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CSI's Offerings: Quick and Easy Updates Downloading data is so simple! Just click the telephone icon on the UA toolbar, or update automatically in an unattended mode. You can even visit our website before you download to monitor CSI's internal posting status of your favorite markets. Accuracy is Everything! Data accuracy is assured with Unfair Advantage, and every customer enjoys the same level of perfection. Errors do occur, but any suspicious data point reported by a customer or discovered by our staff will be subject to careful review and verification. If an error is confirmed, a correction will be transmitted the following day. An independent study featured in Futures Magazine found CSI's error and omission rate lower than all competing data firms tested. (Futures, 9/99 - How Clean is your Data?) We publish monthly all errors committed during the past 30 days.  (Click image to enlarge) Snapshots Show Market Movement The UA Snapshot is a great way to get an overview of daily closes, volume and the net change for individual issues. Access by your private portfolio or all futures markets at once. Revolutionary Compression Saves Disk Space Unfair Advantage uses a proprietary serial compression (four times more powerful than Microsoft's Double Space) to hold hundreds of thousands of time series in a relatively small amount of disk space. More Price Manipulations Under menu control or at the right-click of your mouse, UA can adjust the presentation of data, such as: Included with Unfair Advantage is a QuickStart Manual, a guide to using the CSI software. It also serves as a quick an easy reference to UA's main features. Click here to download the manual online, and get a feel of how UA really operates. (.PDF form, requires Adobe Acrobat to view). Portfolio Management Unfair Advantage is designed around one or more user-defined portfolios representing the various futures, stocks, funds, options, etc. you wish to actively follow. The value of a portfolio to the UA user is that all of the items in all portfolios are conveniently grouped and export files are automatically updated at data distribution time. Your specifications for the computed contracts are stored in your portfolios, along with format and reporting frequency (daily, weekly or monthly) requirements for export files. Portfolios are designed to facilitate file appendage whenever possible, but will totally re-create files from scratch whenever necessary. Portfolios make it easy to access charts and studies that may be important to your market interests. Portfolios also make it easy to use UA as the data source for multiple analysis products. Basic Charting Tools Every user of Unfair Advantage can see not only today's summary data reports, but may also review the extensive history of any series in chart form or as a numerical table. Charting with UA is arranged to assist the analyst in comparing one market with another, and lets you simultaneously display studies superimposed over the data. There are many ways in which one might present a chart: The bar frequency of any given time series can range from daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly to annually. Lines may be drawn in selected colors, and the charts may be annotated. Study curves may accompany the pricing data, and can be color-coded as preferred. Use the "Study Tools" menu or right-click your mouse to reach these features.   (Click images to enlarge) Our lineup of standard study tools currently includes:  (Click image to enlarge) Unbeatable Features Our decades of experience with international traders and investment firms give us a unique knowledge of the tools that make a difference. Such as:  (Click image to enlarge) Advanced Chart Tools UA offers an advanced analysis system that allows users to write and test custom trading systems. This includes an optimization feature with graphic and numerical results. Use VisualBasic or Perl to modify sample programs or write your own trading systems. Sample studies provided in the Advanced Study Library include: Unfair Advantage Trading Tools Trading System Performance Evaluator (TSPE)™ Many Unfair Advantage users make trading decisions based upon customized technical analysis. Others rely on technical trading systems they have purchased to generate buy and sell signals. In either event, such systematic procedures can now be investigated in advance of committing funds to the market. TSPE is a Monte Carlo Simulation that will interpret your actual, simulated or projected track record and determine whether you have a chance to achieve a pre-set monetary goal before exhausting your capital stake. Too often, the success of a trading system depends heavily upon the experienced trading sequence of profits and losses. Rare windfalls can make an otherwise poor result appear to be a great trading system. Since TSPE randomizes the mix of profits and loses under the assumption that each profit or loss is an independent outcome, the result becomes much more believable. This tool is FREE to all UA subscribers, and should be used before embracing any trading system. By thoroughly examining your proposed trading approach, you will know how much capital you must put at risk to accomplish a given likelihood of fulfilling your goal. TSPE is found on UA's Trading Tools menu and requires the following input: 1) the string of actual or paper profits and losses experienced over a period of time, 2) your monetary goal and 3) the capital you are willing to place at risk. In cases where you may have purchased a trading system, request the developer supply a trade-by-trade record so that you can apply those facts in advance and determine what TSPE says your capital stake and profit goal might be. TSPE will calculate and quantify your chances of repeating that actual or simulated experience.  (Click image to enlarge) MultiMarket Analyzer (MMA)™ This analysis product is designed to help you trade many markets as a correlated group. It functions as a natural tool for evaluating market dynamics. MMA statistically determines which markets are leaders, which are followers, which are correlated and which are redundant. Then it lays out its understanding of the current econometric picture with an emphasis on probable direction. Access it through the Trading Tools menu and identify your desired group of markets.  (Click image to enlarge) MarketScanner™ This tool enables the trader to write custom indicators and studies to follow and predict market action. The analyst can capture market statistics on stocks by exchange identification (NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX, all mutual funds, etc.) to sort and filter this data to reveal a list of stocks or commodities that meet a particular criterion. For example, one might want to reduce a list of stocks down to all stocks that are priced between $10 and $20 per share, or all stocks which have just risen by over 25% in a single day, or all stocks that have just broken out of a 5 or 10-day low or high. The Market Scanner offers a very simple way to examine large volumes of data with relative ease. Your indicators can be written in VisualBasic or Perl, both of which are built into the UA product.  (Click image to enlarge) Emerging Market Study To familiarize the user with this the custom programming offered within both the Advanced Studies in the UA charting module and MarketScanner™, several sample Perl program codes are included. These guide the user through the initial learning experience. The Emerging Markets Study is an exclusive CSI product and a promising trading tool, for which the complete code is supplied to every subscriber. With this sample study, one can quickly review the history of many thousands of stocks and identify every stock that meets the condition of 1) flat market behavior, followed by 2) accelerating upward or downward market movement. There is much that the UA analyst can do to expand on this capability to identify potentially profitable opportunities, or one can simply use the tools supplied to create useful original studies. Position Manager™ This Internet-linked capability prices open holdings throughout the day using the following update schedule:  (Click image to enlarge) Stay on top of your investments with intraday updates showing you both individual market performance and ongoing account progress. This trader's "accountant" shows the then-current net change from yesterday's close and reports an ongoing equity value for all stocks and futures and funds throughout the trading day. Part of CSI's Unfair Advantage® (UA) software, this program was engineered to accommodate multi-national investments. Values can be seamlessly calculated in the currency of choice, regardless of the currencies used for by world exchanges for reporting your various positions. Position Manager processes data in Euros, Pounds, Dollars, Rubles and more without missing a beat. Enter or import your portfolio, then automatically keep track of winning and losing trades, open and closed account equity, current positions and more. Records export to a spreadsheet or to UA's Trading System Performance EvaluatorT where they can help you make better trading decisions. Unfair Advantage customers of record before January 1, 2003 will have access to this service at no extra charge. The software is included in UA versions 2.5.2 and higher. Special Features Application Programming Interface (API) UA comes complete with an API to assist developers who may wish to access the massive CSI Database with customized software written and owned by the customer. The instructions for making an API project work for you are clearly presented in the UA Programmer's document, which is supplied with the software. Programmers are invited to become API developers and write your own indicators and systems for public distribution. CSI has a Marketing Assistance Program that offers incentives to developers who refer their customers to CSI. Intermarket Correlation Studies This is an impressive set of information that will be useful to anyone looking for low-risk intermarket-spread opportunities. The CSI host computer looks at some 320,000 pairs involving the 800 futures markets that UA follows daily. It then computes correlation coefficients based upon twelve years of data on each of the markets. The resulting 320,000 correlations are sorted from most to least correlated. The most positively correlated and the most negatively correlated markets are identified in a table for review, showing their coincident movement. The difference, measured in standard deviations, is also shown so that the user can identify market entry points (for example, where market "A" diverges from market "B.") The trading suggestion for the user is to sell the higher member of the correlated pair and buy the lower member of the highly correlated pair. Perpetual Contract® data is used to feed the system. This study is unique, original, and unbiased. All students of the market should consider it as a source of direction. We suggest simultaneously considering the results of the seasonal study when making trades in correlated markets.  (Click image to enlarge) Power Through Knowledge Load up on important facts - both widely reported news stories, and those important tidbits that are known only by a few. CSI keeps you in-the-know with these Free services: News Headlines Stay informed about today's important news events that are reported by major news agencies. At your option, UA will display the day's news headlines with URL links to relevant stories that may affect your trading plans. These stories are displayed during the distribution phase of each daily download session. Tomorrow's Newspaper Today A new addition to UA is a comprehensive display of charts and data. View online from CSI's website: Click here to view newspaper  (Click image to enlarge) Market Facts, Alert & Event Calendar A highly informative set of documents is provided within UA, including the Online Factsheet, the Alert Calendar and the Event Calendar. Each of these is accessible through UA's Database menu. Rare, but important historical facts concerning particular markets are readily available for students of the markets. CSI Technical Journal Each month regular subscribers receive this thought-provoking newsletter. Chock full of market and economic insights, views on analysis techniques and specific information about CSI's services, this Journal is eagerly awaited by our readers. A library of current and historical CSI Technical Journals is available on the CSI website Here. Transformed Computed Data Unfair Advantage comes with software that will transform raw futures contract data for a given commodity into a single continuous series. This forces any futures series comprised of many delivery months into a single series that can be analyzed over an extended period. This type of data is suitable for individual study or for simultaneous analysis of multiple continuous series. The available options include:  (Click image to enlarge) Explanatory Essays The online and printed UA reference manuals assist and instruct the user on the merits of using each of the many computed contract series through essays by Bob Pelletier. The methods used and the definitions of each are provided. These essays explain the pros and cons of each of several alternatives that might be helpful in choosing the best approach for your development efforts. For example, the merits of using Perpetual Contract Data versus a back-adjusted contract, versus. an Nth-Nearest future, or a Gann contract may be explored. Commitments of Traders (COT) Steve Briese, editor of the Bullish Review, has compiled a unique database of the weekly COT data. The CFTC reports on the open interest positions of large and small traders for all regulated commodities, and this market sentiment is known to be an indicator of future market movement that favors the larger commercial interests. Also included are the COT indices Mr. Briese has created for each market to simplify interpretation.  (Click image to enlarge) Unique CSI Chart Studies: At The Money Study Available only to subscribers of CSI futures option data, this study graphically presents a band around a price chart of any given market that supports option trading. For each output, the put premium is added to the close and the call premium is subtracted from the close. The study reveals expected volatility limits for the underlying time series, which lie between the put and call lines. An advantage of this presentation is the implication of knowing whether buying an option may be less expensive than invoking a protective stop. Seasonal Index Unlike competitive seasonal tools, UA's Seasonal Index Study depicts seasonal tendencies by employing forward-looking analysis for individual markets. It is unbiased in that it does not use the future to force the index to appear like the past. UA's Seasonal Index is cumulative - based upon daily increments of data by adopting a 251-trading-day year. This unique formulation allows it to learn over time. The statistical nature of this study makes it a helpful tool in predicting future market movement. Help at Your Fingertips At any time, press the Please call CSI's marketing staff to have all your questions answered and to start your subscription today. 561.392.8663; Fax: 561.392.7761 E-mail: info@csidata.com. We look forward to hearing from you soon! |
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