Version 3.8

What's new in version 3.8.2

Introduction

The Online Trader continues to grow in functionality and usability. The major new functionality in version 3.8 is a rewritten Charting Module, the Basket Trading window, the Click Trading window and the Quote Request order entry type. All of these are documented thoroughly in separate documents.

In the following text we will highlight some of the other areas that have had improvements, changes or bug fixes.

Application

A new toolbar theme can be selected through View | Toolbar | Themes. The new theme is called DarkBlue.

Alerts

The alerts functionality and the alerts list interface was substantially improved in version 3.7. In this version we have added a toolbar button and right-click menu to clear the Hit Count column for the selected alert.

There is also a new Active checkbox column that you can use to quickly disable or enable an alert without opening the Edit Alert dialog. By default, new alerts are now active. A bug was fixed – now alerts use the proper number of decimals for the symbol’s price and trigger price.

Composite Window

There is a new column that can be useful to have in a Composite window. The new Access column will show what kind of feed – delayed or realtime – you have for each symbol in the list.

In addition to the List | Delete Symbol (Ctrl+Del) command, you can now also use Edit|Delete (Del) to delete a symbol from the list in a Composite window.

There is now a feature that allows providers to help their clients setup their list of symbols for the mTrader mobile application. Providers should contact Infront for details if they need to do this.

Find Symbol

Searching for a symbol has been made easier by enabling a contains-search on the description field of the symbol by default. This means that you can type “hydro” to find “Norsk hydro”. Previously you had to enter a string that matched the start of the target description (unless you manually changed the search operation to Contains).

Forex Cross Table

The default sorting of currencies in the Forex Cross Table window has been improved – now the most common currencies appear first. You can change the sorting to match your own preferences by dragging and dropping the columns. Alternatively you can move them by using the Move Up (Ctrl+Up) and Move Down (Ctrl+Down) right-click menu items. You can also reduce the number of currencies displayed by right-clicking and selecting Properties | Edit crosses.

The description of each currency has been updated.

Market Pages

The Market Pages feature is used to display custom designed pages for information from vendors like TulletPrebon and was introduced in the 3.7 version. The functionality of these pages has been extended in this version.

You can now easily create a DDE link in Excel to a field in one of these market pages by right-clicking the field and selecting Edit|Copy DDE link. Then paste it into a cell you your Excel spreadsheet.

If you try to open a market page that you already have open in the current workspace, the program will now ask you if it should go to the existing window or create a new one. It is now possible to customize the colours used for blinking changes in the market pages by selecting Properties | Edit Colours.

Market Window

In the Market window for the Euronext feeds: Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Lisbon, there are now new columns available for displaying indicative prices before the market opens. The new fields are indicative high, indicative last, indicative last volume, indicative low, indicative open price, indicative open volume and normal market size.

Market and Composite Window

The Symbol Status column that can be added to the Market and Composite windows has now been extended to show the logical status (such as Suspended) in addition to the textual status it displayed earlier ("TRADING").

News Window

In the news list window there are new available columns for Category, Country, Industry, Language and Topic. These columns are used in news feeds such as AFX and Dow Jones.

In addition there is a new FeedSymbols column that shows the explicit feed and symbol reference of each news item. It is mostly useful when tracking down issues with the news to symbol links.

The Time column has been extended to show seconds in addition to hours and minutes. This will give you more accurate timestamp information for the news (note that not all newsfeeds carry second resolution timestamps). The width of the time column in existing workspaces will be converted (widened) when loaded into the new version.

A headline in the news list that is longer than the width of the column now has an ellipsis (...) at the end of the line. If you hover the mouse over the text, a hint pops up with the complete headline.

When you read an integrated (not web-based) news article, the date and time of the news item will now be included with the name of the news vendor at the top of the news story window.

For some news feeds (such as Dow Jones and AFX), a (red) flash news item might have a body, and a normal (black) news item might only have a headline. The client now supports these states.

The news windows have now been made smarter and will no longer re-request news items from the server that are already present in another news window.

Flash news are now colored red in the Composite window, the Symbol window and in the My List page of the Market window.

The filter functionality in the News window has now been expanded to support filtering on the new columns Category, Industry, Topic and Country. Note that not all news feeds supports these columns yet. Feeds that support them include the Dow Jones and the AFX news feeds.

Symbol Window

At the bottom of the Trades page of the symbol window, there is now a label showing statistics about the selected block of trades. When no selection has been made, it shows the global values for the symbol today. The calculated statistics are Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP), Lowest Price, Highest Price, accumulated Volume and accumulated Turnover.

Ticker Window

In the vertical ticker window, you can now change the order of the columns by dragging and dropping them using the mouse.

You can now filter on a specific set of broker codes no matter how many markets you include. You configure this on the Filter on Broker page of the ticker window setup dialog. Just enter the list of three-letter broker codes using comma as a separator.

Chart Window

You can still delete a line on the chart by selecting it (by clicking on it) and then select Edit | Delete or press the Delete key. If the study line is not visible for some reason (there are not enough points in the chart to fill up the Period of the study, for instance), you can now delete it by using the new Chart | Delete Study menu

Orderbook

The orderbook displayed for forex symbols has been brushed up and now looks nicer (new in version 3.8.1).

Order Entry

Basket Trading, Click Trading and Quote Request functionality is now supported (see separate descriptions)..

In the Order Entry window, you can now enter a ‘k’ or ‘m’ suffix in the volume fields to have them multiplied by one thousand or one million, respectively. This can be useful when entering large volumes.

In the Tools|Order Entry settings dialog, the default volume field has been changed from a nominal volume to a multiples of boardlot value. This makes much more sense as using a fixed default volume will make the default order value fluctuate for differently priced symbols.

The client now supports getting variable tick sizes per instrument from the order entry server. When configured correctly on the server, this will give more correct steps in the price when using the up and down arrows in the price field.

We now support using fractional volumes – entering decimals on the volume field is accepted. This is needed for some forex and commodity markets, for instance.

The View Order dialog will now also list custom fields that are defined dynamically on the order entry server. The displayed fields will vary with the order entry provider and the market place.

We now support opening more than one order status window for the same order entry provider (but each window will use the same login). The dialog that pops up to confirm that you want to Deactivate all orders has now been made optional.

Whenever you insert an order, an order is refused or a trade executed the client will now play an audio sound. The sounds can be configured or turned off using the new Alerts page of the Tools | Order Entry settings dialog. We have also moved some other alerts related dialog settings into the same page (changed in 3.8.1).

Some markets (such as Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen Stocks) have different tick size (minimum price change) rules for different category of symbols. The client now supports these additional tick size tables (new in version 3.8.1)

All actions performed in the order entry windows (such as order inserted, trade executed etc), are logged in the Log page of the Order Status window. Now this log is also persisted to .log files in the Ontrade\Setup directory. The files are named OrderEntry"nr"_date.log where "nr" is the provider id of the order entry provider and "date" is the date of the performed actions (new in version 3.8.1).

Filtering and groups has now been extended to support all columns in the four order status pages (Orders, Trades, Accumulated Trades and Portfolio) (new in version 3.8.1)

The system now supports issuing a Short Selling warning if you try to sell more of a symbol than is present in the current portfolio. Press Abort to abort the order, or Ignore to ignore the warning and insert the sell order anyway. You can turn off this warning by unchecking [ ] Short selling warning in the Alerts page of the Order Entry settings dialog.

If you have selected to keep deleted orders (in the Order Status page of the Order Entry settings dialog), the Status column will now show the true cause why the order is deleted. The old Deleted status has been split into Executed, Refused and Deleted statuses. The Executed status means that the entire Volume of the order has been filled and executed as trades. The Refused status means that the order was stopped in the order entry server and an error message returned (for instance, no coverage). The Deleted status now means that the order was manually deleted by a user.

User Interface

In the Regional page of the Tools | User Interface Settings dialog, there is now a new setting for selecting your preferred default country. The default value will be taken from your Windows locale settings.

Note that the list of countries only includes countries from which you have access to streaming quotes. The selected country is used for the first two pages when creating a new automatic workspace (File | Create New Workspace). It also determines what country is shown at the top of the Select Market and Select News dialogs.

For symbols from feeds that are configured to allow Request Quote order types, there is now a new Request Quote menu item in the right-click menu (new in version 3.8.1).

Virtual pages

The functionality of the virtual page buttons on the bottom left of the main window has been improved. You can now remove any page (and close the windows in the page) by right-clicking the page and select Remove Page. You can also insert a new page between existing pages by right clicking and selecting Add Page.

There are three new menu options that will allow you to freely move pages around. The Move Page menu item will prompt you for a new page number for the page. The Move Page Left (Shift+Ctrl+PgUp) and Move Page Right (Shift+Ctrl+PgDn) commands can be used to quickly move a page to another position.

As a reminder, windows can also be quickly moved from page to page by using the Window | Move to Previous Page (Ctrl+PgUp) and Window | Move to Next Page (Ctrl+PgDn) commands.