
- Constant $ Value - A constant $ Value above and below the VWAP.
- Proprietary - This option is a work in progress and currently being
kept proprietary.
-
New Indicator: Volatility Stop
The Volatility Stop Indicator helps define the current trend. The
indicator plots a red line above the prices bars when a downward trend
is detected, and a blue line below the bars when an upward trend is
detected. These lines are commonly used as trailing stops. This
indicator is commonly used as a exit tool rather than an entry
technique. When price crosses the VSTOP value, the trend reverses and
VSTOP moves to the other side of price. The VSTOP is calculated as
follows:
VSTOP Calculation
When Up Trend Detected....
VSTOP = CL - MULT * TR
As Up Trend Continues....
VSTOP = MAX(VSTOP.1, MaxCL - MULT * TR)
When Down Trend Detected....
VSTOP = CL + MULT * TR
As Down Trend Continues....
VSTOP = MIN(VSTOP.1, MinCL + MULT * TR)
Where...
CL = Closing Price
MULT = True Range Multiplier
TR = True Range
VSTOP.1 = Volatility Stop Value on Previous Bar
MaxCL = Maximum Closing Price since Up Trend Began
MinCL = Minimum Closing Price since Down Trend Began
Trend reverses between up and down when Closing Price crosses VSTOP.
RTL Token: VSTOP
The RTL Token for the Volatility Stop indicator is VSTOP. A common
system for trading the VSTOP might be to look for closing price crossing
VSTOP:
Long...
CL > VSTOP AND CL.1 <= VSTOP
Short...
CL < VSTOP AND CL.1 >= VSTOP
More information on VSTOP can be found at:
http://www.linnsoft.com/tour/techind/vstop.htm
-
New RTL tokens: VWAPIU,
VWAPID, VSTOP
Three new tokens were introduced to the RTL Language. VWAPIU provides
the upper VWAP band. VWAPID provides the lower VWAP band. VSTOP gives
the value of the new Volatility Stop Indicator. For both VWAPIU and
VWAPID, the user must provides the band basis and the band multiplier.
-
Miscellaneous 8.8.x
Fixes and Improvements
A bug was corrected that caused the last bar in an intra-day
time-interval chart to draw to the right of the right margin line in
cases where the number of seconds in the periodicity does not divide
evenly into the number of seconds in the trading session.
-----------------------------------------
Traditional chart cross hair feedback was made bold with a larger font
to improve readability.
-----------------------------------------
Using the Add Button command in a traditional chart to add a button for
an indicator now uses the button purpose "Activate Drawing Tool"
automatically if the subject indicator has a drawing tool, otherwise the
button purpose will be "Add/Remove Preset Indicator" as has been the
case before.
-----------------------------------------
When multiple instruments are varying periodicities are resident in the
same traditional chart window, a bug was causing the last bar of some
instruments to disappear. This defect only pertains to fixed time
interval intra-day charts. The bug has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected that caused the mouse to be locked in panning mode.
The bug surfaced when cross hairs were turned on and the user clicked on
a chart button embedded in the chart to activate a drawing tool.
Pressing the mouse down inside a chart window no longer turns on the
panning cursor immediately if a pan delay is specified in Chart General
Preferences. Instead the hand cursor appears only after the user
specified delay, when the panning operation is ready to begin. Other
qualitative improvements were made to ensure that when cross hairs are
on and drawing tools are activated, the cursor shows the tool that is
active instead of the small cross hair cursor.
-----------------------------------------
Groups of type "Chart" will now correctly accept charts of all types as
members of the group. The File-->Add to Group menu commands now function
properly when charts of different kinds are in use (Traditional, Market
Profile, Footprint charts, etc.).
-----------------------------------------
Investor/RT IB users without DTN Market Access historical services rely
exclusively on IB historical backfills. Investor/RT has been improved to
pace IB download requests no faster than every 6 seconds to comply with
IB imposed pacing rules. This improvement will eliminate failed download
requests due the "Pacing Violation" errors.
-----------------------------------------
A rare but serious memory leak was eliminated. The process of producing
monthly bars from daily bars was the source of the leak. Memory loss
from viewing an occasional monthly chart was negligible. The problem
could be serious, however, if some repetitive process was underlying the
reference to monthly historical data, e.g. a scan running frequently on
a large number of symbols with a formula referencing monthly data. The
problem was actually discovered when a pivot point indicator was added
to an intraday chart where the setup for the pivots called for using
monthly data. An intraday chart including an MPD (mixed periodicity)
indicator referencing monthly data would also magnify the effects of the
memory leak.
-----------------------------------------
The main menu bar Edit menu was augmented with a Copy All menu item,
useful for copying all of the text in a text window to the clipboard
with one command. The command is equivalent to a Select All followed by
a Copy. The Copy All command is also available text windows in the pull
down menu at the upper left corner.
-----------------------------------------
The System Status window was improved to provide some workspace
statistics. Buttons at the bottom of the window provide access to other
windows with status information, e.g. the message log, alarm log, and
the feed status window. Click the OK button to close the window.
-----------------------------------------
Keyboard shortcuts were added to Traditional Charts, Market Profile and
Footprint Charts. The spacebar is the shortcut for refreshing
(downloading) data for the chart. For tick based charts, the spacebar
alone will download the current session ticks; shift+space will download
the current and previous session ticks; ctrl+space bar performs a Full
Downloading in accordance with the user's Historical Data preference
settings.
-----------------------------------------
When creating new quotepages, Investor/RT uses the column format named
"Default Format". This format can contain both built-in and custom
columns now. Prior to this release, only built-in columns could be
included in newly created quotepages.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the Full Download function that was causing
redundant historical download requests to be issued. The Full Download
command typically issues three historical requests per symbol, one for
daily data, one for one-minute bars, and a final request for tick data
based on the settings in the Historical Data preferences window. After
completing the Full Download, an unnecessary request was being issued
depending upon the periodicity of the chart in question. The effect of
this bug was magnified for traditional charts containing multiple
instruments. A two symbol traditional chart would cause 8 download
requests rather than 6, a three symbol traditional chart full download
would issue 12 requests rather than 9. The additional downloads were not
issued if the Full Download command was done explicitly from the popup
menu in the chart window. The bug only affected full downloads issued
using the new Ctrl + Spacebar chart window shortcut.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the IB version of Investor/RT that caused fatal
errors for clients tracking equity and index options. This bug was
introduced in version 8.8 and fixed in 8.8 Rev 1.
-----------------------------------------
A minor bug was corrected in the Mac OS X version user profile that
caused the OS X release in use to appear in the profile as 10.4.9 even
after upgrade to OS X 10.4.10.
-----------------------------------------
Exports of multi-chart layouts having one more Footprint charts
intermixed with other chart types were not imported completely (some
charts were missed). This defect has been corrected.
-----------------------------------------
Performance improvements were made to the Verify/Repair Historical Data
utility function. This utility now runs considerably faster than before,
especially when processing futures contracts setup to retain only day
session historical tick data.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was fixed in traditional charting Pane Size commands. When
adjusting the sizes of panes in the traditional chart, the software was
not taking into account the presence of a Button pane at the top of the
chart window. This caused the relative percentages of the other panes to
be different than intended. Charts not having a button pane did not have
the problem.
-----------------------------------------
Version 8.8.4 is a maintenance release with several fixes and no new
features
-----------------------------------------
Version 8.8.5 was updated for capability with NinjaTrader Version 6. The
Order Desk Preferences window now has a check box for enabling
NinjaTrader. By default the NinjaTrader check box is unchecked. Users
who use to execute Investor/RT Trading Orders with NinjaTrader
destination must check this box to enable NinjaTrader. When Investor/RT
starts up it will only attempt to establish linkage with NinjaTrader if
this user preference is on. If the preference is on at startup,
Investor/RT does a second check to see if there is a file named "NoNinjaTrader.txt"
in the admin directory. If this file is found, the NinjaTrader user
preference will be turned off and NinjaTrader trading orders will be
disabled.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the management of user preferences. The compress
before backup preferences were interfering with the "close windows when
opening layouts" preference.
-----------------------------------------
A rare memory leak was fixed in the trading system optimization area
having to do with optimizing on symbols.
-----------------------------------------
Fibonacci retracement lines were draw extended too far to the left in
charts not having a fixed time interval, e.g. ticks/bar charts, range
bars, etc. This has been corrected. Drawing of the ZigZag indicator for
non-fixed time interval traditional charts is now available.
-----------------------------------------
Current quote downloading from Yahoo! Finance was updated to use HTTP
1.1 protocol to conform with recent changes instituted by Yahoo!
Finance. Prior to Version 8.8.6, Investor/RT was communicating with
Yahoo! Finance using HTTP 1.0 protocol; HTTP 1.0 requests were resulting
in "Bad Request" responses from the Yahoo! Finance web site.
-----------------------------------------
Setup: Preferences: Historical Data has a user option to "Disallow Data
Accesses that Exceed...". The limit was formerly 1 million ticks; it is
now ten million ticks. If this box is checkmarked, retrieval of tick
data from the Investor/RT database for up to ten million ticks will be
allowed to process. Uncheck this box if you wish no limit at all to be
imposed. There is no practical limit on the number of intraday or daily,
weekly, monthly bars that can be accessed in Investor/RT. This limit
check only serves as a warning that a request for "tick periodicity" has
excceded ten million ticks. Multi-day Market Profile charts and
Footprint Charts commonly request many days of tick data that can well
exceed a million ticks for many instruments. This was causing problems
for clients who were unaware that this checkbox was checked. Since
million tick accesses are increasingly common today, the limit has been
increased ten fold.
-----------------------------------------
A bug was corrected in the DTN.IQ Version for Mac OS that was causing
Investor/RT to sometimes set the DTN.IQ symbol limit to 100 rather than
the actual user symbol limit of 500 or 1300.
-----------------------------------------
Investor/RT 8.8.6 was updated for use with the latest eSignal published
API, Build 152. Prior to Version 8.8.6 Investor/RT uses eSignal API
Build 135. A bug was fixed that was preventing Investor/RT from
launching the eSignal Data Manager once eSignal version 10.0 was
installed.
-----------------------------------------
Downloading (generating) intra-day historical data for a custom
instrument was not loading the complete data for the underlying
components of the custom instruments for the current session. This has
been corrected in Version 8.8.6.
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