WATCHER NEWS FRAME ================== 12/8/97 - Watcher Version 12.18 Update *New Syntetic Net Chage! You know you want it, now you've got it. Anytime a stock has zero volume, Watcher will now display a synthetic net change for the day instead of nothing. The synthetic net change is computed by taking the difference between the current average of the bid and offer versus the average of the bid and offer at yesterday's close. This is the same formula used on the risers and fallers page. Synthethic net changes appear in grey rather than white like a true net change so you can tell the difference. This should be particularly usefull before the opening when there is no real net change yet. *New fast Open/Close transition. I made the transition that happens right at the close every day happen much faster. No big deal, but the servers like to do as little work as possible right then. *New BOMB key! Pressing "|" (SHIFT-CANCEL) will cancel any open orders in the currently hit up stock. Note that the bomb key will cancel at most 10 orders each time it is pressed, so if you have more than 10 open orders, you can press the bomb key more than once to cancel all the orders. *New SuperBomb command! Typing ~SUPERBOMB on the top line and pressing enter will cancel out up to 10 of your open orders, starting with the oldest open order. If you have more than 10 open orders, you can keep entering ~SUPERBOMB until they are all canceled. *New Detail levels! There are now four different levels of detail you can chose from. The levels are Level 0 - No updates on the stock. Level 1 - Only updates that change the inside market, for example high bid or lifts offering. Level 2 - Only updates that effect the inside market, like joins bid or up off offering. Level 3 - Any updates that has a clear direction, like ticks up or ticks down. Level 4 - All updates, even ones where the MMID only changes his size. Note that at any given level, you will also see all the updates for higher levels too. Use the ^ to rotate through the levels. The level is displayed for reference on your page 10. Also note that when ISLD updates, it's detail level is discounted by one, so if you have Level 2 set for a stock, you would not see ISLD going to the bid but you would see ISLD going high bid. This is what the people want, so this is what the people shall have. *Cancel Key Lockout. For now on, Watcher will only let you try to cancel an order at most once per five seconds. You should never have to try and cancel an order more than once anyway unless NASDAQ is having big problems, and it's just at those times when I don't want people pounding the cancels for no reason. *Made TID show 's' for smallcaps. Before it showed them with the same up arrow as stocks on an uptick. *Made High and Low dynamic in the quote windows. Before, they only updated when you hit up the stock, now they continually update. *If you have a stock on your tickers, it will no longer appear in your TID window. This should reduce the flow of TID a little. *Tightened up the code that prevents you from entering orders durring trading halts. *New Network Driver. I've rewritten the network driver that sits under Watcher to make it be able to recieve data four times faster. This will help when things get crazy and quote traffic increases. 10/10/97 - Watcher Version 12.17 Update *More efficient manual ACT access. Watcher now connects to the ACT processor at the instant you do a manual ACT trade and disconects right after. Before, it remained connected all the time. There are only about 45 manual ACT trades per day, so this should be a better way. *NEW SOES INTERPRETATION! We have been given a new interpretaion from the NASD about the SOES five minute rule. From now on, the five minute restriction resets any time you reverse your stand on a stock. This is the result of an SEC opinion that two buys entered with an interveening sell could not be the result of the same investment descision. This makes a lot of sense. Example: You buy a stock on SOES. One minute latter, you then sell it. You could now immedeately buy it again without waiting five minutes. *Moved the SMLEVEL database from the network drive to your local hard disk. This should reduce network traffic and make order entry a little bit speedier. *Took out an obsolite reference to the old Island orders database. Every little bit counts. *Fixed the "Jason TID" problem that made stocks that you killed off your TID keep coming back. Now when you kill it, the damn TID will stay dead. *Implimented the new Legal Short Sale Rule that went into effect Oct 1, 1997. You can new short a stock on or above the offer even if the offer is less than a 1/16th above the bid. This also means you can short on on the bid in a locked/crossed market. *All SOES limit orders now time out after 10 seconds. Before, any SOES limit order entered before 9:35AM would time out after 30 seconds, but that's not nessisary now becuase you can enter a MARKET DAY order. *Adjusted buying power calculations. You now get an extra %5 buying power on long positions held over night. The requirement is now %25, before it was set to %30. *Made Island "Greenies" only show when you are on the first page of market makers in a quote area. *Watcher is now more conservative about letting you enter orders in halted or delisted stocks. If the inside market for the stock shows zero by zero, no orders will be accepted. *Fixed the PageUp key so it works as you would expect on page 10. Before it incorrectly always brought you to the top of the list. *Took out all the code that decided if a stock was phased in or not now that all stocks have been phased in on Island. *Added the ability to specify a timeout on Island and SelectNet Preference orders. By default Island and SelectNet Preference orders entered with the buy/sell limit keys (Shift-Q, Shift-A, Shift-P, Shift-L) would timeout after three minutes. You can now add a semicolon (;) followed by a one or two digit number at the end of the order line to specify a new timeout in minutes. For example, the line #NB200TEST16;5 would enter a buy order that would timeout after 5 minutes. Using 99 as a timeout specifies a day order. Using zero as a timeout specifies the default timeout; it's the same as not entering a timeout at all. If you enter a preferenced order to ISLD, the default timeout is Immediate or Cancel. All other orders entered with these keys default to a three minute timeout. Why? Well you probably never need this feature. I only added this feature for people who handle a lot of day orders so they can enter and forget them rather than having to re-enter them every three minutes. *Removed the Market Maker spread change indicators. Before, you would see if a tick increased a market maker's spread and >MMID< if it decreased it. With the new Order Obligation Rules, this information is of little or no value any more. *Changed the way that Watcher prints times on the screen. It will hopefully be a little bit faster and get rid of times like 09:29:60. *Removed ISLD driven updates from the TID. If it's an ISLD move that changed the inside market, you will no longer see the move on your TID. I was able to add this function by interalizing the functionality of the TID inside Watcher itself, previously the TID was driven by an external program that sent the updates to your Watcher. By getting rid of this program, there is now one less thing to not work, and that many fewer messages coming into your Watcher. The one thing you give up is the bold arrows, but you never used those anyway. *Optimized the code that does numeric conversions so it goes just a little bit faster. *Oh, yea, LAST SALE INFO COMES TO WATCHER!!! You now see the last trade price, last trade net change, and last trade high and low, and volume in your quote areas. On the top line you now see the symbol, the last trade price, the net change, the tier level, and the inside market size. On the second line you get highest trade price, lowest trade price, cumulative volume in thousands, and last trade size. 7/16/97 - Watcher Version 12.16 Update *New Longer Lasting Log Page. You can now see trades from the previous day onb your page 7 log. We work hard to serve you more. *Performance Enhancements. Jeff just discovered a small change to the way that databases are updated that can increase the speed tremendously depending on the situation. I've changed all my code to use the new, turbo charged, almost patentable, "multi-replace" technology. *Persistant TID Page with Marker Bar. Your TID page no longer clears everytime you switch pages, instead it just stops updating until you return to page two, then it inserts a marker bar at the bottom of the window. It's just like the marker bar you use at the super market. Everything above the bar is old, everyting under the bar is new. *Better Description of One Sided Markets. Watcher now correctly shows the direction of a tick when an ECN closes one side of thier market. Previously, Watcher would show "Closes Quote" whenever an ECN closed either side of thier market. *More Efficient BigBrother Interaction. For now on, your Watcher will only tell BigBrother about your status when asked. Before, it sent that info every time it changed. BigBrother is the supervision software that lets your Registered Rep keep an eye on you. *No More Island "Blues" in the Ticker Windows. Since the market has gone to 16ths, the blues have lost most of thier meaning. *New Advanced Ticker. You can now have TWO, thats right, two ticker windows running. While on page 2, press F2 a second time to activate the advanced ticker. It will appear on the left side, replacing the TID window. To move groups of stocks onto this new windows, use the familiar + command followed by a list of colors. These colors will now show up on the left side. Pressing F2 again restores the TID window. *New better UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD file format. I know, a Watcher *should* never go down. But they do. Lightning, spilled coke, and evil hexes can all cause Watcher failure. Now recovering should be a little faster and more reliable. There's still one more thing I plan to do to make any reload take less than a minute, even in the late afternoon, so stay tuned. 5/28/97 - Wacther Version 12.15 Update *MONSTER keys now enter MARKET DAY orders. The MONSTER keys used to enter limit orders %20 away from the market with a short timeout, but now the game has changed and so must Watcher. Now when you enter a SOES order using any of the MONSTER keys, your order will go in as a MARKET order and will stay in all day until it executes, is rejected, or you cancel it. GOOD: You can now enter orders long before the open and hopefully be at the begining of line when the open comes rolling around. Also, in certain VERY crazy situations, you will be able to leave your SOES orders in for several minutes waiting for an eventual execution. BAD: It is now up to you to cancel MONSTER orders. They will not time out on thier own. If you forget to cancel an order, you may be suprised to get an enexpected and unwanted execution latter in the day. Be carefull. *Reduced ISLD ticks on non-detail stocks. By poular demand, you will never ever again have to watch ISLD tick in either of your ticker windows unless ISLD changes the inside market or you have detail enabled on the stock. *No Go Over the Money. You asked for it, you got it. Watcher now tries to help you in the endless battle between too many positoins and not enough margin. Watcher will now stop you from entering an order that exceeds your buying power. It's not perfect, though. I took a very conservitive approch to limiting your ability to enter orders so it is still possible to create a margin call, but under normal trading conditions you should be able to avoid going over by mistake. *TID window clears on page switch. Any time you press F2 to go to page #2 (TID & Ticker), the TID window will be cleared. This works even if you are already on page #2 when you press the F2 key. I actually did this to make watcher be a little faster when you are on other pages besides page #2. *Watcher starts on Page #6 by default. Before, Watcher used to start up on page #1, which is a VERY slow page. Page #1 (Positions), page #3 (Risers & Fallers), and page #4 (Locks) are VERY VERY slow. Don't stay on these pages any longer than you have to or else your Watcher may start to fall behind. I'd suggest leaving your Watcher on page #2 (TID & Ticker) or page #6 (Orders & Ticker) durring normal use for maximum performace. *You can now rotate your price in 1/32nds using Alt-Left-Arrow and and Alt-Right-Arrow when entering an order on the top line. I hope NASDAQ doesn't go to 1/64ths 'cause I'm running out-a keys. Just kidding. *All Island quotes in phased in stocks now show at least 1/16ths. Stocks under 70 sometimes even quote down to 1/32nds! *Monster Order's Price adjusted to round to nearest 1/16th rather than nearest 1/8th. As of June 2, you can enter NASDAQ orders in 1/16ths. *Last trade price and time appears with Shift-Z. Press Shift-Z while on top of a stock and you will see the price of the last trade you did. If you did the trade today, you will also see the time of the trade. Try it. Handy, huh? *Complete overhaul of the order entery mechanisim. I've rewritten all the code associated with getting your orders into the system. Everything should be more consistant now, and I was able to add a few nice features. Read on... *Auto-splits on "now" orders. If you enter a "now" order that gets diverted to Island, but the number of shares available on Island is less than the size of your order, the remaining shares will be entered into SOES if possible. Example: You enter a "now" order to buy 1000 shares on the offer and there are 233 shares available on Island, Watcher will split your order and send 233 shares to Island and the remaining 767 shares to SOES. This should help cut down on odd lot positions too. *New THRESHOLD command. Now you can set Watcher to only show moves in the middle window on positions greater than a certain size. To set the minimum threshold, just type ~THRESHOLD followed by the minimum size. Example: if you type ~THRESHOLD 99, you will never see any ticks in the middle widow for any odd lot positions you have. Your current threshold setting is displayed on Page 1. *Real-time cash journaling. Watcher can now accept cash credits and debits in real-time, so any money transactions can now be instantly reflected in your buying power calculation. *Overnight database optimizations. Each evening your Watcher will now reindex several key databases to hopefully make them run a little faster the next day. *Fixed a bug that occasionaly disclosed the contra broker on an Island trade. *Fixed a bug that could effect buying power calculation with people who added lots of tickers. *Got rid of "Moves?" message for updates that do not effect the inside market. 4/17/97 - Watcher Version 12.14 Update *You can now find reports on page five even if they have lower case letters. For example, if you type "?AB" while on page 5, you will now jump to the reports for trader "ab". *Made Island U R Out messages appear in the middle window. Popular demand. *Fixed the coolest bug. This very subtle bug could cause wrong BAD BID and BAD ASK messages. It only effected stocks that never ever tick. These stocks could appear to have no market makers if they were halted in a very certain way. This only effected one stock that I know of ever, and that stock hasn't ticked in a very long time. *Fixed a problem that collateralized positions occasionaly did not appear on your page 1. *Made the Longvalue and Shortvalue calculations more effecient. *New Margin Calculation. Ok, here's the rule: You must put up %50 margin for any trades you do today. You need only maintain %25 margin on any long position held overnight. You'll need %30 maintenance margin on any short held overnight. The law's the law, anyone who tells you therwise is wrong. EXAMPLE: You open an account with $50,000. You buy 1000 shares of INTCW at 100 using $50,000 of buying power. For the rest of the day, you will not have any excess buying power, it will all be used to hold your 1000 share long position of INTCW. When you come in tommarow morning, however, you will magicaly have an additional $50,000 of buying power because you now only need $25,000 (that %25 of $100,000) of maintenace margin. To make things clearer, I've made the page 1 position list show what your BASIS is each stock. Your BASIS is the number of shares of your current position that you came into the day with. The BASIS shares show up in blue to the right of the last-tick time. It is your BASIS shares that are eligible for the lower margin maintenance requirement. Luckily, you don't have to know any of this. Your Watcher automaticaly figures out your maximum buying power for you and displays on the status bar. *Added a check to prevent orders that could lock the market from being preferenced to Island. 4/8/97 - Watcher Version 12.13 Update *SelectNet orders preferenced to ISLD now go in as Immeidate Or Cancel. This will keep your take-out orders from being added to the book. *Market Maker name now shows on your Page 6 for preferenced SelectNet orders. This is the first step towards Watcher's new automated backing away system. *To make room for the Market Maker name on the orders page, I had to shorten two messages. "Closes Quote" becomes "Close Quote", and "Down Off Bid" becomes "Dwn Off Bid". Don't worry, you'll get used to it. 4/03/97 - Watcher Version 12.12 Update *New DETAIL feature. For now on, in your position and ticker windows you will only see ticks that effect the inside market of the stock. You will not, by default, see ticks from "nowhere to nowhere". You can optionaly turn on "detail" for the stock in you hot area by pressing the [^] key (Shift 6). From that point forward, you will see every tick in the stock. Pressing [^] again toggles detail off for the current stock. You can check your page 10 to see which stocks have detail set. This should help slow down the pace of these windows and start to make them readable again. *New timeouts for orders. For now on, all Island/SelectNet orders entered with Watcher will timeout after 3 minutes, where previously all orders timed out after 1 minute. All SOES orders now timeout after 90 seconds, previously SOES orders lived for 10-30 seconds. Note, SOES orders will automaticaly cancel if the market moves away from them before the end of the 90 seconds. *Watcher has real Equity computation. Watcher now tracks your account balances in real time. It knows your long, short, and cash values at any given moment, so it can help you squeeze the last bit of margin out of your buying power, while helping you to avoid going over your money. Your live Buying Power now appears on the red staus bar. To see more detailed account info, try pressing the [:] key (Shift [;]). *Watcher now puts your total number of shares in the BigBrother database. This is helpfull for Registered Reps to keep an eye on how thier customers are doing. *SOES orders are no longer entered 1/8 away from the inside market. Previously, Watcher would enter your SOES orders an 1/8 away from the market to help move you higher in the execution queue. Since the queue now is only based on time priority, this feature no longer helps. *You can now enter an ACT trade within 2 points of the current inside market. Before, you had to be within 1/2 point. *If you preference ISLD on SelectNet, you order will be routed directly to Island, bypassing SelectNet. This should make executing against Island away from the market much faster. *Big changes are a brewing. The underpinings of Cross Colateralization make thier first appearance in this version. In the process, I've gotten rid of a whole mess of obsolete code the make Watcher leaner and meaner, simpler and faster. 2/25/97 - Watcher Version 12.11 Update *New price fix for Adjustment trades. When you enter an adjustment trade, like +B1INTC, the price will be the price of the last trade you did in the stock. If you have never done a trade in the stock, the price will be the average of the bid and offer. Now you can use adjustment trades like stock price bookmarks to help you remember where a stock was and how much it has moved. *Bigger, better, faster NASDAQ Level II feed! This Watcher version is able to read the latest greatest NASDAQ market maker feed. I've also improved the way I handle that data once I get it from NASDAQ. This will hopefully make everything go a tinesy winsely little bit faster. 2/10/97 - Watcher Version 12.10 Update *No more locking overrides. I've had to take out the ability to override the "WOULD LOCK MARKET". Too bad. *Per share average now shows three decimal places when average is less than $10. It used to only show two decimal places. *Adjustments now do not show a price if you have no real positon. Before, if you entered an adjustment in a stock that you did not have a position in, you would see the price based on the last position you had in the stock. *Longer timeouts on Monster orders. Monster orders used to automaticaly cancel after 21 seconds, now they stay in for 90 seconds. This is becuase under the new system, time priorty is all that matters and every time your order gets canceled and re-entered, you go to the back of the line. By leaving your order in longer, you will stay in longer. This should help on those realy hard to get prints. *ISLD moves nowhere to nowhere handled better. I'm still playing with taking useless info off Watcher, now ISLD moves that don't effect the inside market don't show in your ticker windows but does show in the quote windows. 1/27/97 - Watcher Version 12.09 Update *Bigger numbers for agregated size. The numbers at the top of the quote windows that show the total number of shares on each size of the inside market are now full size. Several people said that the tiny ones gave them headaches. *Fixed an Island shorting bug. I fixed some logic in the Diverting To Island code that could have incorrectly designated short sales. 1/24/97 - Watcher Version 12.08 Update *Everything goes per share. Everywhere it matters, you will now see per share figures on your Watcher. If your firm is still charging you by the ticket, you should urge them to switch to a per share system, it's just more fair under the new rules. *Island now filtered in Ticker Windows. In an effort to reduce the ammount of stuff you have to look at all day, we are slowly pairing back certain updates from your Ticker Windows. First to go is anytime ISLD moves that does not effect the inside market. So now, you should never see an ISLD move unless it is joining or leaving the bid or offer. *SelectNet preference keys swapped. After many hours of deliberation it has been decicided, the SelectNet preference keys were in the wrong place. Shift-2 and Shift-W will swap places with Shift-0 and Shift-O. It's a matter of prefernence, but the consensous seems to be in favor of this new configuration. * UPDATED SELECTNET PREFERENCE KEYS * Shift 2-Sell Preference 1 Lot Shift 0-Buy Preference 1 Lot Shift W-Sell Preference Closeout Shift O-Buy Preference Closeout *Shares are agregated in quote windows. You will now see the total number of shares displayed in the upper right corner of the quote window rather than the number of Market Makers. With the new rules, the number of shares is more important than the number of MM's. *Cleaned up the code that would decide how to report ACT trades. Now it correctly OE reports trades where your firm is regestered for a stock but does not actively make a market in it. This does not concern most traders, so don't worry if you don't know what I am talking about. 1/23/97 - Watcher Version 12.07 Update *You must leave a preferenced SelectNet order up for at least 10 seconds before canceling. This is a rule. This is now enforced by Watcher. *Fixed a problem that could have caused a SOES order to be rejected as a short sale even though you were long. It only happend a couple of times. *FYI returns to the Nifty Fifty. You can now see the the Market Maker who executed your Island order in the Nifty Fifty stocks. This only applies when the Market Maker executes your orders using the SelectNet linkage. 1/17/97 - Watcher Version 12.02 Update *New Keys! I've added new keys to help you preference ECNs on Monday. Shift 2-Buy Preference 1 Lot Shift 0-Sell Preference 1 Lot Shift W-Buy Preference Closeout Shift O-Sell Preference Closeout Basicaly these new keys work just like Shift A & Q and Shift L & P except they will prefernece market makers that are on the inside market. Pressing the key again will bring up the next market maker in a round-robin sort. The order will not actualy be entered until you press ENTER. These keys will always pick and ECN first, then market makers. While you can use these new keys to preference Island (ISLD), you are always better off just using your normal Shift keys to execute against Island. This way the execution is MUCH faster becuase it goes directly to Island, rather than though SLOW SelectNet. This will be crucial becuase the only way to get a print if an ECN is alone on the inside will be to send him a preferenced order. The ECN must respond to your order within a few seconds. The ECNs will be B*Trade (BTRD), Teranova (TNTO), and Instinet (INCA). If Island is on the inside, you are better off just pushing the Buy or Sell NOW keys like you do now for a faster and cheaper print. *New size changing keys. You can now use the "<" and ">" keys to roll the number of shares just like you now use the left & right arrows to roll the price. You must have an order set up on the top line to use the rolling keys. "<" - reduce shares 1 lot ">" - add 1 lot to shares Shift "<" - reduce shares 100 Shift ">" - add 100 shares *No need to clear the top line before using Shift keys. If you press a Shift key to enter an order, it will overwrite whatever was one the top line. *No more .O for override. The new way to override is the Override key. To override the order on the top line, press the "|" key, thats the key just above the enter key, with the shift key held. It shows up on the top line as a , which means override. *Frugal use of settings database. Your watcher now grabs all the info it needs from the settings database on boot up, then politely closes the database before the program starts to run. This means is has one less database to deal with all day. Does it matter? We'll see. 1/17/97 - Watcher Version 12.01 Update *Not Ready for Prime Time Watcher. This is almost it, the Watcher you will use come Monday, January 20. Is it ready? Does it matter? The only changes between now and then will be the Shift keys to automaticaly preference ECNs with SelectNet. *GO HOME FLAT FOR THE WEEKEND. I mean it. No one knows what is going to happen on Monday, but I know that you will be much better able to react if you have no positions. Heed this warning. 1/14/97 - Watcher Version 11.98 Update *Purple N's. You will see a purple N next to the tier level when you hit up a stock that is a Nitfy Fifty stock. These are stocks effected by the new Order Obligation Rules on Jan 20. *No more Island locked markets! Watcher will not let you enter an an order that locks the market, with the exception of preferenced SelectNet orders. I'm sorry, if you don't like it (and I don't) complain to the NASD, they made me do it. *Raised maximum non-override SelectNet order to 3000 shares. Before you had to override to enter an order more than 2000 shares. *Removed protections against SOESing in a stock your firm makes a market in. The rules allow customers to use SOES even if thier firm makes a market in the stock. 1/13/96 - IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR REMOTE WATCHER USERS If you are a remote Watcher user, that is, you do not work at 50 Broad Street, you will need to get a new version of the HI25.COM file onto your hard disk. This new file will let you see little numbers next to each Market Maker indicating his size. Size will become important on January 20 when the new rules are put into place. If you do not get this file, your Watcher will still work, but you will see wierd symbols next to each Market Maker. The best way to get the file is to go to www.josh.com on the Internet and download the HI25.COM file. Just copy this file into the subdiectory where you run Watcher. If you cannot get the file from the Internet, contact you Tech Support provider for help. 1/12/97 - Watcher Version 11.96 Update *Market Maker IDs are visable on executions. You can now see who you executed against on SOES trades and on Island trades that were executed on SelectNet. I also moved around the order of Market Maker ID in FYI messages so that it reads better. *Filter on "Moves?" messages. We noticed this Saturday that there are are a lot of Market Makers adjusting thier sizes to reflect incoming orders. These updates don't realy effect the market that much, but take up a lot of space in the Ticker windows. Therefore, I've made it so that you won't see a "Moves?" message unless the Market Market updates his quote WITHOUT changing his size or prices. 1/5/97 - Watcher Version 11.93 Update *Revised order managerment page. You Page 6 has been mushed around a little to make extra room for Exectued Shares. The exectuted is the last number at the end of the line and tells you the total number of shares executed so far on this order. The other number in the middle of the line tells you how many shares remain pending on the order. 1/4/97 - Watcher Version 11.91 Update *Partial SOES Executions are here. It is now possible to get a partial fill on SOES, that is a buy of 1000 shares could execute as two fills of 300 shares each and a U R out on the remaining 400 shares. This completely chnages the functionality of your Page 6. For now on, you see the NUMBER OF SHARES LEFT on the Page 6. An open order will display the number of shares that can still be executed, or a zero if you are out. Don't get confused, this does not show how many shares were executed! You know how many shares were executed by looking at the execution in the middle window or checking your Page 7. 12/26/96 - Watcher Version 11.9 Update *Size DOES matter. Under the new rules, market maker sizes will have to display the true size of orders they are representing in thier quote. So here you have them. They're kind of boring now, but try TFONY or MVIS for a taste of the what they might look like. 12/23/96 - Watcher Version 11.8 Update *No noticable difference to you, but things are changing rapidly. This slipstream version adds the ability to read Market Maker sizes form the data feeds. The next version will display these sizes in in the quote window. 10/30/96 - *Notice* Please do not enter any trades on you Watcher after 16:15 PM. Any trades you do after 16:15 PM will not hit your account the next day and you will get stuck with them on settlement day. 10/29/96 - Watcher Version 11.7 Update *Server based settings. For now on, your prefernces are stored on the server rather than your Watcher. This is the first step the much wished for walk-up-Watcher. Someday you will be able to sit down at any Watcher, anywhere, type in your username and password, and start trading. *Increased BlockBuster trades to 5001 shares or more. Now you can enter a 5000 share order, previously you could only enter up to 4999 shares. *Position offsets no longer effect the position count on your status bar. The people have spoken. *New Keys! Now everyone gets the SOES TIMEOUT on Shift-Z. Pressing Shift-Z will tell you how many seconds you must wait before entering the next SOES order in the stock that is currently active. To make room, I moved the HOLD key to Shift-C. There are only a couple people who can use the HOLD key, so this should not be a problem. *Fixed a problem that could stall your Watcher while adding a stock to your ticker. *Fixed a problem that made you have to override when closing out an odd lot position with Shift-D, Shift-R or Shift-5. You will still have to override to do any trade in a 200 share tier stock. *Slightly changed Diverting to Island behavior. Now, when you try to buy a stock using the Buy Now keys and there is an offer on Island below the NASDAQ offering, your order is diverted to Island at the price of the Island offer, not the NASDAQ inside offer. This is better. Same goes for sells. EXAMPLE: TEST is offered on NASDAQ at 12 1/2. There is an Island offer at 12 3/8. You press Shift-B (Buy Now 1 Lot), Watcher enters an order to buy 1 lot at 12 3/8 on Island. Previously, it would have entered the buy on Island at 12 1/2. *Slightly changed Closeout Now keys. Now when you press a Closeout Now key (Shift-D and Shift-N) and there is a matching order on Island, Watcher will enter an order to closeout your entire position in Island, not just the tier level for the stock as it has been doing. EXAMPLE: You are long 2200 shares TEST. There is a bid on Island inside the market. You press Shift-D (Sell Now Closeout), Watcher enters a sell for 2200 shares onto Island. Previously, it would have entered only 1 lot. 10/7/96 - Watcher Version 11.6 Update *Fixed the position count in the status bar. For now on, the position count will reflect the number of positions with offsets folded in. 10/2/96 - Watcher Version 11.5 New Features *Amazing Autoadd Returns, in your choice of colors! You can now set your Autoadd to add any stock you do a trade in to your tickers, and you even get to pick the color! Just tell someone in Tech Support what color you want your Autoadds to appear in. Be creative! *What would you do with Wild and Wonderfull position offsets? Well, we'll finally find out. A position offset lets you enter a fixed share offset that is added to or substracted from your true position for display in the middle position window. So, for example, say you were long 500 shares TEST, and you entered an offset of -250 shares TEST. For now on, your position ticker will show you long 250 shares only. Why on earth would you ever want to do something that silly? Well, how about adding a 1 share position offset. To enter a position offset, just type + followed by either "B" for buy or "S" for sell, then the number of shares and the symbol. For example to enter a position offset of long 1 share of Intel, type +B1INTC and press enter. Thats it. Much easier than the old oneshares, eh? Note that for short sale compliance and P&L calculations, only your true position matters. Offsets are ignored. NEW KEYS - NEW KEYS - NEW KEYS - NEW KEYS - NEW KEYS - AND NEW KEYS I've completely changed the order entry keys. They are much better now but they are very different, so pay attention. There are four classes of orders you can enter: NOW - Buy the stock on the offer, or sell it at the bid, now. Enter the order at the inside price, or 1/8 away if the stock is quoted in 1/4s. These orders typicaly are routed to SOES for execution against a market maker or Island to take out any orders on the book that are better than the inside market. You should never get an execution worse than the inside market at the time you pressed the key, but you may do better. NOW orders are automaticaly canceled after 10 seconds (21 seconds on the opening). MONSTER - Buy the stock up to %20 above the current offer, or sell it up to %20 below the current bid. The order is entered instantly and routed similarly to NOW orders. These orders have a better chance of execution than NOW orders because they have a higher priority than NOW orders, and becuase they can be executed at worse prices if the market moves. You can get an execution at any price up to %20 away from where the market is when you press the key. Monster orders are automaticaly canceled after 21 seconds if not executed (30 seconds on the opening). TAKEOUT - Buy the stock at any price that is superior to the current ask, or sell at any price superior to the current bid. TAKEOUT orders are entered immedeatly as Fill or Kill. If they do not execute, they are canceled immedeatly. TAKEOUT orders are usualy used to execute an Island order that is already in system that is price inside the spread. LIMIT - Limit orders can buy or sell the stock at any price you choose. When you press a LIMIT order key, you are prompted to enter a a price. Unlike NOW, MONSTER and TAKEOUT orders, limit orders will only be executed if another party actively executes them. Limit orders can only be executed at the price entered, and are automaticaly canceled after one minute if not executed. There are two default quantities you can enter: ONE LOT - Enters exactly one round lot. The number of shares in a LOT varies by stock and can be either 200, 500, or 1000 shares. The size of a LOT is displayed in the quote winodw for each stock. CLOSEOUT- Enters enough shares to close your position in the stock. For TAKEOUT, MONSTER, and NOW orders, a CLOSEOUT order will never enter more than ONE LOT, so if your position is more than one lot, there is no difference between a CLOSEOUT order and a ONE LOT order. For LIMIT orders, CLOSEOUT will enter exactly the number of shares needed to close your position. That said, here are the new keys: Shift $- TAKEOUT sell ONE LOT Shift U- TAKEOUT buy ONE LOT Shift E- MONSTER sell ONE LOT Shift H- MONSTER buy ONE LOT Shift S- NOW sell ONE LOT Shift B- NOW buy ONE LOT Shift %- TAKEOUT sell CLOSEOUT Shift I- TAKEOUT buy CLOSEOUT Shift R- MONSTER sell CLOSEOUT Shift J- MONSTER buy CLOSEOUT Shift D- NOW Sell CLOSEOUT Shift N- NOW buy CLOSEOUT Shift Q- LIMIT buy ONE LOT Shift P- LIMIT sell ONE LOT Shift A- LIMIT buy CLOSEOUT Shift L- LIMIT sell CLOSEOUT *Shift-X for FYI Recall. This is just a new key for an old thing. You can now press shift-X if you are too lazy to reach up for the F11 key. Does the same thing. So much for the only exercise you get. Pressing Shift-X again toggles you back to your original page. *New and improved status page. You probably don't care. To see it, type ~INFO and press enter. You can also just press the double quote key ("). *Light Up Islands. Now when you get Islanded, the order on your page six will flash bright blue just before you get the execution. Island is so fast that you probably wont even be able to see it, but what the hell. *Lower case accomidations. I made a few invisible changes to the Watcher adding the ability to have lower case letters in your initials. Now there will be no conflicts between backups and TID databases. *Lastly, I made LIMIT KEYS work down to 32nds. The old SelectNet keys would round to the nearest 16th. This doesn't mean you should use 32nds, just that you can. SPECIAL NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO JUST DON'T GET IT With these new keys, you can not enter an order to open a position of 500 shares in a 1000 share lot stock. If you want to trade in 500 share lots, you have to play in 500 share tiered stocks. 9/11/96 - Secret Magic Ticker Filter Revealed You've had it all along, but didn't know it. Just click yuor heals together three times and say "I want a ticker filter, I want a ticker filter..." Then type -567 to filter out tickers that are in colors 5,6, & 7 from appearing on your page two ticker. Use +56 to turn 5 & 6 back on. +0 turns on all colors. -0 turns them all off. Why? Well you could, say, put all tech stocks on ticker color 8, then disable 8 with -8 so they didn't scroll up your screen all day distracting you. When the techs start runing, just hit +8 and they will all start showing up and you will make loads of cash. 9/05/96 - Watcher Version 11.4 New Features Firm independace for Watcher and Island. Now other firms besides Datek can use the Watcher to access Island. This means more executions for everybody. Yeay. Island for FSCO customers. Yeay. Automatic Island Devertions. Now when you press Shift-B or any other "buy on offfer" key while there is stock for sale on Island, your order will automaticaly be diverted to Island for instant execution. When an order is diverted, it comes up in an ugly aqua color so you don't miss it. You know when there is stock for sale on Island at the offer and then a market maker goes low offer? Well now the Island order will not show any more, just as it always should have been. Same goes for the bid side. Any manual trades (one shares, adjustments) will now show up with the word "Manl" to diferentiate tham from real trades. The secret magic ticker filter is coming... S&P Future Index now displays net change rather than actual value. For customers, the ticket count now includes Island trades. For traders, there is no change. New P&L Lottery. The Watcher now automaticaly adds or subtracts a random amount of money to your P&L. Totaly new update engine. You may not notice the difference, but I've completely re-writen the Wacther to handle tickers and updates much more efficently. This should help speed things up when you need it most. Inside market on FYIs. Now FYIs always show the correct inside market even when the the FYI is not on your ticker. New spread change indicator. Now you can catch those wriley market makers in the act of adjusting thier spreads. In the position and ticker windows you will now see <> or >< around the market maker id showing you that he changed. For example, GSCO was 27x28 and updates to 27 1/4x28 you would see >GSCO< on the update, telling you he narrowed his spread. What does this mean? Well, he might be trying to trick you by showing an uptick in the stock while still hanging out on the offer. Or, he could just be doing his part tring to narrow the inside spread in NASDAQ. It could happen, right? Rejoyce, Multicolor Tickers are here. You now have 9 fabulous colors to suit your mood and the current fashion trends. To set to color of the currently hit up stock, type * and the number (1-9) to set and press enter. Hitting "*1" would set the active stock to White, "*2" to yellow. I'll let you explore and discover the others for yourself. Setting to color to "*0" takes a stock off the ticker. I changed the background color of the Position Page (F1) so that I could show the ticker color there too. FYI Recall on page 11. You asked, you got. When you press F11, you will the last few FYIs in whatever stock you have in your active area. If you lost money with FYIs before, you should now be able to lose at least twice as much. Only one lot of Free Soes held. For traders, Shift-Z only holds one lot of free soes for now on. 7/22/96 - Don't be scared by the greek Today we rolled out version 11.3. One of the new features is that it can display 32nds. To do this, it uses a new font. If you don't have this font, the 32nds will look like greek. Depending on where you sit you should have the new font by the end of the week. In the mean time, don't be scared. Have an open mind. Obey your thirst. 7/10/96 - Watcher Version 11.3 New Features *Added the S&P Spread to the Index line where the S&P Cash used to be. The spread is equal to the cash minus the future. A value above "Fair Value" means bullish acceleration. "What's Fair Value?" the gentle reader may ask. Fair Value is the par difference and it changes every day. It's announced on CNBC every morning. *Fixed the phantom top line on the Order Cancel page. If you arrowed all the way to the top of page 6, the cursor would be lost in the dead zone behind the indexes. Works fine now. *Made Watcher ready for the new version of SockSupe. This new SockSupe will allow more lines to NASDAQ, and thus faster SelectNets when things get busy. Yey. *FYIs on non-position and non-tickered stock now come up with no price rather than the wrong price. *Display 32nds. Watcher can now show prices in 32nds. Before it would round to the nearest 16th. If you are a Remote Watcher user (you don't work at 50 Broad Street) you will need to copy a couple of new font files to your computer. The files are avalable at www.josh.com on the internet. *Display Decimals. Watcher can now show you execution prices in decimals. Now you can see how much a dividend was actualy for, down to the penny. 6/25/96 - Watcher Version 11.2 Fixes *The SOES timeout in Version 11.1 did not work proerly for 200 share SOES tier stocks. Now it's fixed. *Fixed Manual SOES Entry. It works now. *Added "Journal" trades. You will now see this type of trade for splits and dividends. These were showing up as ACT trades. 7/1/96 - Less Dangerous Keyboard Repeat *Starting today, when you hold down a key, it will not begin to repeat for at least 1 second, and then it will repeat only twice per second until the key is released. This should mitigate problems people have had when they press and hold an Island key and end up with 20,000 shares. 6/27/96 - New Splits/Dividend System *Splits and Dividends are now applied to your Watcher the morning after the ExDate. This is better that the old way of applying them at midnight the night before. The will be no more problems with going over your money because of splits, and the Split will be very obvious becuase it will be right on your execution page. 6/23/96 - Watcher Comming Attractions *MultiColor tickers *Display of fractions down to 32nds *Watcher login password *Macro keys 6/17/96 - Watcher Version 11.1 New Features Yep, you've waited long enough Watcher fans. Now that Island is up and running for seven outside firms, I finaly have time to update the Watcher! *Scrolling Risers & Fallers. You can now scroll through the Risers & and Fallers page (F3) using the up and down arrows. Pressing Home will bring you back to the top. Be carefull, leaving your Watcher on the Risers & Fallers page makes it slower, so switch when your done. *Fixed the problem that made the last Market Maker on the first page dissapear off the quote page when an Island quote appeared. Now that Market Maker will appear on the second quote page as expected. *Enhanced Page 6. Page 6 now shows all of your orders, and you can finally cancel SOES orders here too. You still cancel an order by pressing '\', but now the order turns yellow to indicate it's canceled status. Don't let the Yellow throw you, it takes a day to get used to. Even better, you can still see your tickers while on page 6. Nice huh? *SelectNet now checks to see if your firm is Market Maker in the stock. If they are, you must override to enter a SelectNet order. This will prevent people from opening positions on SelectNet and then finding out that they cannot close them on SOES. *Made Shift-Z show how long Customers will have to wait until entering thier next SOES order. Shift-Z will continue to hold Free-Soes for traders. *FYIs and executions are now totaly distinct systems. This is good, now you will see an FYI on any trade that you get FYIs on, even if its your own trade. The FYI comes a millionth of a second before the execution. This may take a little getting used to, but it's better. *You now will see FYIs if any of the following are true; you have the stock on you hot ticker, you have a position in the stock of 500 shares or more, or you have the stock hit up in an area. *Customers now see all other customer's FYI's. Be carefull, in the hands of an inexperinced trader, FYI's are very destructive. *Out-of-order message handling. This new network method will mean everything can go a little tiny bit faster. Will you notice a difference? Maybe on the opening, I hope. *Hypertext Object Ready. The Watcher is now a full featured virtual 32 bit object oriented Intranet application with Turbo- and Hyper- context sensitive BLOBs. It was designed for Windows '95 and includes an advanced professional quailty WYSIWYG style multimedea interface for rapid visual development. Voice enabled drag-and-drop. ISDN too. (Video on demand available 3rd quarter) 5/13/96 - No more JUMP trades for customers Customers can no longer enter jump trades (#D) among themselves. Instead, customers can enter and execute Island trades but should be aware that if they enter agreegious orders it is possiible that those trades may be executed by the street. 4/15/96 - Today begins the WDATK commercial free summer! You asked for it, you got it. No more morning reloads. That's right when you sit down your at Watcher this morning and every moring you can look forward to a FULL DAY of uninterrupted trading pleasure. The best mix with less talk, all from the top, top, top of the monkey building. 4/10/96 - Watcher Version 10.9 Update *SCROLLING PAGE 7! Finaly, you can scroll back and rewiew you entire day's work. Plus, as if that was not great enough, you can see trades for just one stock by typing ? and the stock name when on page 7. To see every trade in INTC today, switch to page 7 by pressing F7, then type ?INTC and press enter. You can scroll page 7 using arrow keys, Home, and End. Executions are green, non-executions are in red, order entries are white. Every time you switch to page 7, it will always jump to the last trade. Happy now? *Positions only on Island Ticker. Due to popular demand, the ticker window on page 2 will only show Island orders in stock that you have a position in. This should help make the ticker window readable again, rather than just being a multi-color blur. *Faster & Better Uploads. Now if two people do an UPLOAD at the same time the second person gets "Upload aready in progress". This also makes for faster RELOADs because your Watcher will automaticaly start when the current upload completes. *New SOESTIME setting. The new SOESTIME setting controls how many seconds a customer must wait between SOES trades. NASD Rules dictate that it must be at least 5 minutes, however some firms are restriced even longer times. Customers of FSCO must wait 7 minutes. Customers of DATK only have to wait 5 minutes. *The index line has been changed. You now get S&Pc and S&Pf. The S&Pc is the S&P500 cash index net change, the S&Pf is the future net change. By watching the future versus the cash you may get a leading indication of market direction. The TRIN is gone. Sorry. *Customers of FSCO cannot do ACT, ISLAND, or JUMP trades yet. 3/13/96 - Watcher Version 10.8 Update *Customers can now gain price improvement when selling against Island bids. If a customer enters an order to sell a stock on Island (Shift-4,Shift-5,Shift-6), it is possible to recieve a price higher than the highest current bid on Island by up to 1/8. Trades that receive price improvement are indicated on the Watcher by a * after the execution price. Note, there may be an additional charge for such trades. This additional charge will never exceed the net ammount of the price improvement. *Made changes to FAIRY and ISLAND to support FSCO. For now, FSCO orders will not appear on Island, and FSCO traders will not be able to execute Island orders. I will remedy this within a week or two. *Leaned out the main loop to make it slightly faster. This should help on really heavy days. Also leaned up the code that reads executions. *Made all the nessisary changes to Watcher to support multiple firms in preperation for bringing FSCO on line. There are two new settings, NOISLAND and ORDERS. NOISLAND will inhibit the entry of Island orders, and ORDERS lets you specify what Manager orderfile to use. If this means nothing to you, then you don't care. 2/28/96 - Watcher Version 10.7 Updates *New *500* share Island overrride in 1000 share tier stocks. If you try to place an Island order for 500 shares using or in a 1000 tier stock, you will have to press again to override and enter the trade. This protects you becuase it is unlikely that you would want to only execute 500 shares in a 1000 tier. *Island now sends out U R OUT, LIMIT AWAY, and ONLY ENTERED messages. - U R OUT means that your order was entered, but someone beat you to it. - LIMIT AWAY means that the order you tried to hit is now longer there - ONLY ENTERED means you entered an order for more shares than are there You can also get a CAN NOT SHORT message when tring to hit a bid on a downtick. This means you can not short the stock to that bid. Get it? 2/27/96 - Watcher Version 10.6 Updates *You can now see new Island orders in your ticker window. The stock can be on your Ticker or Hot list. The line is blue and is displayed only when a new Island order narrows the spread. *Added the abiltiy for customers to do Island trades. There are a few limitaions on short sales, not all short sales that hit the bid will be executed, but the majority are executable. *Fixed the ~LINES command so that the smallest quote area alowed is now 4 lines. If you set it to 3 lines and an Island quote came in, Watcher could have crashed. 2/22/96 - Watcher Version 10.5 New Features *Big Changes* - New Island Keys - New "#" Order Command - Island Yellow Island keys are completely different, and they are better than ever. Sell 2 Lots Buy 2 Lots Sell 1 Lot Buy 1 Lot Sell 500 Shares Buy 500 Shares Johhny Tanzman came up with these and I think they are MUCH better. The only downside is that all orders (SelectNet,Act,D..) used to start with $, now they can't. Now orders now start with # instead. Get used to it. Plus, now if your SelectNet order gets executed via Island, you will see first see the order turn red on Page 6 as it executes, then immedeatly see it turn yellow to show it was Island executed. Page 6 also will show the number of shares *EXECUTED* on Island trades. Also, Now you can never get an Island print inferior to the NASDAQ inside quote. Watcher now checks the inside quote before entering your order and will not enter it if the Island price would be worse than NASDAQ. 2/21/96 - Watcher Version 10.4 New Features A new display hook lets us write programs that can send informaion directly to any area on your screen. Hopefully this will let us customize stuff like Power Uptick and Overlap messages. I added an AutoResponder to each and every Watcher. For now on, we will know if your Watcher stops working (crashed, unplugged, Coke spill) before you do. NOTE: For now, ISLAND will only work for DATEK's traders. I hope to have it working for customers by the end of the week. 2/16/96 - Watcher Version 10.3 New Features Island is here! You now have the ability to execute Island orders from the safety and comfort of your own Watcher. Here are the keys: - Island Buy 2 Lots Island Sell 2 Lots - - Island Buy 1 Lot Island Sell 1 Lot - Here's how it works; you see 4000 shares for ZXYZ for sale at 22 1/2 on Island and you want to buy stock at 22 1/2. ZXYZ is an SM5. You would press to enter an order to buy 1000 shares (2 lots of 500). You could also press to only try to buy 500 shares. Want to buy 2000 shares? Just press twice. Fun. All Island orders are Fill or Kill, if you don't get the execution instantly, you order is canceled. The other side of the coin is that now someone can execute a SelectNet order YOU entered using Island. If you put up 1000 shares ZXYZ at 22 3/8 and someone else enters an Island order to buy 500 at 22 3/8, you will see your SelectNet order cancel, followed buy an Island execution for 500 shares. At this point, if you want to sell the remaining 500, you must enter another SelectNet sell of 500 shares. I also fixed a problem with scrolling quote pages while there is an Island quote. 2/16/96 - New Big Brother Add Stock Feature Anyone who has an enabled Big Brother can now change the SOES tier level of a stock by pressing F7. 2/15/96 - New Report - Top Ten Lonely Tickers Jeff had the idea for this report while he was sweating in the steam room. It shows you any stock who's inside market moved more than 10 times yesterday, but we did not do any trades in it. It also shows you the SOES Tier level and closing inside market of the stock. 2/9/96 - Watcher Version 10.2 New Features * Removed the FredLog functions. We don't realy need it any more and taking it out may make Watcher sightly faster. If you don't know what what the FredLog was, you won't miss it. * Message Selectivity. We can now choose with poeple get which status alert. For example, the is no reason that customers need to see a message about our traders' party. "9*" sends to all customers, "A*" to all traders, and "**" to everyone. * One Small Step for Watcher, One Giant Step for Watcher Kind. It's called ISLAND, and it lets you see the internal inside quote. When you hit up a quote, you will see any SelectNet orders priced at or better than the NASDAQ inside quote. They appear on the top of the quote in a nice green tint. You see the total number of shares and the best price. You cannot execute against these orders yet, but soon... In the meantime, use the info wisely. If you see 6000 shares on the offering, don't make it 7000. Don't make a habit of just undercutting other offers, it's bad trading style. * Fixed a problem that could produce a message "MUST WAIT FOR 0 SECONDS" occasionaly. The message subsided in less than a second, but I fixed it anyway. * Limited the price range that customers can enter ACT trades. Trades will only be acepted that are within 1/2 of the current inside market. This is even more incentive to enter your ACT trades timely. If the market moves away from you, tough luck. 1/29/95 - Watcher Version 10.1 New Features * New Index Line on Page Two! Now you can watch the leading market indicators just like the pros do. I've included the following indexes: ù Indu = Dow Jones Industrial Average Net Chage ù Sox = S & P Technology Index Net Change ù Spx = S & P 500 Index Net Change ù Compx = NASDAQ Composite Index Net Change ù Trin = Short Term Trading Index, Less than 1 is Bullish * Changed the color of the legend text in the status bar to a light grey from bright yellow. Easy on the eyes. * Revoked the Override ability for Customers. Customers can no longer override and create a short sale on a downtick. * Customer to Customer Jump trades (Type D) must now be entered by the seller. * Fixed a problem that could have caused an incorrect number of Market Makers to be diplayed on page 1 immeadeatly after a reload. I doubt it could have ever happended, but just to be safe... * Made a nice little status window pop up durning the "Integrety Check" scan when Watcher is first loaded. Who cares? * New affermative determination rules prevent cusomers from selling short new issues and other non-borowable stocks. 1/23/95 New multilevel TID indicators The TID now lets you know how many levels the Bid or Ask has moved in the last 2 minutes. The first uptick in the last 2 minutes will show a . As long as it keeps ticking up at least once per 2 minutes you will see . If there is a downtick, or no ticks for 2 minutes, it will reset. The Bid and Ask are tracked seporately. Soon you will even see a little tiny number telling you HOW MANY levels it has moved. 1/23/95 Improved Reports The Daily P&L reports have been impoved to show the SM Level of each stock. They also look a little nicer. 1/17/95 New P&L System Feature The P&L system now AUTOMATICALY will adjust for stock splits and divendends. If you have a position in a stock the night it goes ex-split you will see a type "S" in your reports adjusting your position. Your Watcher will show the correct post-split position in the morning. If you have a position in a stock that goes ex-divedned, you will see two trades in a bogus stock "#XDIV" adjusting your P & L to reflect the money paid on the divedend. 1/4/95 Watcher Version 10.0 New Features * SelectNet Reference numbers have been changed to handle letters too. NASDAQ will start using letters in the Reference field on January 8th. This will cure the running out of SelectNet numbers at least until we have a 1,048,576 SelectNet order day. * Added a nice little closing screen when the Watcher quits out. 12/13/95 Watcher Version 9.8 Changes * SOES orders on the opening will now time out after 30 seconds rather than 99 seconds. This is in response to NASDAQ's semi-fixing the no find problem. If this works ok, we will reduce the time to the normal 10 and 21 seconds. 12/12/95 TID System Update * When a stock is halted, it appears in the TID window with an H in the bid tick field and zeros in the bid and ask field. * A new program, TIDALL, is automaticaly run every morning when your Watcher is reloaded. This new program automaticaly deletes stocks off of your TID according to your criteria. Your rules are based on the sheet that was curcualted last week. 12/5/95 Watcher Version 9.7 New Features * Alert messages now stay poped-up even when you scroll around in the reports. * Adjustment trades now work for 9th floor guys, you can use a space to separate the price from the contra field. * Auto-TID exclude ready. I made some changes to prepare for Pete's new program that will automaticaly delete stocks off your TID every morning. 11/30/95 Watcher Version 9.6 New Features * Report Subsystem Overhaul. I've completely rewriten the entire page 5 report viewing subsystem. Everything is now MUCH faster, especially PageDown on longer reports. It is also more robust. * Report Searching! You can now jump right to any report by typing a ? and your initials and pressing enter. For exaple, you could type ?JL and press enter, you would switch to page 5 and be on top of the first report for trader JL. If you are zoomed into the text of a report, use ? search the report. For example, ?XLNX would jump you to the first line that had XLNX on it in the current report. You could type ?COMPU while viewing the rankings to jump straigt to the Compuer Men. Play with it, you'll like it. * The Watcher now accepts ACT trade Breaks and Cancels. The cancel will now hit your Watcher, update your position, and automaticaly be included in the P&L system reports.  Comming attractions  Macros - Just hit an Alt key to bring up you favorate stocks! Full Quote - See a complete NASDAQ quote on page 11, Company Name too! Faster Updates - A new NASDAQ feed will make the FASTEST quotes FASTER! 11/13/95 Watcher Version 9.5 New Features * Auto-Realtime Jump Trades! Now you can do a Jump trade with another trader in realtime and have it AUTOMAICALY hit your Watcher, his Watcher, the P&L System, and the Wire Confirm. Enter Jumps like this... $DS1000TESTA10 1/4JL This would execute an a[D]justment to [S]ell [1000] shares of [TESTA] at 10ƒ to trader [JL]. You would see the sell hit instantly, and he would see the matching buy hit also. If someone executues a Jump trade against you, and you do not know the trade, just Jump it back to the other trader. * Auto-Overrride. You will never again need to overrride to sell out of a long position, Watcher will automaticaly overrride when you are long the stock and no freesoes are available. Now no one has any excuse for overriding ever. NOW THINK FIRST BEFORE YOU OVERRIDE! * Optimized code. I moved around parts of the Watcher that read in your executions to make the whole thing faster. * Better manual SOES order handling. The manual SOES system now handles orders more consistantly, and has more safeguards for checking orders. * End-of-File prescreen. The Watcher now does a double check everytime it gets loaded. If you ever see the message "PAST EOF" pop up, tell someone! * Act Trade Reports! You can now enter an Act trade into the Watcher and it will automaticaly be reported to NASDAQ and hit your P&L work. To enter an Act trade use the format $C so to sell 1000 TEST at 10 1/2... $CS1000TEST10 1/2SUPE The Watcher will automaticaly figure out if it is an OE or MM side trade and ship to report off to NASDAQ. For now it is still up to you to make sure that the trade locks in, but soon the Watcher will keep track of that too. 11/07/95 Watcher Version 9.3 New Features * Improved performance. We deleted some obsolete data out of Watcher's main databases. This should make everything go a little faster * Kool new HOT AREA borders. There is now a setting to change the lines double lines on the edge of the active quote area to anything you want. Some people like using the \ and / charaters to highlite the area. 11/02/95 Watcher Version 9.2 New Features * Private Reports. We can now make reports that are only viewable by certain people. If you zoom into a report that you do not have permision for, you will see ***REPORT NOT AVAILABLE***. 10/30/95 Watcher Version 9.1 New Features * You can now quickly enter 2000 share SelectNet orders using the keys for Buy 2000 and for Sell 2000. * You can quicky clear your tickers using the new ~CLEAR command. Just type ~CLEAR and press enter and all you hots and tickers will be magicaly washed away. * The smallest you can make the bottom quote areas is now 3 LINES. 10/26/95 Watcher Version 9.0 New Features * No Actions File. This should slightly speed up buying and selling keys. * Easier Override. When you Short stock at the bid, you must override. Now, the top line is not cleared out, so you can just enter .O at the end of the line rather than retyping the whole line. * One Key Tickers. Now you can just press * or = to add stocks to your tickers. The currently hit up stock is automaticaly added or deleted from your ticker list. This should save a lot of time over the old way of typing '*' plus the stock and enter. * Bigger Status Field. Because we do SO MUCH trades, the FREDSEEK field had to be increased to 8 digits! It was 7. Don't Care? Oh well. 10/20/95 Watcher System Enhancement * All SOES orders entered before 9:35 will have a timeout of 45 seconds. After 9:35 they will revert to the normal 12 second timeout. This will hopefuly elevieate some of the NO FIND bottlenecks on the opening. 10/17/95 Watcher Version 8.9 New Feature * Watcher now checks to make sure all SelectNet short sales are at least 1/16 above the bid on a downtick. 10/12/95 - New SelectNet AutoCancel Time * Non-prefernced SelectNet orders will be automaticaly canceled after one minute. Previously it was set to two minutes. 10/9/95 - Watcher Version 8.7 New Feature * SelectNet "U R Out" messages no long show up in your ticker window. They still appear in your log on page 7, however. * Bigger Buffers! The number of messages that your Watcher can store when things get busy has been increased from 100 to 250. This is the number you see flickering in the upper right hand corner of the screen. As long as this number stays less than 200, you are pretty much cought up. 10/7/95 - Watcher Version 8.6 New Feature * Some people were having problems because they pressed ESCAPE when the computer said "Don't Push Escape" while entering orders so now you don't have that option any more. Also, there is a new setting that lets us balance SelectNet orders among the NASDAQ lines. This should eventualy help SelectNet orders go in faster with less BUSY. 9/29/95 - Watcher Version 8.4 New Features * You can now view your tickers and hots on Page 10. You can scroll around using the arrows and PageUp, PageDown, Home and End. Go though and take out any obsolete tickers, this will help your Watcher keep up on the opening. 9/25/95 - Watcher Version 8.2 New Features * Everything now works after the close. You can hit up quotes. You enter SelectNets. You can eat pretzels. It all works. * AutoRestart - This feature allows us to quickly reload Watchers en masse. This should reduce the time it takes to reload the Watchers in the morning from 5-10 minutes to less than one minute. 9/22/95 - Watcher Version 8.1 New Features * SelectNet page 6 now shows who you are preferencing on pending orders. * The MORE scolling on quote areas now works reliably, and the market maker counts should always be acurate. * The Status Bar now shows the NASDAQ 100 Index. It is labeled "N:". 9/21/95 - Watcher Version 8.0 New Features * SelectNet Preferencing! To preference a Market Maker on SelectNet, just put his 4 letter MMID at the end of the order, for example $NS1000TESTA11 3/4SUPE $NB500TEST2 3/4NQMO.O You DO NOT have to override when prefernecing on the bid or offer, only on sells below the bid or buys above the offer. For now, you cannot see who you preferenced or even that an order is preferenced, but I will fix that tommarow. * More, More, More key almost works. If you want to see the next page of Market Makers, use Control-DownArrow and Control-UpArrow. It doesn't work 100% yet, but you can start playing with it. 9/20/95 - Watcher Version 7.9 New Feature * You can now see the TICK indicator on the right side of the status bar. 9/19/95 - Watcher Version 7.8 New Features * Watcher News - Watcher News! There are now scrolling headlines on page 9 of the Watcher. To see them, just push F9. You will also see a message in your ticker area any time a news story comes out on a stock you have a position in or a ticker on. * Maximum Value warning message has been adjusted to 90% from 95%. * Odd Lots on SOES actualy work now. You could use $OS250TEST8 to sell only 250 shares of TEST on SOES at 8. * The only 500 share keys (Shift M,K,F and T) should really work now too. 9/14/95 - Watcher Version 7.7 New Feature * You can not enter a SelectNet order for 5000 shares or more. Ever. Nope. To enter an order for 2000-4999 shares, use .O to override. 9/8/95 - Watcher Version 7.6 New Features * When you cancel a SelectNet on Page 6 using the '\' key, you no longer see the "CANCELING" message in your ticker area. Instead an asterix appears next to the canceled order on Page 6. This should reduce the clutter in the ticker area, and also lets you see weather an order timed out or was canceled. * Alt-TAB now toggles you between any page and page 6. Before it always took you back to Page 2. 9/7/95 - Watcher Version 7.5 New Features * SelectNet comes to Watcher! Page 6 now shows all orders, including pending SelectNet orders. White orders are pending. Red orders are TimedOut or Canceled. Green orders are executed. You move the cursor with the Up and Down arrows, Page Up and Down, or End and Home. When you switch to page 6, you automaticaly go to the last order. After that press END to jump to the bottom. The blinking down arrows tell you that there are more orders below the screen. To cancel a SelectNet order, move the cursor on page 6 on top of the order and press the '\' key. * Added a new setting, DEBUG, that controls wether you see NASD REFRESH and REDUNDANT REPEAT messages in your ticker area. * Alt-Tab switches you between Page 2 and Page 6. 8/31/95 - Watcher Version 7.3 New Features * The Hot quote area is now highlighted with longer lines. * When entering a SelectNet order, you can now rotate the price by 1/16's using Control-Right and Control-Left Arrows. * Every time you switch areas, Watcher automatocaly clears any keys on the top line. * If you hit up a stock that is already in another area, Watcher clears the OTHER area and brings up the stock in the current area. 8/11/95 - New Report, Firm Net Position by Market Maker This new report shows the entire firm's net trading position on the day with each Market Maker. If you see that a firm bought 50,000 shares on SelectNet from us, it may tell you something. 7/20/95 - Watcher Version 6.6 New Feature * Watcher now has an EXPRESS MODE that is toggled by pressing '|' on the Watcher keyboard. When express mode is on, you don't see any tickers on your page 2. Use this to speed up your Watcher whenever it starts falling behind on extremly busy openings. Using express mode can make the inside prices on your page 1 to be wrong for tickers, but they will reset on the next tick in the stock. 7/19/95 - Watcher Version 6.5 New Feature * If you try to buy two lots of stock, but there is only one market maker on the offering, the Watcher will only enter one order. The same goes for selling stock on the bid. This does not effect monster orders. This should help reduce the number of cancels going through the system. 7/18/94 - Watcher Version 6.4 New Feature * Before 9:35AM, all orders will stay live in the system for 99 seconds before they automaticaly cancel. At 9:35AM they will return to canceling automaticaly after 10 and 25 seconds for baby and monster orders respectively. This should help reduce the number of cancels and "NO FIND"s on the opening. 7/11/95 - Watcher Version 6.2 New Feature * Watcher now ZIPs it's files for an Up or Down. This should let us get people up and running much faster after a major outage. 7/3/95 - Watcher Version 6.0 New Feature * Your Marked Ticket Avaerage now appears on page #1. 6/29/95 - Watcher Version 5.9 New Features * The new quote feature has been enhanced. You can now press Shift-V on your *workstation* to bring up a quote on your Watcher. It works like any other Shift key, bring up the stock on you workstation with F3, then press Shift-V. Your Watcher will switch to page 3 and pull up the quote. To clear the quote, just press F2 on the Watcher. You can adjust the size of your quote window by pressing < and > on the Watcher keyboard. You can also pull up the quote page by pressing F9 on the Watcher. * The ticker area on page 2 now shows a BidTick indicator. This should save some time hitting up stocks during down markets. * Reports on page 5 really should work right now. Before, you might have had to press HOME to get the first few reports. 6/26/95 - Watcher Version 5.8 New Feature * You can now hit up a quote on your Watcher! This might be usefull if your workstation is down and you need a quote bad. Quotes appear on page 9, you hit up a stock by typing # then the symbol then enter. 6/22/95 - Watcher Version 5.7 New Features * All SOES orders, Monster and Regular, entered on CTCI will automaticaly be canceled after 10 seconds. * Starting Thursday morning, everyone's Trickery keys are disabled. If you realy want them back, tell me and I will turn them back on. * When the Watcher quits out from a remote command it now waits a minute or two to allow other watchers time to finish thier work. 6/19/95 - Watcher Version 5.6 New Features * Fixed the problems with the Locks page. * Added Remote Commands. This lets me and Jeff send commands to your Watcher. Now we can change colors and other stuff WITHOUT quiting out. 6/15/95 - Watcher Version 5.5 New Features * There is now a messaging system that alows us to send messages either to individual traders, or to all traders. These messages will pop up on you screen in a red alert box. Your Watcher will still continue to update, but you will have to press F8 to clear the message. This insures that no one can say "I didn't see it." You can also see a list of messages by switching to page 8 (F8 key). * There is a new flag, "Waste FreeSoes", that controls how your Watcher puts up SelectNet sells. When "Waste" is on, any SelectNet sell that closes a customer position will be a long sale. This helps preseve money when the firm gets really tight, but at the cost of not having FreeSoes. "Waste" is toggled with the '{' key. Don't ever change this flag unless your manager tells you to. 6/9/95 - Watcher Version 5.4 New Features * Hot stocks now appear with a blue background on the Watcher page 2. This should make Hots stand out better. * RightShift now puts SelectNet orders onto the Workstation's page 5. So, pressing RightShift-P will enter a 1000 share sell order on your page 5. Shift L-Q- and A work the same way. LeftShift keys still work the same as always, on page 1. This lets you enter SelectNets faster becuase you can have one transmitting on each page. Also, for Monday morning I am changing the repeat rates on the workstation keyboards. You will have to hold a key for a full second before it begins to repeat. Then it will only repeat twice per second. People have been accidentaly entering tons of orders by holding Monster Keys down too long. 5/26/95 - What does "Late" mean on a CTCI SOES order? CTCI automaticaly tries to cancel a SOES order if it has not gotten a report within 13 seconds (31 seconds for a monster order). The "Late" message means that CTCI tried to cancel an order, but was not able to. This probably means that the order was already executed, but for some reason CTCI has not recieved that execution yet. It usualy happens on the opening when all reports are slow comming back. What should you do? Well, if it's 9:30:45 and you get a "Late" it probably means that you will get the report in a few seconds, so trade your position as if you got the print. However, if you get a "Late" at 12:30 PM, you may want to wait and make sure you realy got your execution. There are no guarantees, but the "Late" message may give you extra infomation that could help in fast markets. 5/25/95 - Watcher Version 5.2 New Features: * This version is competely enabled for CTCI. To toggle CTCI for SOES, press %. Not everyone is allowed to use CTCI yet, so don't turn it on unless you know you are authorized. * New Page #7 shows your last few exectuions, sort of like page 3 on the workstation only better. This is especialy usefull for CTCI trades because you can't see them anywhere else. * Better help when you press ?. Try it. Don't use any feature unless you know what it does. * Fixed an error that made CTCI "Too Late to CXL" messages get processed like executions. This made CTCI people have fake positions. 5/23/95 - Watcher Version 5.1: * Get ready for CTCI SOES! This new version of watcher knows how to read executions from the CTCI line. CTCI should be fully functional for traders by the end of this week. * Fixed a problem that could cause you to loose the freesoes for a long position if you got soesed out. 5/17/95 - Watcher Version 5.0 Fixes: * Fixed a problem that caused positions that you were long above the bid but below the middle to be marked to the middle. Short positions were marked similarly. This caused Watcher's marked P&L to occasionaly be higher than P&L system on the opening. * I can now remove groups of stocks from TID like stocks below 5, stocks above 100, stocks that end in G, 200 share soesers. Just give me your list of rules. 5/4/95 - Watcher Version 4.9 New Features: * Fixed a problem with the Shift-F (Sell 500 Shares Only) and Shift-M (Buy 500 Shares Only) keys in 200 share SOES stocks. These keys would mistakenly enter one order of 500 shares, they now correctly enter one order of 200 shares. * Traders can now change the color that TID highlights appear on thier page #2. The default color is still Yellow on Blue, but JT has experimented with White on Brown and likes it better. To change your colors, just tell Joe Cool or Josh. 4/20/95 - Watcher Version 4.8 New Features: * You can now only see FYI's in stocks that your position is 500 shares or more. 4/5/95 - Watcher Version 4.5 New Features: * You must now override to SOES in 200 share SOES stocks. To sell a 200 share SOES stock that had no free SOES, you would have to override twice. * NEW SHIFT KEYS: Shift-Q puts up a SelectNet order to buy 1000 shares Shift-A puts up a SelectNet order to buy 500 shares Shift-X checks freesoes Shift-Z trys to hold freesoes The new SelectNet buy keys should save you some time, and they are more consitant with the SelectNet sell keys. 3/30/95 - Watcher Version 4.4 New Features: * Hilighted stocks on your ticker now only show the symbol in yellow, the rest of the line will be brown or white depending on the tick. Before, the entire line was yellow, so you could not tell the direction of the tick. 3/29/95 - Watcher will no longer show any info messages on stocks that are five letters long and have "G" for the last letter. These are those weird bonds that you can't SOES in anyway. 3/29/95 - Fixed a bug that would incorrectly mark stocks that you were short above the bid. This was a particular problem for Jay. 3/28/95 - Added a new report that shows all SelectNet trades after the close.