JerryS
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Everything posted by JerryS
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I can honestly say I've never seen those choices before. I'll give it a try. You know, I think a better human interface design decision would have had those three little (but important) choices that are now tucked in the bottom-left corner placed instead at the top with all the other choices. What's more, those three choices are only visible when the search tab is selected, in which case the eyes are focused where all the action is -- at the upper left-hand corner. The Help window has to be set quite large because of the large font and images, so it's not obvious that there are selection choices in the lower-left corner particularly when there is so much room to put them at the top of the window, much closer to where the eyes are focused. I guess you could have done worse by putting them in the lower right-hand corner, but at least they would have eventually been found there as one drags the sliding tab down and follows that with their eyes. human interface design: http://tinyurl.com/gm43jtq
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Well, I only get one response for each search, and they are different. One for dividend and a different response for dividends. Maybe you should look into how updates are done as to how all older files are treated. Perhaps it is best to completely uninstall an older installation before updating to a newer version (as opposed to installing over an older version). The last time I got a message to update, I waited a few days till the weekend to download the file and install it. On the following day I turned on the program and got another message saying I needed to update. I thought, wow, somebody must have found a serious bug.
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Nope. Did it many times, over and over. Just did it again. Even closed the program and restarted it, and did it again. Get one response without the s, get a different single response with the s, never get two responses. After you do the search, make sure you hit the Display button, or double-click the list, to refresh your display of the result.
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We have a problem Houston: Searching on "Dividend" causes another subject to turn up but not the one you have. To get what you have requires typing in "Dividends". See the difference? Your search engine cares about the "s". Your Help search engine should not be plural sensitive. There are probably a few other suffixes that the search engine should not be sensitive to.
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I can reduce History charts and I can reduce Intraday charts and I can even reduce the Options window, and I can expand them again one-by-one very easily as they are easily found above the taskbar. But I cannot reduce Portfolio windows. Attempting to reduce Portfolio windows turns them off completely – they disappear, in which case I have to literally go to the Dashboard and turn them back ON. Once I use the Dashboard to turn back ON a Portfolio, the Dashboard disappears, so then I have to go to the taskbar again to turn that back on so that I can turn the other Portfolio (a horizontal list of indices) back ON. How annoying is that? In fewer words, Portfolio window reduction does not work. And the Dashboard runs away at the sight of a Portfolio being opened.
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I don't have a membership with SC, so I don't even know if they have a switch to turn ON/OFF dividend adjustment. However, I look at their charts all the time and my very recent and limited comparison of their public (non-membership) chart and an MT chart after turning ON dividend adjustment now matches. When you refer to what most sources do, I presume you are referring to data sources and not chart sources. StockCharts.com is by far the most common chart I see posted at iHub, and it is the only online chart I use, and I use it very frequently. They are adjusted for dividends FWIW, I did a search of MT Help for "dividend". Only one thing came up and it said nothing about being able to turn ON or OFF dividend adjustment. I almost didn't even look in Help because I rarely find what I'm looking for there. You know, you can purchase software for automatically generating word lists for making indexes. Get the hint?
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Comparing data between StockCharts.com and MT, there is a difference. MT shows the same result for data sources of either Yahoo or TDA. The difference gets larger when looking farther back in time. After doing a little checking, the difference appears to be due to dividends. If so, how can I turn that off so that my charts agree with Stockcharts.com?
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If you saw that number at the TDA site, then it is a TDA problem. I think that is what you are saying. The number was much larger earlier in the day, so it is a type of error that is easily detect. Then I would say that they ought to have a means of automatically monitoring the integrity of their data, then immediately fix the problem or send a message out to users that there is a problem and that they are working on it and when they expect to have it resolved. It seems like forever that I've had similar data problems with Yahoo stock quotes. It's gotten a lot better, but they still have occasional problems. So, because of all the problems I've had with Yahoo data, I wrote code that checks data integrity for everything I import into Excel, and that's a few years of historical (and current intraday) data on over a hundred symbols every day. There is no error I can't detect, unless it's a small accuracy error. When an error is detected, the background color of the cells containing the bad data and the symbol of the stock is changed to red. Apparently Yahoo doesn't do integrity checks and, instead, counts on users to report problems One of Yahoo's greatest data blunders is leaving a historical data file open for read access by anyone seeking to download the data while the file is being updated every night. They didn't have the common sense to disallow access until all updating was done. Furthermore, they are so stupid that they would rewrite the whole history file every night for every symbol, most of the time containing many years of data. Apparently they don't understand the concept of appending the current day's EOD data to their hoard of historical data. So, who would Yahoo blame for their historical data problems? The data vendor. Stupid! Yahoo already has all the history -- all they need to do is append the current EOD data! Okay, I'll try to keep my rants to myself in the future.
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Watching unusual options activity on WDC today. Reported at iHub the volume I saw at three strikes. After the close, two of the strikes remained as showing high volume, but the third one did not. So ... I thought maybe I made a mistake, so I checked volume at E*Trade. Well, their numbers agreed with mine, but not MT. WDC according to my earlier numbers and verified at E*Trade: $77.50 1,278 $80.00 1,451 $82.50 1,259 MT numbers: $77.50 27 $80.00 1,451 $82.50 1,259 Changing the source of the data made no difference. The serial number on my MT seems to be the latest release.
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Clear Ovals is listed twice.
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"Watchlist is just a list of symbols." Just symbols? Not exactly. It's got a lot more than just symbols. It has everything else I look at, which I limit to seven columns. Should I ask, "what else does a watchlist have that a watchlist doesn't have"? As it turns out, I should have searched for watch*. Thanks for the humor.
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Portfolio vs Watchlist: Did a search on Help to find out what the difference is between a Portfolio and a Watchlist. Am I not allowed to "watch" a portfolio? Found three entries of this "portfolio/watchlist" result which infers they are the same thing. Found two other Help entries for "watchlist" but always connected to "Portfolio"; so again, could be the same thing. But, in the context of the next paragraph below, they apparently aren't the same, at least in a small way. Why would I care? Because I was trying to figure out how to get rid of the Total row because I have no use for it because it is far easier (I think) and better to keep track of my monetary position within Excel -- so, I would just like to delete the Total row because it uses space that could be put to better use. But then I see the comment in an earlier message (above) that the Total row can't be removed in a simple portfolio and it doesn't exist in a watchlist. Really? What's a Watchlist, and what makes that and a Portfolio different? Without any useful help on Watchlist in the Help file, I decided to enter a new portfolio and see if the word "Watchlist" appears. I'll be damned -- there it is! Well, I couldn't figure out how to change an existing Portfolio into a Watchlist, so I created a similar portfolio name and manually entered all the same symbols ... would rather push a button to make the change. Boom! -- now I have a Watchlist with all the same symbols and no Total row. Great! Now I'm wondering what I could have used the Total Row for. I did a search of Help for the word "Total" also but didn't find anything that told me directly what it does, so I guess it does something if I do something else first and I'm not interested now in trying to figure out what that other thing is, but I really think that a search of Help ought to go directly to a short paragraph that says exactly when it's used and what it does. And it wouldn't hurt to also explain the other differences (if there are any) between a Watchlist and a Portfolio, and why I can't change it from one to the other more simply by just pushing a button or check-marking a selection.
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This problem (template Load or Save drop-down lists not loading) happened again today. The setup was that I had four charts open: $SPX daily and intraday, and $VIX daily and intraday. I was in the process of modifying a specific $SPX historical template to add SMA(320) to a group of six other SMA()s that I already had for the particular template. I wasn't doing anything with the intraday charts. During this process both the Load and Save drop-downs were working on both historical charts. After saving the historical template changes for the $SPX chart from that chart, I decided to look at the $VIX historical chart and see if I could load the changes there. Now, clicking on the Load drop-down at that chart did not produce a list, whereas it worked before. At that point I decided that I should obtain and send a log file but I decided to do a few more tests and collect more information first. I did several things and the Load drop-down for the $VIX chart continued to not produce a list; then while attempting to look at something else I accidentally deleted the $VIX history chart, so I reloaded it. After reloading that chart, the Load drop-down worked. Bad me -- I can't make it quit working again and now I don't have a log file taken while it wasn't working. So, obviously, you'll have to wait for a log file showing an inoperative drop-down.
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I see ... so it's a TDA thingy. Why am I not surprised?
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The name (description) currently applied to UVXY by MT is: ProShares Ultra VIX Short That name (or description) is incorrect, especially as it implies that UVXY goes down as $VIX goes up, and vice versa. A better description of UVXY is: ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures A satisfactory (shorter) new name that MT could use would be: ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term
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That's very interesting because I had never seen that pop-up before even though I often had trouble getting any activity from TDA after starting up MT. I would get frustrated and reboot the program then usually everything would be OK. I even called TDA once to ask if they were having trouble and they said NO. I don't know how they could tell so quickly unless they pinged me and looked for a response, but they didn't say they had done that and I doubt if they did because the person reached on the help line probably doesn't have the ability to do that (but I didn't think to ask them that at the time). I assumed that if they don't get a number of complaints above a predetermined threshold then they assume it is not their problem and they make no further effort. (I'm glad that PG&E isn't that way. I'm at the end of one of their lines and I'm virtually always the first one to call them and let them know that the power is down.) So, if I'm to take that message seriously then there is at least a way built into MT of determining that there is a problem but maybe it's not thorough enough (or prompt enough) because I've only seen the message once even though I've had the problem more than once. - - - At any rate, I don't recall having much trouble since then -- at least I'm pretty sure. Maybe I've grown more patient. Or maybe the complaint count at TDA exceeded a threshold above which they concluded there is a problem and they fixed it, and that's why I haven't had a problem recently.
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Since my last comment on this subject, I've only had one time when the drop-down didn't bring up a list. However, if I quit the program and restart it, then the list worked as expected. This was a few days ago. This may relate to some of the problems: Sometimes when starting the program it seemed unresponsive as no quotes would update and the green indicator wouldn't flash, then (being impatient) I would fiddle with MT to see if I could figure out why it was unresponsive. Sometimes it would start working, and sometimes not, so I would reboot. That's always quite annoying, but now here's the interesting part ... one day, when I was having this startup problem, a little message box opened up outside of any other MT window and was located at the lower-right corner of the screen. That has never happened before. It contained a message seemingly from TD Ameritrade stating that they were having problems with their data feed. Now I'm wondering, was that message generated by MT or did it come directly from TDA? And, when at other times the program was unresponsive, why didn't I get the same message? FWIW, since that day, I don't recall any startup problems and the drop-downs have worked.
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I already understand all of that. I have 7 templates which I've already saved. I'll try again. Read very slowly. Early this morning I wanted to load a template on a specific chart. So I clicked the dropdown button on that chart while expecting a list of 7 templates to appear. Nothing happened, meaning there was no drop-down list. So I downloaded the template anyway using the button with the folder symbol. Now, after the market closed, I wanted to look at a specific chart (probably not the same one I looked at earlier) using a different template than the one it had. So I clicked its template dropdown button. A list of 7 choices came up. Now it works, but it did not work early this morning.
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Depending on Loading or Saving chart templates, there are two pairs of choices: a symbol (either a file folder for the case of Load, or a 3.5" floppy for the case of Save); or the words Load or Save, each with a downward pointing arrow. The downward pointing arrows indicates that those choices each activate a drop-down list containing the file name choices for either Load or Save. The drop-downs usually don't open, indicating the file names were never loaded into their respective lists when the program (MT) was started. Yesterday I played with these things for a long time because I assumed these things were working as designed, but the performance didn't match the instructions in the Help file. After fiddling with them for a long time, they started working. But I don't have a clue what I did to make them work. Currently, they are not working.
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Specifically done that many times. It's deader than a doornail. Doesn't help to keep beating on it. Files are being sent via email.
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I just filled the options table with data for CRUS and several other symbols. All worked very quickly. Then I tried CSIQ many times and it's blank every time. Not even the grid loads. Therefore I don't think it's a timing problem. There is something specifically wrong with CSIQ. I've noticed that when I try a new symbol that it takes a few seconds to load the grid in the options table then the data is displayed a short time later. For symbols that have already shown options data, the grid loads immediately when I enter the symbol then the data comes in after a small delay. Now when I load CSIQ, the grid never appears. Does that mean that I have a corrupted temporary data file involving CSIQ? Perhaps that temporary file can be deleted so that it can be rewritten correctly?
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I tried Reload many times. Sometimes I waited a minute or so and tried again. Didn't matter. I tried other symbols and they all worked. I looked at other settings to see if they can be different for different symbols. Clicked on the green light/button to turn it OFF and back ON -- didn't help. This happened at least once last week but don't remember if it was the same symbol. So ... I tried it after reading your message, and before writing this response, and it worked. Go figure. A thought I had last week after similar difficulties: there must be some timing limitations when handling data back-&-forth over the phone network. Some data operations must have a time limit/window, otherwise the operation (and therefore its channel or time slot) can be held in limbo while waiting for a response. Because of my remote location, all communication to the outside world is via geosynchronous satellite. One round-trip delay between earth and satellite is 240ms (and it can be longer if there is interference, or multiple hops depending on service provider at each end). I wonder if that can cause a timing issue when data is being passed back and forth. One thing for sure -- when people talk to each other over such a network, they must not talk over each other as that will cause the system to cut on and off, resulting in each conversation being chopped on and off.
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No options chain for CSIQ. Getting data from TDA. All other symbols I tried fill the chain. CSIQ produces blank table. Option chain at TDA is visible for this symbol at their site, so it would not make sense for me to call them.
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I tried everything you mentioned, and more, and I did those things many times. Absolutely nothing would make it work. Not even one line would print. But every other symbol always worked. Go figure. So ... shut down the program and re-booted. Now it works. I was afraid of that. Makes it difficult to find the problem. **** On another subject, I sent you an email with an image yesterday. Did you get that?
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No options quotes on M_Trader today for MU from TDA. Do get stock quotes for MU. Just blank for options. All other 2-letter (and longer) symbols work. Just MU doesn't provide options quotes. Don't get MU options quotes from Yahoo either. All other symbols I tried worked. Called TDA, and their feed works as far as they can tell, and they tried two different platforms. So far, seems like an M_Trader problem. However, it did work yesterday. Now going to try re-boot and see if that works. I hope it doesn't because that would make it difficult to find the problem.