Each month in this Journal, our technical support staff addresses issues of interest to many CSI subscribers in a question-and-answer format. 

Notice:
  The views and information expressed in this document reflect the opinions and experience of the author Robert C. Pelletier.  Neither CSI nor the author undertake or intend to provide tax advice or trading advice in any market or endorse any outside individual or firm.  All recommendations are provided for their informational value only.  Readers should consult competent financial advisors or outside counsel before making any software purchase or investment decision.  CSI does not stand behind or endorse the products of any outside firms.

Copyright (c) 1999 Commodity Systems Inc. (CSI).  All rights are reserved.

    CSI will be closed for voice communication on Monday, September 6 for the U.S. Labor Day Holiday. The CSI host computer will be accessible as usual, and data from those exchanges that remain open will be available at their normal times

Q.
    I would like to use UA's "artificial high/low" option for my default data presentation because my charting program requires standard open-high-low-close price bars. This works well for everything except the Advance/Decline stock series (4000, 5493, 5500, 5798, 5800, 5960) because their "prices" are actually quantities of stocks or volumes. Is there any way to preserve these raw values?

A.
    Yes; just download the current UA version from our web site. As of version 1.75.1, these time series will not be adjusted, regardless of the default data presentation chosen.

Q.
    I have been working with UA to devise a trading system using customized computed contracts. Can someone at CSI help me determine specific trading signals and verify my results?

A.
    Our policy on trading advice is quite clear: We don't give it. Our mission in both theory and practice is to provide accurate data and innovative tools for market analysis. Our service staff will be happy to give instructions on using any of these tools, but the interpretation of individual results for making trading decisions is out of the realm of CSI services. Our staff can give only the most general information about the analysis tools, of the type that would be appropriate for all users, and never customized to a user's specific trading applications.

Q.
    The Error Report in the CSI Technical Journal typically lists anywhere from one to perhaps a dozen corrections each month. How does this reconcile with the dozens of corrections that show up with my daily downloads through UA?

A.
    The Error Report in the CSI Technical Journal includes all corrections made to current updates within the last month. The UA update correction file, on the other hand, can include revisions for any data point within the entire database. The non-current corrections are usually the result of our own initiative in checking our archives for errors and omissions. We have been reviewing volume and open interest data for many commodities in the past several weeks. Many of the corrections occurred because of missing data, and most of the errors were minor. Corn had more errors than the other commodities since our data for it goes back 50 years.

The process of maintaining a database is lengthy and ongoing. We often have to locate several sources to obtain valid data. We believe our database is the cleanest, as well as the most extensive, in the industry. UA's automatic correction procedure allows CSI customers to benefit from our maintenance programs on an ongoing basis. Check out the current September issue of Futures Magazine for a comparison of data vendors and information  on the importance of data accuracy.

Q.
    I always save the list of corrections and revisions that come in with my UA daily updates. When I finally got a chance to review the file, I found that it held only one day of corrections. What happened?

A.
    The daily correction file (called update.adm) always has the same name, so it is overwritten with each retrieval session. If you want to save a file permanently, use Windows Explorer to rename it before your next update. Consider using the date as a filename to avoid duplications.