New feature request - transparency

Questions about MultiCharts and user contributed studies.
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New feature request - transparency

Postby arnie » 04 Aug 2013

Tried to create a PM but it seems it' not yet working.

So I request it here and when PM's are once again available I'll create it there.

Please compare both charts.
Which one it's easier to read? Less stressful to the eyes?
Both show identical studies.

The ability to create transparency options for studies, allowing us to create different coloring "channels" facilitate the chart reading when dealing with too many lines/trendlines.

This is a must have in MC.

Image

Image

Also, another issue visible on those charts, check the orange trendlines which indicates the initial balance high.
MC shows it at 1700 whereas the other platform shows it at 1700.75.
This is because the study, with time inputs, in MC, is being plotted on a 4 point chart. The other platform the study is being plotted on a 30 min chart and than overlayed on the 4 point chart, giving a correct reading.

This is another thing that is a must have. An easy way to reference studies (variables) on a chart and than export (overlay) them into another chart.
I tried to overlay a 30min chart on top of the 4 point chart but the end result was something not worth mentioning :(
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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby sptrader » 04 Aug 2013

Yes Arnie, that's a great idea, so great in fact that I've sugested that as well but couldn't get the new feature request to work when I tried either.... we really need this feature.. it's great for marking session breaks , trends etc .. Transparent colors are used by TOS, NT and many other platforms and it's very useful, powerful and visually pleasing.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby Andrew MultiCharts » 09 Aug 2013

It is possible to report an issue or leave a feature request in PM again and we are working to fix anything else there at the moment.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby arnie » 09 Aug 2013


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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby piranhaxp » 09 Aug 2013

Why making it heavier and heavier on one side and calling for milliseconds etc on the other side. I don't get it .... just my 2 cents. There should be strategy which way MC wants to go !

For -

the "IWantToBeAHFTrader@Home" - user with super light software environment

or -

the "IAmAVisualPropTrader" - user with heavy software environment ..... !!??

Both will not work on the long run !!!!!!! Never did ....

BTW ... Is there a chance to vote against it ??????????????????????????

Regards.

Mike

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby ABC » 09 Aug 2013

Mike,
I can see your point, but in my opinion being able to participate in HFT trading profitably from home (or in the retail market in general) is not possible anyway.

I have written a small blog post on that a while ago and there is an interesting article on the
vanity fair website. It's written by Michael Lewis about Sergey Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs.

Regards,
ABC

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby arnie » 10 Aug 2013

BTW ... Is there a chance to vote against it ??????????????????????????
Well, the best way would be not vote at all.
If only one person votes I doubt MC management will lose their time in considering and planning such implementation.

What you're saying is that MC needs to choose one road when both are, at the moment, highly spoken and followed.
It would be the same if a doctor said that you need to gave up one of your legs because keeping both is too expensive and too difficult to manage.

Although the expensive part I understand, because develop each new tool can become quite expensive and it will take you years to see the return of your investment, the difficult to manage part is a bit more difficult to accept because there're ways to manage that. MC could put some tools in separate modules where the user would only install if that module was needed, freeing this way computer resources. Something similar to what Microsoft does in the MS Office.

I'm sorry but I don't follow you in this.
This is a business, where developing tools for both sides is essential to keep up with the competition.
It would be suicide follow only one road.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby piranhaxp » 10 Aug 2013

Mike,
I can see your point, but in my opinion being able to participate in HFT trading profitably from home (or in the retail market in general) is not possible anyway.

I have written a small blog post on that a while ago and there is an interesting article on the
vanity fair website. It's written by Michael Lewis about Sergey Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs.

Regards,
ABC
That's the point ! You got me wrong and have to read it again the sarcastic way .... MC is proud to deliver milliseconds (forced to do so by "IWantToBeAHFTrader@Home" users which are totally quiet now) in one way and is getting more fat on the other way due to "1000" new visual developments which doesn't help anybody or just for the people they like to say "... it looks good".

MC is going the wrong way ... What is looking good does not make the trading better ... Would be nice to see more developments in the fields DOM etc., scanner, database etc etc ...

I hope you got me now :)
Well, the best way would be not vote at all.
If you have 100 possible voters and you recommend not to vote if you are against it that doesn't mean that the majority really wants your "wanted feature". If tehre are 50 people for it and 50 people against it it ... what now ... ah sorry, the 50 voted not against it so 100% agreed to your proposal .... :)

You must be a politician.
What you're saying is that MC needs to choose one road when both are, at the moment, highly spoken and followed.
and
It would be suicide follow only one road.
No, I'm not saying MC has to choose one road. It's already going both directions. For what do we need "huge developments" in milliseconds etc which bounded so many resources instead of putting them into much more needed developments for scanner, DOM etc etc ... Where are the pushers for milliseconds now ? Do they seriously earn more money now ? Or they all gave up because of what ABC wanted to say ?

Damn, MC is a proprietary trader software so it should do something in this direction. Ask why so many MC users still are using TT as their trading front end etc etc ??!! And you are trying to keep resources for "transparent" visual developments ??!! I want a better dom, a better scanner, a better workable and usable chartwindow (look at yours how much info is going away because not everything can be seen on the right side) because of some "transparency" issues .....

In Germany we are saying ... SCHUSTER BLEIB BEI DEINEN LEISTEN !!!!!!!

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby arnie » 11 Aug 2013

Great discussion, even though I'm not a politician :)

I tend to look at the business side of things first, even if that might go against my needs which can be of a pain.

Regarding the milliseconds, for those coding strategies, HFT strategies, something that everyone is trying to get into nowadays, that type of data is needed. Since MC is a platform with programming capabilities and since thousands of people code in EL and .NET, it makes perfect sense, business wise, to invest in such development so they can bring more people to MC.
Yes, we can argue that we personally have other needs, we had actually requested other features months or even years prior the millisecond advent but for MC management, this made more sense developing first. They saw an opportunity to see a return of their investment faster if they had invest in other features.
We might not agree with it but it is like it is.

I do agree with you, the DOM is something of the utmost importance and I've been requesting for months new improvements which will finally be attended. AMEN!

Regarding the transparency tools, well, this is something related to how each one of us trades.
I'm a visual person/trader. I like to look at charts with the less noise possible which allows me to see the bars clearly, without having things in front of them.

I use 3 tools, a bar chart, a DOM and a footprint.
The chart shows me where prices are/were in relation to prior swings, the DOM shows the resting orders and how those orders are being dealt with (are they being consumed or added?) and the footprint show what indeed has been traded at each level, looking at signs of absorption.
My chart has 3 sets of data which produces far too many lines to look at. It creates too much noise. The ability of creating transparency backgrounds would allow us to create channels/bands on many of those lines, making the chart a lot less noisy.

This is the way I trade. It might not be yours but it's mine and because of it, I'd like to see a tool that would facilitate the chart reading.
Notice that we are talking about MC, which is a trading platform but above all else, it's a chart platform and should have tools that facilitate chart reading and of course, chart handling.

I understand for those that only trade using a DOM and a simple chart without any type of indicators, tools that will make MC eat more computer resources is something that makes no sense but than again, each one of us has its own way of trading and MC needs to attend those needs the best way possible, mine and yours.

I might be in disagreement with them many times, in the way they built a tool, the options provided for that tool and of course the features they are working on which won't bring any value for me and my trading but I understand that there are others users with requests that need also to be attended.

We need to be able to respect each other needs.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby piranhaxp » 12 Aug 2013

I see we are not faraway from each other.

But, looking to the business side is nice and blandly, till TSSupport's strategy to implement new features into MC fits to the needs their customers have. It makes no sense, as a customer, to step back and to have "understanding" for a very long time for TSS's business views how MC should develop and which direction when elementary features and "other things" are not implemented. Instead I see features coming which are implemented for reasons which are in teh interest of TSS alone ... not for customers and less for traders and their needs. It is just an adjusting to other trading appz etc ... But this doesn't mean it is helpful for us. And this is my concern.

Like you said :
Regarding the milliseconds, for those coding strategies, HFT strategies, something that everyone is trying to get into nowadays, that type of data is needed. Since MC is a platform with programming capabilities and since thousands of people code in EL and .NET, it makes perfect sense, business wise, to invest in such development so they can bring more people to MC.
Is it really helping you ? As I defend my thoughts and ABC is on the same direction, HFT with MC is "useless" and makes no sense. So analyzing milliseconds makes less sense. Why adding something which is useless ... ? Right, it brings people to MC only, but doesn't help !!!

Again, just to let a software looking good and with nice colored charts with 1000 ads doesn't mean it will help you in trading. I would like to see more developments in usability and easiness, flexibility with handling of data & symbols, speed and so on. 4 yrs ago I had a nice project with the university of Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and a very well known psychologist with high reputation in analyzing trading psychology, which had a very strong outcome. We made tests with Excel worksheets, simple plain and nice colored. We made tests with charts reading and trading in stressful trading environments and so on. The outcome was : yes, reading nice colored worksheets and charts let the traders and analysts feeling very comfortable and more open to look at it. But or better BUT !! : the traders and analysts could read less information out of it, react to it much slower and the test results were surprisingly very bad .... Color and features are robbing your attention to details. I see this behavior, to put more and more useless features in software and it doesn't mean it is MC - NT - TS, IRT or something else. They are all sitting in the same boat.

I think, TS Support has so many open issues in MC, so many open requests to add really useful features and so many unanswered requests for already forgotten bugs, that it should take attention to these bad issues first instead of adding useless "tools" which are keeping manpower on the wrong place.

In trading : LESS IS MOSTLY MUCH MORE .... Like KISS .... Kepp the software simple !!!!

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby sptrader » 12 Aug 2013

I thought this thread was about " New feature request - transparency " ?

You should start an HFT thread , it's an interesting topic but should have its own place..

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby arnie » 12 Aug 2013

Is it really helping you ? As I defend my thoughts and ABC is on the same direction, HFT with MC is "useless" and makes no sense. So analyzing milliseconds makes less sense. Why adding something which is useless ... ? Right, it brings people to MC only, but doesn't help !!!
As far as I remember I never requested milliseconds features. I requested footprint and volume profile.
I did talked about millisecond data but trying to understand if that would make the footprint and volume profile tools be more accurate in their volume reading.
Millisecond data is not directly associated with footprint charts nor volume profile.
I'm not a HFT trader. I'm not a programmer. I leave the programming for ABC.
Why adding something which is useless ... ? Right, it brings people to MC only, but doesn't help !!!
Well, if it helps or not it's not up to you to say nor MC. It's up to the user to know if the tool helps him or not. Who are we to tell anyone that this or that tool is useless?
the traders and analysts could read less information out of it, react to it much slower and the test results were surprisingly very bad .... Color and features are robbing your attention to details.
We do agree here, we have things on our charts that rob our attention from what is important, in my case, I have too many lines. So if I can remove some lines and substitute them by a transparent background I'm able to clean my chart, facilitating its reading.
I'm really not interested in the channel colors, I'm interested in removing some lines so I can get a better view of my areas of interest and a transparent background helps me a lot.

Maybe it would facilitate this discussion if you enumerated the features you see as the ones really important for MC, the ones you want to have to facilitate your trading/MC functionality.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby ABC » 12 Aug 2013

After all it comes down to one point anyway: Think about what would happen if the datafeeds carry millisecond information and MC would refuse to add them. The competition would do it and MC would lose market share.

Now they are the first software that is offering it and this alone makes it useful marketing wise. It will drive more business towards them and in turn make more money available for developing other features.
It will always be like this when your business model is mainly based on selling the software. You need to have a lot of features to appeal for the broadest audience possible.
Which is why the transparency also is a good idea.

Just my two cents.

Regards,
ABC

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby TJ » 12 Aug 2013

From a programming perspective, adding millisecond is easier than adding sub-minute analysis -- everything defaults to a single datetime.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby arnie » 12 Aug 2013

From a programming perspective, adding millisecond is easier than adding sub-minute analysis -- everything defaults to a single datetime.
Good point TJ.

Yes, the DateTime keyword gave us a much better control over the text plotted on non time based charts thanks to milliseconds. It was quite painful when we had several bars with the same time stamp which would made the text plot only on the first bar, not recognizing the other bars.

Now I can plot some of my studies on non time based charts with accuracy thanks to millisecond capabilities.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby swz168 » 12 Aug 2013

I'm happy about all the new features MC offers, whether it is visually discretionary trading or automated trading related features.

But somehow the speed of new features implemented is somehow "frightening". I mean the core stability for trading suffered. For example: things that worked in earlier versions suddenly have bugs in new versions. If new bugs are related to new features, then it is understandable, but not if something "old" gets buggy. I have no idea about quality management system in the IT industry, but MC have to do something about this issue.

Now to the topic: Transparency is nice to have, but not a must have feature. In my opinion.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby TJ » 12 Aug 2013

I'm happy about all the new features MC offers, whether it is visually discretionary trading or automated trading related features.
But somehow the speed of new features implemented is somehow "frightening". I mean the core stability for trading suffered. For example: things that worked in earlier versions suddenly have bugs in new versions. If new bugs are related to new features, then it is understandable, but not if something "old" gets buggy. I have no idea about quality management system in the IT industry, but MC have to do something about this issue.
Now to the topic: Transparency is nice to have, but not a must have feature. In my opinion.
Bear in mind that a beta is a beta... it is a testing release. It is for the early adopters. It is for people who want to try out the new features. If you DO NOT want to try the new features, DO NOT upgrade until a formal release is made and stability is proven.



See description and expectation of Beta release here:

Software Lifecycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_r ... life_cycle

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby swz168 » 12 Aug 2013

Bear in mind that a beta is a beta... it is a testing release. It is for the early adopters. It is for people who want to try out the new features. If you DO NOT want to try the new features, DO NOT upgrade until a formal release is made and stability is proven.

Software Lifecycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_r ... life_cycle
Thanks for the link TJ, I know nothing about Quality Management System in the Software development industry, but I know what BETA means.

Since I own a MC licence I spend many hours with the support, some sessions related to beta, others related to final versions. Luckily, I was spared with that with the newest release.

You only have to look at minor bug fix releases, and you will see that nearly all "first final release" still had severe bugs.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby TJ » 12 Aug 2013

Bear in mind that a beta is a beta... it is a testing release. It is for the early adopters. It is for people who want to try out the new features. If you DO NOT want to try the new features, DO NOT upgrade until a formal release is made and stability is proven.
Software Lifecycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_r ... life_cycle
Thanks for the link TJ, I know nothing about Quality Management System in the Software development industry, but I know what BETA means.
Since I own a MC licence I spend many hours with the support, some sessions related to beta, others related to final versions. Luckily, I was spared with that with the newest release.
You only have to look at minor bug fix releases, and you will see that nearly all "first final release" still had severe bugs.
That's without saying... that's why I am trading on MultiCharts64 Version 8.0 Release (Build 5622),
and my TWS is Build 928.6, dated Jul 20, 2012.

Simple rule of thumb: if you don't need the new features, don't upgrade. Keep making money with your current version until it is nolonger supported.

YMMV

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby piranhaxp » 15 Aug 2013

Ok, looks like I may underestimated the relevance/important of the beauty of charts instead of minor bug fixes and open questions why some wrong things are like they are. One of them let me honk every day ... see chart 2 of post 1 ( not transparency !!! ... chart shift and txt !!! ) ... But seems not to be important :)

So be it ....

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby trader39 » 15 Aug 2013

Let me register a strong vote in favor of this feature. I tried to vote on the feature page, however my vote was not registered for some reason. I have been struggling with toggling the visual order of my studies for complete visibility for some time...this is a far better solution. One of the great strengths of Multicharts is that it combines visualization with the ability to code the most complex analyses. The lack of transparency support, particularly when competing platforms offer it, is a major shortcoming on the visualization side. If it would mitigate the development complexity, a simple check box (Transparent: Yes/No) in the visual order object list would probably suffice for most purposes, or alternatively a "Transparent: Yes/No" option to select when an indicator is initially compiled or applied to a chart.

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Re: New feature request - transparency

Postby sptrader » 15 Aug 2013

Along with "Transparency" the ability to "Fill in transparently" the space between moving averages for example, is also very valuable for those of us who are Visual...


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