Multicharts 6.0 Beta 2 feedback

Some things on my short list excluding the "elephant in the room" of a DOM+Chart Trading:

a) Add a Transparent color option for plots. Invisible plots are not sufficient, see this post.

b) Allow more than one custom fitness to exist simultaneously, like a drop-down list.

c) Improve chart scrolling. This is major. A long discussion on this already, but I'd also like to be able to "grab" the chart with left-click and drag the chart left or right with the mouse. I am not talking about scaling, I am talking about scrolling.

d) Add option to maintain the right-margin during chart scrolling. I really dislike my margin going away when I scroll backwards, but it should be toggle on/off.

Mike

This happened two times within a short period (maybe a total of an hour and a half of use). I am a new MC user and experienced TS user. TS 8.7 was running (however quite idle) while this happened both times.

The problem: During a genetic optimization, I clicked the cancel button. The platform froze for about 10 seconds both times, then closed each time. All unsaved work was lost.

Thanks for reading.

Please think about a new feature:
Multi-Order (= allow trading on data2, not only signal from data2)

I believe the whole issue of being able to trade multiple series is something that's been discussed a good bit including in this support forum, and is already contemplated for the future - I just haven't heard there's an ETA for this yet. This is important, obviously, for certain classes of systems such as pairs trading or for trading a single system on a portfolio of instruments, where the single system needs to be aware of all positions. While work-arounds are possible (GV, ADE, etc.) they're generally cumbersome and prone to error because of complex sequencing/timing and other issues.

I agree on the data2 trading. There are probably two camps here -- camp 1 are algo traders who don't care about a DOM and discretionary trading, and who would really like to see the ability to submit traders to a data2 timeframe. Then there are camp 2, who are discretionary traders using two platforms and really want to eliminate the non-MultiCharts platform, and thus really want the DOM and Chart Trading badly.

I do both, but since there is already a workaround (GV) for the submitting to data2, my personal preference would be for the discretionary trading options to remain the #1 priority. Perhaps if 6.5 or 7.0 contain the DOM, then it isn't too unreasonable to hope that the next .5 release can add the ability to submit orders to an additional dataseries

Also, someone on my forum mentioned they were told by TSSupport the next release might be 6.5 (not 7). Is there a post about this somewhere here on the forum? I am wondering if discretionary is being add to 6.5, or if 6.5 is being released without discretionary trading.

Mike

I agree on the data2 trading. There are probably two camps here -- camp 1 are algo traders who don't care about a DOM and discretionary trading, and who would really like to see the ability to submit traders to a data2 timeframe. Then there are camp 2, who are discretionary traders using two platforms and really want to eliminate the non-MultiCharts platform, and thus really want the DOM and Chart Trading badly.

I do both, but since there is already a workaround (GV) for the submitting to data2, my personal preference would be for the discretionary trading options to remain the #1 priority. Perhaps if 6.5 or 7.0 contain the DOM, then it isn't too unreasonable to hope that the next .5 release can add the ability to submit orders to an additional dataseries

Also, someone on my forum mentioned they were told by TSSupport the next release might be 6.5 (not 7). Is there a post about this somewhere here on the forum? I am wondering if discretionary is being add to 6.5, or if 6.5 is being released without discretionary trading.

Mike

* Last I heard, Andrew said that beta3 was due out, about a week ago, I think, so anytime. That should be the next version released.

While work-arounds are possible (GV, ADE, etc.) they're generally cumbersome and prone to error because of complex sequencing/timing and other issues.

It's really so complex to program this feature?
I thought it must be added only the order commands data2, for example

buy xxx xxx xxx data2;

like signalcodes

var1 = currentask data2.

Mh. This feature, MultiInstrument-Orders, would very very nice for me
In NT I use multi-instrument-orders in a strategy at time, but I don't like NT, MC is greater

I am wondering if discretionary is being add to 6.5, or if 6.5 is being released without discretionary trading.

Discretionary is scheduled for an unspecified time in summer. So I think this feature will be added earliest in 7.

I just want to make sure this bug is well known by TSS:

After defining a custom fitness, the code is lost at some time in the future.

Steps to reproduce:
Edit custom fitness
Create code
Use MultiCharts on a daily basis

At some point, the custom fitness code is gone. I haven't been able to narrow down when exactly because I haven't paid close enough attention, but I do know that I "Saved workspace" and it made no difference.

It seems this is a underutilized feature of MultiCharts, but it is a crucial one to optimizing, so please fix it so I don't have to keep re-coding the fitness code.

Thx,
Mike

Dear Mike,
We failed to reproduce the issue. Could you illustrate all steps we must take to reproduce the issue?

Andrew,

Using MC 6.0 beta 2. I've added the Custom Fitness code in the Format Signals - Optimize box, Algorithm-specific, custom criteria - Edit.

When I exit MultiCharts and reload, the custom fitness code is gone. This has happened to me twice, I'm sorry I can't be more specific. Does this C code exist in a file somewhere? Is it in some database somewhere? Maybe I can go look at the file directly.

I do know I used "save workspace" and it still happened. Is Save Workspace required to save this custom fitness code?

Is a clean-shutdown of MC required for it to be saved, or is it saved as soon as you exit the screen? I do remember MC crashed on me a couple of times during large optimizations, but I didn't exactly go straight into the custom fitness code after re-loading MC to see if that is when it was missing or not.

Overall, I really kindly ask you improve this area of MultiCharts for the next release. Being able to only have ONE custom fitness is very limiting, I really would like to see a drop-down box with all the custom fitness I create, like NT. Maybe during this code change the problem I am experiencing will also go away.

Thx,
Mike

While work-arounds are possible (GV, ADE, etc.) they're generally cumbersome and prone to error because of complex sequencing/timing and other issues.

Just while we are on the subject of sequencing I would like to see millisecond time stamps so that indicators behave the same on historical data as live data. This is particularly important when using multiple data streams or bid ask and last data to construct MD type indicators. I think this is probably the main reason that IRT is doing so well.... the popularity of indicators that need volume@bid vs. volume@ask.

Even with millisecond time stamping indicators need to calculate from start to finish before another tick is processed (even if it is in another data stream). As things stand now race conditions can occur with multiple data streams. Precision is important for certain types of work.

I have sent emails to support on this subject but thought it might be appropriate to mention here.

Proper sequencing and processing across multiple data streams (both live and historical) is crucial to any modern charting/analysis software.

...volume@bid vs. volume@ask...

Well, and you may not realize yet that there's no historical storage of bid or ask prices either, but you would need that if you want to conduct historical testing of this.

...volume@bid vs. volume@ask...

Well, and you may not realize yet that there's no historical storage of bid or ask prices either, but you would need that if you want to conduct historical testing of this.

In QuoteManager "Fields to Collect" there are bid/ask/last, what is the bid/ask for if it isn't being stored? I figured "collected" meant "stored".

Mike

My mistake in the incautious way that was phrased. In EasyLanguage, CurrentAsk and CurrentBid are defined separately from Close only in real-time (and I was speaking of historical testing above), so if you want to analyze historical bid/ask you would need to make them their own data series and choose in the symbol setup to base the symbol on bid or ask rather than trades. However, this would align such bars only by second timestamp, so it would not probably be accurate in the way the poster here looking for MD type analysis is envisioning.

My mistake in the incautious way that was phrased. In EasyLanguage, CurrentAsk and CurrentBid are defined separately from Close only in real-time (and I was speaking of historical testing above), so if you want to analyze historical bid/ask you would need to make them their own data series and choose in the symbol setup to base the symbol on bid or ask rather than trades. However, this would align such bars only by second timestamp, so it would not probably be accurate in the way the poster here looking for MD type analysis is envisioning.

Thx for the detailed response Bruce.

So, if I have:
data1 = last
data2 = bid
data3 = ask

Then I can have correctly-aligned bid/ask data matching/synchronized with the last, yes? I just can't use CurrentBid or CurrentAsk keywords on a historical chart, but I can use 'Close' of data2 and 'Close' of data3 for the same, right?

Mike

In theory, that type of approach "works" provided you understand that aligned means by the time stamps, and the time stamps only have a 1 second resolution. So, if the bid/ask/trade prices fluctuate all over the map within a given second, the assignment of those trades to a particular bid/ask side is somewhat arbitrary in this scenario.

In other words, the trade/bid/ask data is kept in a sequence in QuoteManager, but the charting engine is written in a general way and doesn't know you've put different aspects of the same tick stream on the chart - all it knows is it has several tick series, and that it has to align tick series based on their second time stamps.

This is an area that I suspect could be improved significantly in the future. EasyLanguage wasn't really designed for this kind of analysis, although MultiCharts has come a really long way relative to what TS does at least as of today.

I like this feature in MT:
open chart - click left and hold => move mouse to another point in chart

now the mouse count pips and bars.

so you can see fast how many pips and bars between 2 points are.

This thread should move to a new feedback thread, as beta 3 is available for download today.