Each month in this Journal, our technical support staff addresses issues of interest to many CSI subscribers in a question-and-answer format. 

Notice:
  The views and information expressed in this document reflect the opinions and experience of the author Robert C. Pelletier.  Neither CSI nor the author undertake or intend to provide tax advice or trading advice in any market or endorse any outside individual or firm.  All recommendations are provided for their informational value only.  Readers should consult competent financial advisors or outside counsel before making any software purchase or investment decision.  CSI does not stand behind or endorse the products of any outside firms.

Copyright (c) 2000 Commodity Systems Inc. (CSI).  All rights are reserved.

Q.
    I see that Unfair Advantage® (UA) has a "Stock ScannerT" with features for screening stocks according to my own specifications. Does CSI have a similar product for commodities?

A.
    UA's Stock Scanner can be used to select, sort and screen both commodities and stocks at your discretion. This enhancement is included in UA version 2.2.3. If you don't have it, please download the latest version from the CSI website at www.csidata.com (see Support - Program Updates). The Stock Scanner, incidentally, is being renamed, Market ScannerT. UA version 2.2.3 will incorporate more details on Market Scanner and some new contributed tools designed to identify and filter emerging commodity opportunities for review.

Q.
    Will Unfair Advantage accommodate the exploration of stocks by industries and sectors?

A.
    Yes. To a large extent, UA does this now. Industry and Sector groups are comprised of correlated stocks that should move together over time. We have made extensive classifications of markets, making it easy for you to investigate opportunities in the financial arena. Don't avoid these opportunities for tracking and following the many financial markets around the world. Many U.S. Mutual funds subscribe to CSI services to fashion homogeneous elements of similar or diversified groups of stocks. You can do this too.

As a research item, we are investigating the feasibility of adding the capability to group stocks according to your unique purposes, track group performance over time and exclude low or non-correlated members of the classified group.

Q.
    Unfair Advantage's distribution screen regularly reveals that it is processing adjustments to my database, but it never tells me just what they are. This concerns me because changes could affect the analysis on which I based my current open positions, and I would like to be informed about such changes. Is more information available on the adjustments I receive?

A.
    UA's Update.adm file addresses data point changes, after-the-fact additions and adjustments that affect the overall database. Adjustments include conversion factor changes (as in the change to decimalization), changes in tick intervals, changes in the concatenation of similar series to maximize historical reserves, etc. All but a small fraction of entries in the Update.adm file are dividends and capital gains distributions that are released after the original corresponding price data are posted. Actual error corrections are extremely rare and far between, so the chance that a given trader's open position would be affected is slim.

The exact content of the Update.adm file is provided exclusively to the hundreds of commercial subscribers who redistribute CSI data to their own customers, allowing them to maintain a clean database for redistribution. This information is not provided to individual Unfair Advantage customers, who have the luxury of allowing UA to handle all necessary changes automatically. Commercial users pay considerably more than individual CSI customers. Were we to reveal every change made to individual UA subscribers, any "personal and private" customer could unfairly compete with CSI using our own data.

If you are like most UA users, you follow less than a couple of dozen different markets, making it fairly easy to review the indicators that pointed to your open positions each day. If you follow much more than that, perhaps the extra charges associated with a higher level of service might be justified and affordable.