Best Choice Software

Best Choice Software’s Market Timer’s Software Revised Version 18-Apr-07.

The next version of Best Choice 4.0 is meant to address some major fixes and enhancements that have been current issues. We recently had to recode to account for changes in the data retrieval of the options. Included in this was the data retrieval for the interest rates which are included in the calculation of the “Greeks”. In addition, Sunny has found that certain types of short term swing trading strategies work best and we have changed the program default settings to reflect those strategies although existing customers will still retain whatever current settings they have. The form which acts as the user interface for Short Term Trading Methods has been extensively revised to keep the user informed of his/her choices and even has a hidden link to show all settings for short term trading as currently stored. In addition, several bugs that were pointed out to us were fixed as well as others we discovered along the way. Some minor enhancements have also been made when we revised the program. We will outline these below.

Menu Changes

Unlicense your computer has been removed as it was not functioning properly. Enter Interest Rates for Greeks has been added. See the additional information below. It is included with the explanation of the use of the Interest Rates is explained under the topic “The Option Greeks” which follows

The Option Greeks

The Greeks are based on comparisons to how your money could do with risk-free investments. Most people consider the Daily United States Treasury Notes and Bonds to be risk-free. www.treas.gov defines these rates as follows: Treasury Yield Curve Rates. These rates are commonly referred to as "Constant Maturity Treasury" rates, or CMTs. Yields are interpolated by the Treasury from the daily yield curve. This curve, which relates the yield on a security to its time to maturity is based on the closing market bid yields on actively traded Treasury securities in the over-the-counter market. These market yields are calculated from composites of quotations obtained by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The yield values are read from the yield curve at fixed maturities, currently 1, 3 and 6 months and 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30 years. This method provides a yield for a 10 year maturity, for example, even if no outstanding security has exactly 10 years remaining to maturity.

The data feed for these values was changed and we had to reprogram. The program will continue to automatically retrieve these values but in order to make sure that the program can continue to function in the future if this data feed were to change again, we have built in the capacity for the user to manually enter these values. We also allow a user to decide to enter this information manually starting immediately. To so do he/she would have to click on the Program Options icon and select Program Settings or access the form by using the menu selecting View/Program Options/Program Settings. Then click on the Manually Enter Daily Interest Rates check box to change the setting and save:

We have also added the capacity for the user to view the current Interest Rate values using the menu as illustrated below:

Short Term Method Settings

To view the Short Term Settings, we can access them by clicking on the Program Options icon (

) which will bring up the Program Options form with nine buttons and then select the Short Term Methods button. The form that follows will appear and the appearance of the upper middle section will depend upon the short term trading method the user has already selected. The one that is illustrated first represents the current trading option Sunny recommends and which will appear as the default if no selection has been made by the user or once the user has clicked on the Reset to Recommended Short Term Defaults. It can also be modified and saved with the edited values.

The major differences between the new form and the current form are the fact that only one method is selected, based upon the user’s choice in the Select Trading Method drop-down box. There are now three choices in the drop-down box rather than two. The current settings are clearly indicated in the frame labeled Currently Saved Short Term Settings. The user has the opportunity to peruse through the three possible choices for short term trading without which have been more accurately described. They are Breakout Trading, High/Low Short Term Swing Trading and Range Percent Short Term Swing Trading. In reality, only one method would be selected before but that was not clearly indicated to the user. The settings that exist determine which of the following center sections appear. All the while, no matter, which choice the user is exploring, his/her current settings appear in the bottom center section. A new button has been added, Recover Prior Settings, allowing the user to return to the setting he/she had upon opening the form. Once the Save New Short Term Setting Above button has been used and form is closed, and there is no way to revert to the previous settings except by entering them again. For High/Low Short Term Swing Trading, the top part of the form will appear as follows:

Note that since this type of trading has not been previously selected by the user, neither the Use Dollar Amount option button nor the Use Percent of Stock Price option button has been selected, i.e., neither has a black dot inside of them. The choice of which of these submethods, using the dollar amounts or the percentage, determines which of the text boxes needs to be displayed, the $ Above High / Below Low or the % Above High / Below Low. For the dollar amount the $0.01 amount will display for the default if the user has not previously selected this method. Since Sunny has no recommendation for the percent value, 0 will be the default display for that text box. Examples follow:

For the Dollar Amount

The Range Percent Short Term Swing Trading method has only one choice and that is to fill in the percent desired. As illustrated below the default value is 25% and is editable:

<--- Right below the Recover Prior Settings button, there is a tiny period. Clicking on this period would allow a technician to view all the settings for Short Term Trading set in this form for trouble-shooting purposes. A message box appears with the settings:

The options graphs were only showing for Calls and they have now been added for Puts.

I also disabled buttons that should not be pressed during certain uses of the forms and brought them back when they are applicable. Notice how the only active button when in the graph mode is the Show Options button.

The Cycle Wizard

New defaults have been set for the cycle wizard. These will only apply if the user has not already decided which values to use. They are:

Smallest number of days = 14
Largest number of days = 45
Minimum Rating = 4
Minimum Winning Percentage = 90
Minimum number of winning trades = 5
Minimum average profit per trade = 5

Bug Fixes and Enhancements

Now able to use the Close button to exit from the Market Timer's Download screen.
The “Security Screen Wizard” is now labeled the “Stock Search Wizard”.
The ability to dynamically keep track of holidays by getting some additional data from our web site to be able to handle unexpected holidays like President Ford’s funeral.
Revised some of the message boxes displayed by the Cycle Wizard form so that they would include more information especially to indicate which stocks the user has chosen to delete from the list as a check before performing the deletion.
Revised deletion of items from user lists so that the user is forced to delete the entire list if they get the list down to a single item.
Increased size of font on print out of the Cycle Trades.
Enabled the print out Cycle Trades to include both short and long trades.
Added a button to the Cycle Trades form to allow deletion of all trades in a cycle list.
Saved the last database maintenance date so that the user would not be constantly asked if he/she wants to perform database maintenance.
Fixed the caption about the last trade in the options chain table form so that it shows the last price traded from the current data load.
Added a reminder on the download forms to make sure that firewall settings will allow the program to download files over the Internet.
Reset the defaults for swing trading in other parts of the program besides the form to match Sunny’s new recommended values. These values are only used when the user has entered no selections.
The command button to restore the stop exit defaults on the Exit Stops form will set up Sunny’s new recommended settings as pictured below. Notice that items 1 to 3 and 5 to 8 have been selected (checked) and values have been entered for each of them.

Revised some error messages.
On candlesticks chart, other objects moved over to cover the “R” button if the user clicked on the other tabs on the lower right portion of the screen. Made the “R” button move appropriately.
Remove some temporary files from the Best Choice program folder when the program exits.
Other files needed to be written to their own folder for better efficiency.
Improved the management of the User Lists form and made more meaningful headings for the message boxes that appear there.
Retained previous symbol on the graph screens when a stock symbol does not exist in the Symbol index database or finds the symbol but the supporting database is not available or the user is not licensed for that category of stock.
The cycle chart was erasing itself when an inappropriate symbol was used, instead of retaining the previous chart. This was corrected.
Temporary files are now being written to the BestChoice4 folder in anticipation of Vista and its objection to the placement of some files. Also erased most temporary files before and after using them--in case the program closed improperly and did not erase them the last time the program was run.
Added functions and revised forms so that the interfaces requiring CD-ROM or DVD drives displays only those drives in the drop-down menu for the choices to be made.
If no CD compatible drive is found a message is displayed prominently on the form and the command button to download from the CD is not visible. If the person forgets to put the CD in the drive, he/she is reminded to do so.
For consecutive days displaying candlesticks of the same length and the same price range, turned off identifying those days as both inside and outside days as this was an error.
Corrected the option chain tables so that calculated negative values resulting for both time value and annual value are disallowed, substituting zeroes instead.
Changed the messages that appear when the additional databases are not found and the program is trying to use them to remind the users that if they are licensed for that type of security, to download the databases.
Users can now save the notes on the tabs for short term, long term and cycle charts. The same notes will be displayed on each of the different charts.
Also, some customers were getting a message after downloading that they have not performed database maintenance even after they have done so. This should now be saved correctly. An extra entry was added to the Program Options Program Settings form (accessed via the Program Options button next to the yellow telephone and clicking on the Program Settings Button) to set the reminder not to come up again. By deselecting this option, the user can rescind that request if he/she has a change of mind later.