New manual split and bulk merge

During the import process, Tradervue groups individual executions into trades. If you want to make changes to how these executions are grouped, we’ve had the ability to split and merge trades.

However, there have been limitations. Specifically:

  • Trades could only be split at points where you were flat (with the exception of option trades, which had a split options feature)
  • Only trades adjacent to each other in a timeline could be merged

To see where this could cause problems, imagine the following scenario. You have a single trading account, and you buy 100 shares of stock, as a longer-term position. Then a few days later, you buy and sell a new position in this same stock, as an intraday trade. So we have:

11/22/2016 – buy 100 SPY

12/14/2016 – buy 200 SPY

12/14/2016 – sell 200 SPY

Up to now, if these were done in the same trading account, there was no easy way to split out the intraday trade (the buys and sells on 12/14) into its own trade, because you weren’t flat immediately before or after the intraday trade.

Similarly, for merging trades, if you had three closed trades in SPY (each with their own executions), one each opened on the following dates:

7/19/2016

7/20/2016

7/21/2016

There wasn’t an easy way to merge together the trades on 7/19 and 7/21, without also merging the trade on 7/20.

Today, we are making two changes to give you the flexibility to split and merge trades how you wish.

Manually split trades

You can now select any executions you want from a trade, and as long as together they form a closed trade of their own, you can split them out into their own trade. So in our example above, you could split out the intraday buy and sell on 12/14 into their own trade.

To do this, go to the detail view for the trade, click Advanced:

Then click Manual split:

You can then choose the executions to split out into their own trade.

Merge trades from the bulk editor

You can now select multiple trades with the same symbol using the bulk editor, and merge them together:

This helps in two ways. First, if you have a number of trades you wish to merge together, you can now do this in a single operation, rather than having to merge them one at a time from the trade detail view. And second, you can now merge trades that are not consecutive in the timeline of trades in that symbol. In our example above:

7/19/2016

7/20/2016

7/21/2016

You could now merge the trades on 7/19 and 7/21 together, and leave the trade on 7/20 standing alone.

These new features are available today for all users!

Customizable columns in Journal View and Dashboard

For some time now, we’ve had customizable columns in the Trades View.

You can now also customize your columns in the Journal View and the Dashboard! In both cases, it’s as simple as clicking the setup icon on the right side of the column header, and selecting “Customize columns…” from the menu:

tradervue___journal

You’ll then be able to choose the columns you want:

tradervue___journal

For intraday trades, all columns will be used. For multi-day trades, each line in the Journal View and Dashboard may only be displaying realized data for that particular day; because of this, not all of the available columns will display data for multi-day trades. For example, the Exit Efficiency column will not show data for multi-day trade adjustments in the Journal View (although it will show data in the Trades View, where each line represents a trade in its entirety).

You can independently change the columns for the Journal View, the Dashboard, and the Trades View, and they will be saved separately. Set up your journal any way you want it!

Entry and Exit price columns

Entry and exit price columns are now available in Tradervue. Entry price has actually been available for a while, but exit price is brand new.

Here’s how entry/exit prices are determined:

  • For stock, futures, and forex trades, not containing options, the entry price is the price of the first execution, and exit price is the price of the last execution.
  • For pure option trades, the entry price is the price of the first execution, and exit price is the price of the last execution.
  • For trades containing both stock and options (or both futures and futures options), the entry price is the price of the first non-option execution. Similarly, the exit price is the price of the last non-option execution.

The third case above handles the case where you’re trading, for example, a covered call. The entry/exit prices will both reflect the stock price you executed at, rather than the option prices.

Both entry and exit prices are available in the following locations:

Charts display mode on Trades View

We’ve added a new way to view your trades in the Trades View. If you click the Settings button over on the right side, you’ll see a new “Display Mode” setting:

Tradervue___TradesThere are three settings to choose from:

  • Table (this is the default view)
  • Charts (large)
  • Charts (small)

Here are examples of how each view looks.

Table

Tradervue___Trades 2

Charts (large)

Tradervue___Trades 3

Charts (small)

Tradervue___Trades 4

The charts views can be very useful for quickly identifying patterns visually in your trades, without having to open the detail view for each trade.

The charts displayed are automatically chosen from the charts you have configured for each trade, choosing the chart with the most detailed timeframe that will still show the entire trade (if possible). Any configured studies on the chosen chart will be shown.

The new Trades View modes are available today for all users!

Price MFE/MAE columns

We’ve added two more columns to the list of available columns in the Trades View:

  • Price MFE – the maximum favorable price movement during the trade, independent of position size
  • Price MAE – the maximum adverse price movement during the trade, independent of position size

Let us know if there are other columns you’d like to see in the Trades View!

Duration and side columns

With the new flexibility of being able to choose the columns you want to see in the Trades View, we’ve added even more. Two new columns available:

  • trade duration – this will look like 01:14:55 for intraday trades (that’s hours:minutes:seconds), or 4d for longer trades
  • side – this will be either Long or Short

If there are other columns you’d like to see in the Trades View, let us know!

New P&L (ticks) columns added

We’ve added two new columns to those available in the Trades View:

  • P&L (ticks) – gross P&L in ticks for futures trades
  • P&L (ticks per contract) – gross P&L per contract in ticks for futures trades

Both of these new columns will always show gross P&L, regardless of the P&L setting.  If you switch to net mode, their column titles will change to emphasize they are still gross.

We’ve also added totals and averages for the Commission and “Commission and Fees” columns, at the bottom of the Trades View.

New customizable columns

Ever since Tradervue was first released, folks have been sending us email asking for certain columns to be added to the Trades View. We couldn’t add all the columns people asked for, as there wouldn’t be enough room on the page for them all.

But starting today, you can choose which columns you’d like to see on your Trades View! Simply click the setup icon on the right side of the list, and choose “Customize columns…” from the menu:

cols1a

When you select that, you’ll see the list of available columns, and you can choose which ones you want to add:

cols2

Clicking “Save changes” will save your new columns, or you can click “Reset to Defaults” to get back to the original columns.

The available columns are:

  • Open Date – the date the trade was opened
  • Open Time – the time of day the trade was opened
  • Closed Date – the date the trade was closed (closed trades only)
  • Symbol
  • Volume
  • Execution Count
  • P&L – the P&L for the trade shown in USD
  • P&L (R) – the P&L for the trade, shown in terms of R (risk); only shown for trades that have an initial risk specified
  • P&L (%) – the P&L for the trade in % (equity trades only at the moment)
  • Commission
  • Commission and Fees – the sum of commissions and fees
  • Initial Risk – the amount you entered as the risk in the trade
  • Position MFE – the maximum interim profit during the trade (runup)
  • Position MAE – the maximum interim loss during the trade (drawdown)
  • Shared
  • Notes
  • Tags

Some of these columns are only available for silver or gold subscribers.

As part of this change, we’ve also moved the links to change P&L gross/net display mode, and the download to Excel link, into the menu.

If there are more columns you’d like to see made available, let us know!

Trade grouping, splitting, and merging

When you import your trades into Tradervue, they come in as a list of individual executions. Even something simple like buying 1000 shares might come in as buy 200, buy 400, and another buy 400. They might not even occur all at the same time – if you entered that order as a limit buy, there could be an arbitrary amount of time between the first and last execution. They also might execute on different venues.

But when you entered the order on your platform, you were thinking “buy 1000 shares”. All the rest is important, but in a higher level sense it’s all just details.

So when you import all of these trade executions into Tradervue, it uses an algorithm to group your trade executions together into logical trades. In highly simplified form, this algorithm basically starts a new trade if a) you change sides (e.g. long to short), or b) it’s been over a certain time limit since your last trade closed. Otherwise it may continue the prior trade.

What we’ve found is the vast majority of the time, Tradervue’s automatic trade grouping does what the trader would want, and the resultant logical trades match up with a “trade” in the trader’s mind. Occasionally, however, you might want to tweak this trade grouping.

So with that in mind, we have added two new functions in Tradervue:

Split trade

If you click “Advanced”, and then “Split Trade” on the trade detail screen, you’ll see the trade split interface. On this screen you can choose the specific execution that should start the new trade, then click “Split Trade”. Not all of your executions can be selected – only those that would ensure the original trade is closed after the split.

Here’s an example:

Merge trades

If you click “Advanced” and then “Merge Trades” on the trade detail screen, you’ll see the trade merge screen. Here you can choose which trade you would like to merge with the current trade; only trades which are eligible to merge are shown. If you select the trade you wish to merge, and click “Merge Trades”, the selected trade will be merged with the current trade.

For example:

For both split and merge, you will only see those options if they are applicable. For example, if a trade cannot be split, you will not see the Split Trade option. And if there are no eligible trades to merge with the current trade, you won’t see the Merge Trades option.

So all in all, you probably won’t need to use these features often, if at all. But if you want to be very specific in what you refer to as a “trade”, you can now fine-tune things as much as you like!