Miscellaneous ASCII specifications are set for each portfolio. These may be set when the portfolio is first created, or may be edited later. To reach this screen after initial portfolio creation, select the desired portfolio in the "Select Portfolio" box of UA's Portfolio Manager. Then click "Edit Portfolio Settings" from the Portfolio menu to reach this screen.
The available settings are shown here:
þ Include Header Line: A header line is the first line of the file, which identifies the columns with headings such as "date," "open," "high," etc. To include a header line with your file, click the box.
Handle a Holiday by: This refers to how Unfair Advantage deals with daily voids in the data file when no market data is reported. Such voids are usually weekday holidays for which no data is included in the file. These could be days that were not holidays, but for which no trading took place in a particular market. Unexplained "Holidays" could also be the result of a corrupted database file.
The choices for presenting data fields for "holidays" in ASCII files are:
| · | No record for holidays - This eliminates all gaps in your data files, but may obscure problem areas where no data exists.
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| · | All prices zero on holidays - Zero prices make some trading systems crash.
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| · | Duplicate previous day's prices on holidays - This eliminates gaps, while avoiding troublesome zeros in your files, but can produce misleading results in series with multiple voids.
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| · | Duplicate previous day's close only on holidays - This also eliminates gaps, but results in a distinctive data set alerting you to the possibility that this is a contrived value.
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þ Use the CSI number for the symbol when writing stock files: CSI has assigned rather arbitrary identification numbers to all stocks (the CSI #) which can be used to differentiate between stocks with the same exchange symbol. Duplicate symbols can occur when a stock is delisted and its symbol is re-used for another stock. If your ASCII files will contain both active and delisted stocks, the use of CSI numbers is recommended to avoid overwriting files with duplicate symbols.
Click [OK] to save your changes.