Software Changes - Version History

04/10/2006:version 2.2.9
New Features
- Support for Bronze and Nickel packages, per transaction pricing
- Right click on Quote Page for Market Depth, if entitled
- Basic Options module for Copper, Bronze, Nickel and Silver
- New printing subsystem, including automatic scaling of charts to fit what is on the screen on the printed page
-Snapshot module supports multiple, user-configurable quotes. Right click menu allows launching from this context
- Real-time snapshot quotes billed per quote

02/24/2006:version 2.2.8
New Features
- Add additional logging information when disconnecting
- Log close actions on internal frames
- If a server is unavailable to save settings, save them locally until the server becomes available
- Eliminate the account status query after every unsolicited fill or order status update. Make the margin requirements request/response in the Account Information screen
- Add a refresh button for margin requirements to the account information screen.

01/28/2006:version 2.2.7
New Features
- Java Webstart installation now detects and configures the application to use all of the available system memory.
- 3-level sort function for Working Order Monitor and Position Monitor (Broker/CTA)
- Multi-column filtering with sophisticated Wizard in Working Order Monitor and Position Monitor
- If the application is disconnected from the order entry server, automatically attempt to reconnect to the order entry server
- If a contract for an order or individual leg of a spread order is expired show a warning dialog telling the user "{order} is for an expired contract. You should cancel it."
- Paper Trading can now clone a Group View into a single Paper Trading account
- 2-legged Spread Orders in Working Order Monitor and Orders & Positions display the spread premium instead of the last trade for each leg
- When entering an order in the afternoon for the evening session on eCBOT, prior to the day order purge, after the warning dialog about placing a GTD or GTC order, return the user to the order preview dialog
- Add “Remember my password” checkbox to both the application login dialog as well as the order entry login dialog.
- Contract Lookup dialog on Order Ticket allows exchange-traded spread selectio
- Added cancel/replace-market option to right-click menu of Price Ladder
- From the Order Preview, allow account to be changed (Broker/CTA)

01/06/2006:version 2.2.6
New Features
- Quote Board Screen. (QT plus, QT platinum only) This screen gives you a “thermometer” view of trading activity in a grid display. You can:

1. easily enter contracts by clicking on a blank cell and entering the contracts.
2. click on the contract symbol to select.
3. set a property to edit, show a chart or show an options chain when you double click a symbol.
4. set a property to show the opening tick or the opening range.
5. right click on the contract symbol to get a menu of options. You can drag and drop the left and top regions to reorder the cells.
6. Options, exchange quoted spreads and arithmetic spreads are all fully supported. When making a new high or a new low, the price is “flash” underlined to draw your attention to it.
7. click on the price region to buy/sell.

- Chart-Link Workspace. You combine either a Quote Monitor or a Quote Board with a group of charts of varying resolutions. Now, apply any indicators you want to any of the charts. When you click on a symbol in the Quote Monitor or Quote Board, all the charts will change to that contract. Click on another symbol and all the charts change to that contract. The active contract is displayed in the workspace tab. You can also change the contract by renaming the tab. Improved response time of the Chart-Link when a user clicks on a new contract.

- Auto Symbol Completion. Everywhere you type symbols, you will notice after you type the symbol, a window appears showing you the valid month/year combinations available for that symbol. You can use the keyboard up/down arrows, type the letter of the month you want, scroll your mouse wheel or click with your mouse to select.

- Symbol "Strips". At the end of the list of months, is a selection called “strip”. If you choose this, your quote monitor or quote board will be populated with all the months for that contract. Those months will automatically rollover when the front month expires. If you want to lock in specific months, you can hold down the CTRL key while selecting the contracts you want to display, and these contracts will not change, even when the front month changes.

- Delayed Symbols. For delayed contracts, a ‘D’ with the number of minutes the contract is delayed is displayed next to the symbol. The last trade is followed by a ‘D’ to indicate it is delayed.

- Tabular Data Window for Charts. (QTplus, QTplatinum only) This window displays the numeric values for the prices on a chart in a tabular format. You can copy/paste or export the whole table to an Excel file. You can even launch Excel and load the file automatically when you export it. Non-base 10 prices, such as grains and bonds, are automatically converted to decimal values.

- Backup quote capability including:

1. “Switch to Backup” button that immediately changes the market data source from the primary provider to a completely independent second source.
2. “Lights Out” log in to the backup provider when the primary and alternate data sources are unavailable for any reason.
3. Support for multiple backup data providers

- Improved memory usage. Application memory consumption can be monitored from Help->About. If the application exceeds 90% of available memory, the user is notified. Memory is cleaned up more frequently to minimize maximum memory consumption.

- Java Webstart Edition. Install by simply clicking on a link. Checks the system resources for compatibility. Automatically sends updates.

- Integrated Single Browser Window for Video Help and My Subscriptions. Added navigation buttons to My Subscriptions. Futuresline now launches in an integrated browser window and can be accessed as part of the program group on the Windows Task Bar.

- Preview of the Indicator Builder. In the “Tools” section, you can see a preview of the forthcoming Indicator Builder. There is an included tutorial, so you can try creating your own custom indicators and giving us feedback to make this a useful, easy to use feature.

- Contract Info. Right click on any symbol anywhere throughout the program, and see a list of:

1. Full contract name
2. Exchange
3. Contract value
4. Minimum tick
5. Minimum tick value
6. Open time
7. Close time
8. Initial margin requirement
9. Contract expiration date

Support for contract details of Options and Spreads is also available.


Chart Enhancements
- Intraday charts automatically include more days of data as the time resolution increases. This results in fuller, easier to read charts as you switch resolutions.

- Pan & Zoom in Charts:

1. You can drag your mouse button on the price axis to move the view up or down.
2. You can also use up/down arrow or shift-up/down arrow to move the price axis with your keyboard. (your mouse pointer must be hovering over the price axis)
3. You can hover your mouse over the price axis and scroll your mouse wheel or use the alt-up/down arrow keys to zoom in and out on the vertical axis.
4. Scroll through the time axis using either the right/left arrow keys or by dragging the horizontal blue slider control.
5. Zoom in and out on the horizontal axis by hovering over the time scale and scrolling your mouse wheel.
6. Zoom in and out on the horizontal axis using the alt-right/left arrow keys
7. Horizontal movement now features “Smooth Scrolling”. The chart updates in real-time rather than snapshotting.

- Right click on the price scale gives you a menu to fine-tune the price scaling properties

- Enhanced Chart Cursors featuring Crosshairs, Vertical and Horizontal cursors. You can configure which cursor you want from the Chart Properties window. All cursors now show you price and/or time. You can suppress the floating indicator windows from the Chart Properties window if you prefer. You can configure the color and width of the chart cursor. You can freeze the cursor by holding the left and right mouse buttons down at the same time. Unfreeze by left clicking on the chart.

- Global Settings for Chart Properties. There are 2 new buttons in the Chart Properties Window. “Default for New Charts” sets the properties for the current chart and any new charts that are created, but leaves the chart properties for all other existing charts unchanged. “Apply to Existing Charts” changes all the existing charts to match the properties that are selected in the window.

- Alphabetized the indicator list in charts

- In the Contract Selection screen, the contracts are now listed alphabetically by the full contract name instead of by the symbol. This makes searching for the right session quote much easier.


Option Enhancements
- Added columns for net change % and timestamp to the Options frame

- Added Volume, Open Interest and Previous Settlement columns to the Options frame

EXCEL/DDE Enhancements
- Excel DDE has been enhanced so that the linking of prices now loads in the background, returning control of the program to the user almost immediately. Additional optimizations result in better load time for large spreadsheets with many links.


Time & Sales Enhancements

1. Date and time automatically set based on the contract you type in.
2. For large inquiries, you can specify newest or oldest trades for that time interval be returned.
3. Options for either vertical or horizontal display of trades. Vertical is the default.

News Enhancements
- Loading news stories has been optimized
- In the News Search screen, you can now edit your search history.


Spread Enhancements
- Added support for “even” priced spreads
- Snapshot quotes now display spread quotes
- Right clicking on an arithmetic spread gives you options to display charts of the spread.


General QT look & feel Enhancements
- Message windows are now a slightly pulsating blue color to make them more obvious
- Increased font size and utilized bold face in several dialogs


ORDER ENTRY New Features & Enhancements
- User-definable “Trading Workspace” templates allow you to set up a default screen layout, perhaps including a Chart, Depth-of-Market, and Orders & Positions screen, all for a single contract. You can set up a separate contract on individual tabs, making navigation from one contract to another a snap.

- Enhanced Order Warning. If the price you enter for an order is more than 10% from the last trade, you will get a warning asking you if you are sure. This is a great way to catch key punch errors as well as incorrect option premiums

- On the Order Preview Dialog, the Buys are blue and the Sells are red. Type size has been increased and bolded.

- Color-coded buy and sell text. Buy is blue, Sell is red.

- Use the mouse wheel to increment/decrement order quantity and the chart buy/sell slider.

- New Order Entry buttons for “Offset All Positions” and “Cancel All Working Orders”. With a single click you can offset all your positions at the market or cancel all the working orders for your account.

- For Charts & DoM, Cancel Buys, Sells and All buttons now contain the contract, just like the Flatten and Reverse buttons

- In the Chart screen, you can now click a button to “Flatten at the market” or “Reverse at the market”. This action will only apply to the symbol you are charting.

- Import/Export of working orders to Excel added to the Broker/CTA feature set

- Export working orders list to Excel

- Import and Place orders from Excel

- Spread orders can be entered from the Quote Monitor. Arithmetic spreads are entered with the proper ratio. For example, if you click on the last of 2*CZ5-SX5, your order will be to buy 2 CZ5 and sell 1 SX5.

- Show progress information when logging into Order Entry and also when executing group API calls to load accounts, orders and positions

- Optimized the performance of Working Orders, Positions and Orders & Positions screens. They can now comfortably support thousands of orders and positions

- Added Account and Sales Code columns to Working Order and Position Monitor screens for Broker/CTA Feature Set

- Font and Font Size for all order entry messages can be customized in the Order Entry Properties (F5)

- Support SCO order type in live and paper trading

- Added account number to the order review dialog

- Fill reports now use the larger, bold fonts


08/17/2005:version 2.1.6
- Fixed strike price warning for serial month, non futures month option orders
- Fixed the account info OTE bugs
- Assigned a hotkey to the sidebar arrow. (Ctrl-Q)
- Fix Excel bug


06/28/2005:version 2.0.6
- QT 2.0.6 allows users to effortlessly view the open, high, low, last, net change and indicator values at any point on a specific chart.
- Users also have the ability view a greater amount of intra-day data, as well as tick data if possible. The minutely data has been increased 22 days to match the tick data we store.
- Ability to easily change contracts while viewing any chart
- Dynamic news filtering
- Users are also able to rearrange the order of the news tabs located at the top of the news window by dragging and/or dropping them.
- Arithmetic spreads. By typing in contract symbols like “2*CZ5-SX5” or “CZ5*3-5*SX5,” users can create a customized arithmetic spreads within the quotes monitor.
- Support for exchange recognized spreads are now available by using “:” to separate contract symbols when entering spreads. This provides comprehensive coverage of actual spread trade that occurs on the trading floor, and includes extensive coverage of futures and options spread trading.
- Live dynamic links into excel.
- A fast market indicator has also been added to QT, with an “F” placed next to the markets to indicate this status.
- Improved weather options, providing easy access to a multitude of graphical presentations produced by public and private forecasters. QT Weather features all of the U.S. Doppler radar sites and world satellite graphics, including soil condition reports in the United States as well as abroad.


For 1.X.X version history release notes click here