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) 2001 Commodity Systems Inc. (CSI).  All rights are reserved.

A.
    Not to worry! UA version 4.2 still supports Perl for custom programming through the charting module and through MarketScanner.T To ease installation, we now include a public domain version of Perl with the UA executable installation. Your colleague's UA version sports a number of changes like this that simplify various processes.  Please visit the CSI website for more information on upgrading your software.

Q.
    How did the chaos of September 11th affect my UA database?

A.
    Despite the unprecedented events of September 11th, the American financial system performed remarkably well and actual chaos was averted. Most exchanges were closed for just two days following the terrorist attacks, but the U.S. stock exchanges did not reopen until September 17th. Each day of closure is recorded as a "holiday" in your CSI data files. Those data sets that were missed due to late postings in the aftermath have already been updated through UA's remote correction process. If you were unable to download due to problems with your local server, all missing days were automatically supplied upon your first successful access. We know of no latent problems that would require database replacement or additional downloads.

Q.
    My UA stock charts show a gap in trading from September 11 through September 14th. While this accurately reflects what happened, I wonder if I can display the data without a gap. Is there a way to hide the break?

A.
    Not in your UA charts. However, when building an ASCII file, you'll have the choice of converting "holiday" data into zeros, duplicates of the previous day or the previous close, or to simply reserve a null day. These options might be useful for custom or third-party analysis.

Q.
    I'm looking at a price bar on a UA chart that is like none I have ever seen before. The "close" hash mark is all by itself above the price bar. Is this an error?

A.
    Probably not, but please report any suspicious data point to our technical support staff  (techsupport@csidata.com) for confirmation. What you are seeing is more likely an out-of-range settlement. An inherent trait of the commodity clearing process is that some inactive contracts (primarily mercantile) are subject to settlement by committee -- sometimes at values outside of the day's trading range. This allows the exchange to keep all contracts appropriately priced regardless of variations in liquidity. Whenever a contract is "settled" outside of its trading range, an atypical price bar is produced that includes a gap between the vertical range indicator and the closing tick. Many software programs, UA included, can chart out-of-range closes (actually settlements) with no problem, but others cannot. 

   If your third-party analysis software can't handle out-of-range closes or if you do not wish to use this type of data in your analysis, you can edit your portfolio settings to eliminate them. Here's how: First select the desired portfolio from the Portfolio Manager panel. Then click the "Edit" portfolio button. Go to the Rounding/Ranging tab and select from "As published" (can include out-of-range data), "Modify High/Low" (expands the range to include the settlement) and "Modify Close" (adjusts the close to be within the range). In all cases, the UA database retains the actual values. Your choice here affects only data presentation for UA charts and export files listed in the selected portfolio. The same option is available for Non-Portfolio Chart Options.

Q.
   The Columbus Day prices for many of my foreign currency contracts seem to be repeats of the previous day's close. What's going on? 

A.
    A procedural convention adopted by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange does indeed call for some repeated prices on October 8th (Columbus Day). The affected contracts are the CME's foreign currency, E-Mini and FX markets. The lead December 2001 contracts on Globex for the currencies and FX markets traded, and in all or nearly all cases, prices reported were marginally higher. All further distant contracts did not trade.

    In the absence of market data for the farther out contracts, the exchange repeated the close from the previous Friday as the official close for Monday. The volume reports shown for the distant contracts beyond December for these markets were for "out-trades." The CME's official policy is to repeat the settlement of the prior trading day, leaving us with no choice but to post the data as they released it.

    UA customers can manually override the nominal settlements, but such an override could be lost when installing a future new release.