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Log of Changes and Improvements to Sierra Chart
This list contains major items of development, items which are notable, and changes and additions which users need to be informed about.
This is not a comprehensive changes and additions log. It only represents less than 25% of the actual development performed every day. There are not version notes for each version. The main Sierra Chart documentation is updated as needed relating to the changes and additions.
In addition to the below listed items for each version, there are also various low-level improvements, issues resolved, and small additions that a release has which are not listed.
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1589 Release Date: 2017-07-25
- With the CQG trading platform service, options lookup is now supported through the File >> Find Symbol window. This is necessary to find the correct option symbols to use.
- In ACSIL, SC_ACS_TOOL# identifiers have been renamed to ACS_BUTTON_#.
- Corrected small issue with jumping by the specified number of trades or jumping to the next bar, during a chart replay.
- Corrected some minor issues with the Intraday Data Editor arising in a recent release.
- New Chart Drawing shortcut menu command to add a Ray line which is parallel to a Pitchfork drawing.
- New ACSIL members to request and receive keyboard key and keyboard character events. Refer to ACSIL Interface Members - Variables and Arrays.
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1585 Release Date: 2017-07-19
- Added new chart trade menu commands to move Target orders and Attached Stop orders to selected price on chart.
- Corrected small issue with a trend reversal which can occur on first Universal Renko bar of day.
- Corrected an issue with alignment of the Recenter Line on a Chart/Trade DOM.
- Corrected an issue from a recent release with alignment of Color Bar Draw Styles for Renko bars.
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1584 Release Date: 2017-07-13
- Corrected an issue from a recent release with the Intraday data editor where the chart would not reload after changes to data records when the editor window is closed.
- With the Numbers Bar study, when Enable Diagonal Zero Bid/Ask Compares, Input is set to No, then when comparing to a nonexistent price level, the resulting percentage will be 0 and/or there will be no color drawn. May general improvements to the Based on AskVol BidVol Diagonal Difference Percentage of Bar Range Text/Background Coloring Method. Fully updated the Numbers Bars documentation to document in detail, each Background and Text coloring method.
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1583 Release Date: 2017-07-11
- Added option on the Trade menu for enabling automated trading for individual charts. The default is enabled.
- Added option in Global Settings >> General Settings to set the start of the week to Monday instead of Sunday. We realize, that only the United States and Canada recognize Sunday as the beginning of the week. The international standard is Monday.
- All of the time related Spreadsheet functions now support milliseconds. The documentation has been updated.
- Corrected long-standing problem with the Study/Price Overlay Study when another study is based on it where it would not update its output arrays immediately for new bars added but do that the next calculation. An example of where this would be a problem is when a study like the Study Subgraph Multiply study is based on the Study/Price Overlay study. When a new bar is added to the chart, the overlay study updating was being delayed until the next time the study is calculated. This was due to an incorrect determination of the array size because of the allocated dependent Date-Time array for the study. In the past the resolution to this issue was to select Chart >> Recalculate. This is no longer necessary.
- Updated all of the arithmetic studies to perform calculations at earlier indexes when they are based on the Study/Price Overlay study and also update a special index to indicate where they were updated when the Study/Price Overlay study is based on them or other studies.
- In the case of the LMAX Trading service, when new historical order fills are received from the remote trading server, the connected Sierra Chart clients are automatically notified of this and request the fills.
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1575 Release Date: 2017-06-26
- When adjusting a Chart Drawing from ACSIL, if more than one Chart Drawing uses the same LineNumber, only the first found drawing will be adjusted for performance reasons. Therefore, it is not considered best practice to use the same LineNumber for different Chart Drawings added by the ACSIL sc.UseTool function.
- With the Numbers Bars study there is a new Input to highlight and extend nonzero bid volume and ask volume at the high and low of a Numbers Bar. The extension is until intersection with future prices.
- The Volume by Price study has a new input to extend the Volume Weighted Average Price line.
- Corrected an issue with processing the trade quantity/volume for certain exchanges with the Tele Trader data service.
- Various drawing tool improvements.
- Combining of CME trades into the larger original summary trade with the Sierra Chart Exchange Data Feed. This feature is under development still.
- Automatic downloading of historical Intraday data for open charts that are not receiving real-time data when using the SC Data - All Services service.
- Support for AMP Clearing when using CTS.
- For Continuous Futures Contract charts back adjustment changes are now modified through Global Settings >> Symbol Settings.
- Added new sc.BaseDataEndDateTime array to ACSIL which contains the ending date time for each chart bar. This requires setting sc.MaintainAdditionalChartDataArrays to 1 to cause this data to be maintained.
- When using the TransAct Trading service, when there is an order rejection for a new order, in particular an order where a Good Till Canceled Time in Force is not supported, the order rejection was not mapped to the correct order. This leads to a case where the order looks like it is nonresponsive. Instead there was a new order being added to the order list. This problem has been resolved. The underlying problem is that when the TransAct bridge program rejects this type of order, it sets the Trade Account to "0" instead of the actual trade account which causes this problem because it looks like the order is for a different account.
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1570 Release Date: 2017-06-15
- Global Settings >> Global Profit/Loss Management now includes a new option to lock trading for the entire day rather than a specified number of minutes. This is useful for automated trading once a certain profit or loss target has been met, to prevent further order submission.
- The Numbers Bar study now supports extending the Point of Control for a Numbers Bar until future intersection. This is set through the Highlight Point of Control In Input. A separate color setting will be added including support for a price label.
- There is now a much more simplified method to change the contract rollover amount/difference for back adjusted Continuous Futures Contract charts. Refer to Controlling Rollover Amount for Back Adjustments.
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1567 Release Date: 2017-06-08
- Increased the number of displayed drawing levels at a time on the Tool Configuration/Properties windows from 8 to 12.
- Resolved a problem with the clearing of market depth pulling and stacking data when using CQG and also when there are 50 levels of ask market depth data.
- Resolved a problem where the date and time controls would not display properly due to a Windows issue. We have worked around this issue.
- Resolved a slight calculation inaccuracy with the Volume Weighted Average Price - Rolling Standard Deviation bands.
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1564 Release Date: 2017-05-31
- Corrected a problem from a revision of 1563 where market data requests may not have been made correctly for Data/Trade Services which use the DTC protocol.
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1562 Release Date: 2017-05-26
- Resolved an issue with the setting of the Value Format and Tick Size for trading for BitMEX symbols. Versions prior to this for BitMEX are being locked out. In an earlier release, resolved an issue with Testnet data being provided for the live BitMEX trading connection. This only affected some versions.
- New Input added to the Volume by Price study to exclude evening session volume profiles other than for the last day.
- Added keyboard shortcut support for the TPO Profile Chart study for the Input to exclude evening session profiles.
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1559 Release Date: 2017-05-22
- Enhancements to the Chart Replay functionality.
- Completed development of the Hurst Exponent study. Documentation will be added shortly.
- When using chart linking, the chart tabs are now color-coded the standard link colors.
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1558 Release Date: 2017-05-12
- The Numbers Bars study Column # Background Coloring Methods and Column # Text Coloring Methods have improvements with organization and consistency. This makes the study easier to understand. The following changes have been made:
- There are separate coloring methods for percentages and actual volumes. No longer are they combined and the behavior altered by the threshold values.
- There are separate threshold inputs for percentages and separate threshold inputs for actual volume values. No longer are these combined.
- Percentage threshold values are now always in the format of .01 = 1% and 1.0 = 100%, no matter what coloring method is being used even for diagonal comparisons.
- There are completely identical coloring methods for both the background and text.
- There are optional separate colors for coloring text different than the background.
- We are in the process of updating the Numbers Bars documentation to document each and every Background and Text Coloring Method individually. This will make them much easier to understand and all technically correct without any potential for misunderstanding. At the present moment some of the Numbers Bars documentation involving coloring methods and thresholds is inconsistent with the current version.
- Existing instances of the Numbers Bars study in existing Chartbooks should update automatically without the need for changes in most cases. However, you should go through the Input settings to make sure they are correct and as expected. Check the Column # Background/Text Coloring Method and Column # Percent/Actual Volume Compare Thresholds study Inputs.
- Corrected an issue from the prior release with the pulling and stacking market data column where the bid column was not displaying any data.
- For the DTC Protocol Historical Data Server in Sierra Chart, all encoding types are now supported including JSON and Google Protocol Buffers.
- The Numbers Bars study Column # Background Coloring Methods and Column # Text Coloring Methods have improvements with organization and consistency. This makes the study easier to understand. The following changes have been made:
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1556 Release Date: 2017-05-12
- New Input added to TPO Profile Charts study: Exclude Evening Session Profiles Except For Last Day.
- Various improvements to the Numbers Bars study including new coloring method and Volume Profile Bars Length Relative to All Visible Bars Input.
- The Transparency Level setting now exists on the Subgraphs tab of the Study Settings window and is specific for individual studies instead of being global.
- Improvements to the market depth stacking and pulling market data columns where the value for a price level is not cleared unless that level no longer exists on the bid/ask side.
- Efficiency improvements to the Volume Weighted Average Price-Rolling study.
- Added Zig Zag Oscillator Subgraph to the Zig Zag study.
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1549 Release Date: 2017-04-26
- Improvements to the High/Low for Time Period - Extended study. New inputs have been added.
- Added support to modify Chart Drawings copied from other charts, on the destination chart. This is a significant new feature which involved a significant amount of development effort and greatly enhances the Chart Drawing capability of Sierra Chart. For this feature to work, Chart >> Chart Settings >> Chart Drawings >> Allow Modification of Chart Drawings from Other Charts needs to be enabled.
- Completed development of the Global Settings >> General Settings >> General 4 >> Detect Rollover of Current Futures Contract Symbols Based on Real-time Volume feature.
- Corrected an issue with spreadsheets where column references would change to cell range references.
- Corrected an issue with spreadsheets where advanced cell references in formulas would change when a spreadsheet is loaded.
- Added DRAWSTYLE_POINT_VARIABLE_SIZE new study Subgraph Draw Style.
- Added the Recent and Current Traded Bid/Ask Volume commands to the Trade menu. The Trade >> Show Market Data Columns command lets you view the configured market data columns on a chart without having Chart Trading activated.
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1546 Release Date: 2017-04-20
- Restored support for custom studies compiled for versions 1224 and earlier. Support for these was removed in version 1544 and we acknowledge that this was a mistake and created more difficulty than we had expected. We do apologize for the issues encountered.
- In version 1544 the ACSIL Zig Zag intermediate study calculation functions have been changed and this had caused a stability problem in Sierra Chart with custom studies compiled for versions earlier than 1544 that used these Zig Zag functions. The solution to this problem was to recompile the custom studies using version 1544 or later. In this version, 1546, we have solved the stability problem when using older custom studies that use the Zig Zag functions. However, this now requires that any custom study using the Zig Zag functions which was recompiled for 1544, 1545 now needs to be recompiled for 1546 to work properly with the Zig Zag functions.
- Windows XP is now supported again.
- The Color Bar Based on Alert Condition study now supports extension lines until future intersection.
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1544 Release Date: 2017-04-15
- Dramatically improved the performance of saving Chart Drawings in Chartbooks. A performance problem arose with the new file format used for Chart Drawings saved in Chartbooks beginning in a recent release.
- Corrected a potential stability issue with the modification of Chart Drawings from ACSIL.
- Reverted: Corrected an issue with the formation of Renko bars where the trade that starts a new bar was incorrectly being added to the prior Renko bar instead of the next bar which it starts.
- ACSIL Zig Zag intermediate study calculation functions have been changed to improve the accuracy of the Zig Zag study. Custom studies which use these functions must be recompiled. An indication of this is required will be a message like the following in the Sierra Chart Message Log: Warning: The Custom DLL study "CustomStudiesFileName.InternalStudyName" has just caused a CPU exception. You will need to contact the developer of the custom study you are using to have them recompile it with version 1544 or higher. This is an easy process.
- Removed support for custom studies compiled with version 1224 and earlier. This needed to be done in order to make code maintenance easier for us. The studies will simply need to be recompiled on the newer versions using the current SierraChart.h header file. This is all.
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1541 Release Date: 2017-04-06
- The Stationary Text tool has a new option named Link to Vertical Axis Scale. When this is enabled, then the text is stationary along the horizontal axis but not stationary on the vertical axis.
- Changes to constant range scale adjustments for when using a Trading DOM to only use the last trade price and not the entire bar values which are not visible.
- Fixed various issues related to customizing menu commands.
- Added New Draw Style: DRAWSTYLE_CIRCLE_HOLLOW_VARIABLE_SIZE.
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1540 Release Date: 2017-04-04
- ACSIL added Chart Drawings through sc.UseTool which specify bar Index locations rather than Date-Times no longer should use identical LineNumbers. They still can but when modifying one of these drawings, only the first found drawing will be modified. This is part of performance improvements.
- Corrected historical data downloading problem for the LMAX trading service which arose in recent releases.
- Rebuilt the Moving Average-Rolling High Accuracy study. It should be removed from the chart and added again.
- Corrected a minor issue and improvements related to the new network communication core.
- Corrected some issues related to the support for Poloniex and BitMEX crypto currency exchanges.
- When adjusting a manually drawn Volume by Price study on the chart, it is immediately updated as it is being adjusted. If you notice any negative performance impacts related to this, let us know.
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1535 Release Date: 2017-03-29
- Support for Poloniex crypto currency exchange. Documentation will be provided shortly. Support for the BitMEX exchange is also close to being finalized.
- There is now the ability to detect whether to notify have a futures contract rollover based upon the date rule in the Global Symbol Settings or based on increased volume of the next futures contract compared to the current futures contract that the chart is set to. The setting is in Chart >> Chart Settings >> Advanced Settings 3.
- New ACSIL variable name: sc.CustomChartTitleBarName.
- Corrected a problem with the new 64 chart drawing levels.
- Corrected a problem from a recent release, involving the copying of chart drawings from other charts where the drawings would not copy from the second and additional charts when there was more than one chart specified.
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1530 Release Date: 2017-03-18
- Increased the number of levels used with Drawing Tools from 32 to 64. This applies to Drawing Tools like the Price Retracement tool which use a variable number of levels.
- When using any of the Spreadsheet studies, there are new study Inputs used to specify the name of the Sheet the chart data is outputted to. This can be used as an alternative to using the standard of Sheet# where # by default is the chart number.
- Added new variables and functions to ACSIL. You will see the new members at the bottom of the SierraChart.h file. Most of them have now been documented.
- Resolved a potential problem with the downloading of historical Intraday data where there could be excessive memory use and also possibly higher CPU usage. This potentially could lead to instability or freezing. These are less likely but potentially possible. The new high-performance network communication core that Sierra Chart has did not regulate the amount of memory used and would receive data as fast as possible based upon the network speed and speed of your computer. While this is good, this can potentially lead to problems. The downloading is now limited to two megabytes at a time until Sierra Chart and your system can process through that data.
- Various other development.
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1527 Release Date: 2017-03-06
- Improvements to the Divergence Detector study. Refer to the updated documentation for Divergence Detector.
- The Chart/Trade DOM market data columns now update in a chart during a replay.
- Added an option in Global Settings >> General Trade Settings to always estimate bid and ask prices during a chart replay when using 1 tick Intraday data records.
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1525 Release Date: 2017-03-01
- Several new study Subgraph Draw Styles added. This includes DRAWSTYLE_TRANSPARENT_CIRCLE_VARIABLE_SIZE (The sc.Subgraph[].Data[] array contains the Chart Region y- coordinate. The circle size in pixels is controlled through the sc.Subgraph[].Arrays[0][] array.)
- With the Large Volume Trade Indicator study a new method to determine the minimum and maximum volume based upon all bars in the chart.
- When a study is fully recalculated, the calculation time is determined and now displayed after the name of the study in the Studies to Graph list in the Chart Studies window.
- Corrected an updating issue with the Relative Volume study where it would not update after the initial full calculation.
- Corrected an issue with the Weekly OHLC study when displaying the High and Low lines incrementally for the week.
- Resolved a problem with a dynamic reference from the INDIRECT formula function when it references another Sheet in a Spreadsheet.
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1522 Release Date: 2017-02-17
- Resolved a problem where the Trade DOM column configuration was not being saved.
- Improvements with the linking of the associated Chart Drawing to a manually drawn Volume by Price study. This resolves some occasional issues that have previously been occurring related to the linking of the Chart Drawing.
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1521 Release Date: 2017-02-17
- Corrected a problem with symbol matching with the Teletrader Data service for stocks which have a symbol pattern like a futures contract.
- Completed full review of historical market depth data recording and processing to solve a synchronization issue which was leading to a freeze condition under certain conditions. Some changes were made. This had become an issue now that there is a separate thread for market data processing for DTC services. This issue is now 100 percent resolved.
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1518 Release Date: 2017-02-10
- Resolved some additional synchronization issues related to historical market depth data and processing of real-time market data on a secondary thread.
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1516 Release Date: 2017-02-08
- The commands Global Settings >> Customize Chart/Trade DOM Columns - Chart are now specific to individual Trade DOMs and Charts instead of being global.
- Resolved a synchronization issue in the DTC Server.
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1515 Release Date: 2017-02-05
- Corrected a stability issue related to network connections that use SSL/TLS.
- Corrected a performance issue related to Google protocol buffer connections which includes the CQG Web API that arose in version 1514.
- Enhancements to the Large Volume Trade Indicator study. Transparent circle markers are now supported.
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1512 Release Date: 2017-01-31
- It is now supported to change study Inputs directly from a chart through the keyboard. Refer to Changing Study Inputs Directly from Chart.
- New Inputs added to the Volume Weighted Average Price-Rolling study.
- Corrected a problem from a recent release where some custom study DLLs may not have their studies listed in the Add Custom Study window.
- Corrected a problem from 1511 where the DTC historical data server was not working properly due to recent changes. This problem would have been noticed when using sub instances started with File >> New Instance.
- Implemented use of new network socket core functionality. Market data processing for DTC connections now is done on a background thread.
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1510 Release Date: 2017-01-24
- New Horizontal Profile Subgraph Draw Styles. Refer to Horizontal Profile.
- Working on the ability to compile multiple CPP files using remote build (Still under development)
- New sc.DownloadHistoricalData ACSIL function.
- Developing completely new and efficient network communications functionality.
- Updated Volume Weighted Average Price standard deviation band calculations. There are now three selectable choices. This includes VWAP Variance, Fixed Offset, Standard Deviation.
- Greatly minimized a problem with the 50th level of market depth data when using the CQG trading platform service, being far away from the prior price level.
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1506 Release Date: 2017-01-11
- Low-level Global Profit/Loss Management improvements.
- Additional inputs added to the Volume at Price Threshold Alert V2 study.
- Cut functionality is supported with Chart Calculator Chart Drawings.
- Corrected a problem where an exception which could occur immediately when connecting to the data feed when using the Chart DOM.
- Study Collections which have the option Prompt to Remove Existing Studies enabled now append a + instead of a - to the end of the Study Collection name. The reason for this change is being that the Study Collection can add additional studies to the chart rather than replacing the studies, it is more logical to use a +. A - is still supported as well.
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1504 Release Date: 2016-12-26
- Corrected a problem from the prior release where the Trade Order confirmation window was not displaying even though order confirmations were enabled.
- Small improvements to various studies including the Murray Math study.
- When hiding/unhiding a study through the Analysis menu or directly from the chart, the studies are no longer fully recalculated.
- Various other low-level development and issues resolved.
*Last modified Wednesday, 22nd February, 2023.