01/2804

Changes to version 1.21a.

• Hotkeys defined can now be displayed in a Hotkey Pad window. From the View menu, select Show Hotkey Buttons. The Hotkey Pad window can be resized and the buttons will rearrange accordingly. The window size and position is remembered between program restarts.
• Added Submit Target option to hotkeys.
• AutoTrader Online Tutorial in Macromedia Shockwave Flash 5 format is now available. Access the Online Tutorial from the AutoTrader Help menu or from this link. This is the initial version, if there are any topics you want added, please send me an email.
• The target and stop price in Position Exit are now displayed in the correct format, e.g. 4 decimal places for EUR.
• Fixed bug in using right click to set the Stop or Target price or offset value.
• The Qty Open and Profit box in Monitor panel are now color coded. Qty short is red, long is green. Profit is green, loss is red.
• The bulletins tab will now be displayed for 10 seconds when AutoTrader program is started. This is to make sure users do not miss any important AutoTrader announcements.
• For registered users, opening the Preferences dialog will take you to the AT Prefs tab as a default instead of the Donate/Register tab.
• Fixed a bug in AutoTrader playback data collection. Previously you can only playback data collected using the same version. This is now fixed so data collected from version 1.21a on will playback on later versions.

01/21/04

For those upgrading to version 1.21, you can only upgrade to 1.21 from 1.20d. I mistakenly said 1.20c in the download page. That is now corrected. For those who had 1.20c before and tried to upgrade to 1.20d or 1.21, the program will not work because there was a change in the file layout. Some files were added and some removed. I recommend you do a full install of 1.21. If you must upgrade, get the ATFullInstall.zip for 1.21, and extract the file corojdk11.dll and save it in the same location as AutoTrader.jar, and extract the file Coroutine4Java.jar and save it to the lib directory in your AutoTrader folder.

01/19/04

Version 1.21 is now available.

• Starting with this verison, I am sending out registration key in a file called ATRegistration.xml. All you need to do is save the file in the same location as AutoTrader.jar, and when you start AutoTrader, the file will automatically be read in and registered (you need to be online to register). If you have AutoTrader already running when you save the ATRegistration.xml file, you can go to Preferences and click the Import Key button in the Registration section. Make the suggested donation amount and you will receive the registration file.
• Table column widths are now remembered between program starts. If you change the font size or window size, you may want to change the column widths of the Order Status table, and the other tables. The column widths are saved when you exit the program.
• Connecting to TWS in Windows now will automatically click the "Accept Incoming Connection?" prompt from TWS (windows platform only). If you have Autoconnect on Startup option selected, and you have TWS running, AutoTrader wll start streaming quotes from the default symbol when AutoTrader program is started.
• Entry, Target and Stop prices in Monitor section now displays prices in the correct format, e.g. 4 decimal places for EUR, and fractions if the symbol is set to display in fractions.
• I modifed the links to AutoTrader home page in the program to use the actual AutoTrader homepage URL instead of the sling.to redirector.

The sling.to redirector service is still down, so http://sling.to/autotrader URL will not work. Please tell other users to use the alternate URL listed above to access this website.

01/14/04

No new updates today. I got a lot of emails reporting the sling.to/autotrader site is down. I had the alternate website URLs listed here and in eminitraders forum for a while, I also made an announcement in the AutoTrader Bulletins to use the alternate URL. I added that for a reason, not just to take up space, please read the announcements there at least once a day.

I frequently get requests about changing the font size to bigger from people who cannot read well, or change the font size smaller from people who want to use less screen space. Now with the GTK+2.0 themes, you can change the font to anything you like. First, pick a GTK theme that you like to use. Then go to the themes folder and copy the folder of that theme to a new folder. For example, copy Graphite Metal to a new folder called Graphite Metal LargePrint. Next, edit the file in themes\Graphite Metal LargePrint\gtk-2.0\gtkrc. Search for the word font, and replace the line that looks like this
font = "-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
to this
font_name = "tahoma bold 14"
If you want the font to be in italics, you can do this
font_name = "tahoma bold italic 14"
The first word is the font family (helvetica, courier, etc), the second is the weight, bold or normal, the third is the style, normal or italic, and the last is the font size.

I have added a sample theme that displays large print in the download area. Simply unzip it into the themes folder. Next time you open AutoTrader, the folder name (which is the theme name) will show up as a choice in the GTK Look and Feel themes, select it and restart AutoTrader, and the screen should look like what is shown here.

I continue to maintain and enhance the program to make it better, please consider making a donation in order to register your copy. Thank you for your support.

01/13/04

Chagnes to version 1.20d

• I relaxed the Java requirement back to version 1.4 from 1.4.2 since Macintosh users do not have Java 1.4.2. The GTK themes will still work even if you have Java 1.4 installed.
• You can now scale out at offer. When the market is strong in your favor, you can take advantage of the spread by scaling out your position at the offer price. To scale out now at the offer, simply press the SHIFT key while clicking on the Scale out button. This feature is available in live or simulation mode.
• Staged order button(One Click buy or sell buttons) text now display "Staged Buy" and "Staged Sell" instead of changing the font to bold, since some of the GTK themes do not display bold font. To activate Staged Order, hold down the CTRL and ALT keys at the same time while clicking a Buy or Sell One Click button. A staged order will submit a limit buy and sell order pair that is 50 ticks away from the current last price. The order is staged on the exchange (assuming the exchange can take native limit order like GLOBEX), so that when you click your Buy at Ask or Sell at Bid button, the staged order is simply modified and resubmitted. This can save a signifcant amount of time your order travels to reach the exchange. This feature is available only in live mode.
• Entry orders using OCA group (such as breakout orders) now use ATE_<client id> for OCA string in order for entry orders for multiple instance of AutoTrader to not interfere with each other. This makes the entry order OCA string consistent with the exit order OCA string change I did in 1.20c.

If you wish to continue using new and advanced features of AutoTrader, please consider making a donation in order to receive a registration key. People who made donations prior to version 1.20c, regardless of amount can request for a registration key. Donations received from 1.20c or later will get a registration key if you donate the suggested amount or more. Thank you for your support.

01/09/04

Changes to version 1.20c

• You can now request for your registration key if you previously made a donation. Please send an email to autotrader-bugs@sling.to to request your registration key. Provide your firstname, lastname and method of donation (paypal or check by mail). Registering will allow you full use of new features to be added. Registration is good for one year. If you have not made a donation yet, click here to donate now.
• New GTK+ 2.0 Themes is now available. Check out the screen shots of some of the new themes now available for you to choose from. I added 20 new themes here, but you can add new themes yourself by getting them from www.themes.org. You need Java 1.4.2 or later for this to work. Not all GTK+ 2.0 themes will work in Java, so you need to try it yourself to see if it works. You need to do a full install to use this feature.
• Updated commission calculations for report to include ECBOT exchange. This update will calculate YM commission at $2.06 and everything else at $2.40.
• Fixed submit target bug in simulation mode. The target order is not submitted anymore if you do not have the submit target option checked. This fix may have also fixed the incorrect stop and target offset price calculation since I cannot reproduce it anymore in this version. Please email me if you still see incorrect stop or target price calculation in simulation mode causing premature triggering of the exit orders.
• Tick price of 0 are filtered out to avoid false triggering of stop orders.
• For those running multiple instance of AutoTrader and using MySQL database, the problem with program state overwriting each other is now fixed. You can now run multiple instances of AutoTrader with all instances going to MySQL database. To setup multiple instances of AutoTrader, you need to make copies of AutoTrader full install into multiple folders. Then for each one start AutoTrader, then go to preferences and change the client id to a unique value, then select MySQL database, then exit AutoTrader. Do this for each instance. Then next time you start up all the instances, they will all share the same MySQL database. You need to install and setup MySQL database first before you select MySQL database in AutoTrader preferences. Just installing MySQL and accepting all default values will work for AutoTrader. I do recommend you configure it to start as an NT service. On linux, MySQL is automatically started at boot time by default. Users of HSQLDB are not affected by this change.
• Position Exit order OCA string is now ATX+<stop order id>+<client id>. This avoids the problem of Position Exit orders of one instance cancelling the Position Exit orders of another instance if the Order ID is the same.

01/05/04

Changes to version 1.20b.

• AutoTrader can now playback ER2 data from CME! Due to recent popularity of ER2 trading, I have added CME ER2 data as a playback source. When you select CME Globex playback source, you can select a *.gem file, which contains ER2 data for playback.
• Fixed CME playback data to prompt for Expiration date. Recent CME files contains data for 200312 and 200403. This fix will default to the correct front month expiration.
• AutoTrader is now available in French. Thanks to Matthieu of France for translating the AutoTrader text into French. Anyone else interested in translating please send me an email. Other languages in which IB has exchanges they trade in are Chinese (Hongkong), Italian, Japanese and Dutch (Belgium and Netherlands). Be proud of your native langauge.
• The display price on buttons will now display price in fractions if the contract is defined to display price in fractions.

I wish you all a prosperous new year.