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Review of StreetSmart Edge

 
Friday, May 4th, 2012 | Vance Harwood
 

I’m using version 1.14.99 now,  released in early May, which runs well enough on my Vista machine, but somewhat slow on my reasonably powerful Windows 7 based computer.

Steetsmart Edge is available for download for qualified users on the Schwab website. Before I get to my complaints there are some nice changes and additions:

  • You can see if an update is available by clicking the help command and looking at the “update available…” line, if not grayed out there is an update available.   Alternately you can always go to the standard Schwab site to download an updated version if you qualify.
  • Accessing / trading options is nicely done.  Option chains come up collapsed down to expiration dates, which you can then open up.  Copying options to a watch list is conveniently accomplished with copy and paste commands.  Current positions are shown in the option chains—a pleasant surprise.  It is in this area that I see most of my performance issues.
  • I really like the availability of midprice quote, halfway between the ask / bid price—useful for options and lower volume securities.
  • The scrolling / time windowing capabilities located at the bottom of charts are excellent
  • There is a copy chart functionality and some global color theme controls–hopefully these improvements will address most of my configuration difficulties.
  • SSE’s ability to export data, including option Greeks from a watch list to a spreadsheet is useful
  • Good coverage of two sided option strategies, including ratio spreads.

Some complaints:

  • Email not supported for alerts—really?!
  • SSE wants everything in upper case.   If you type in symbols in lower case it capitalizes them.  OK so far.   However if you try to enter in capital letters, matching what is on your displays it very unhelpfully lower cases those letters so that the symbol is not recognized.   This is so wrong.  Just capitalize everything, OK?
  • Option chains show an adjustable number of choices from 1 to 10 or all.  It seems like most of the time I need slightly more than 10 and have to live with huge lists of options.  Arghhh. Why not offer xelections up to 20 or 30   Fixed in version 1.14.99, now you can go to 20.
  • Option strategies offered do not include butterflies
  • No way to get quotes on the indicative value of ETFs.  These quotes (e.g., ^TVIX-IV on Yahoo Finance for TVIX)  are an important tool in getting good price execution on ETFs and avoiding securities far away from their tracking index.
  • The computed Greeks on VIX options are wrong.  The VIX is used as the underlying instead of the actual VIX Futures.   Knowingly putting out incorrect information for this long seem inexcusable to me.
  • More chart data.  Why is daily frequency limited to 3 years?   A detailed look at a market 5 years ago is reduced to weekly level bars.   Same for one minute (5 day limit ) and 5 minute (3 month limit) charts.
  • When using the bar style on charts a line is green if current price is higher than open,  even if the price is down from the previous day’s close.  At least need an option to key off previous close instead of today’s open.
  • Getting default setups the way I want them is painful.  The differences between restoring from  files and templates is not at all clear. Charts always start with candlestick, regardless of how you save them.
  • The charts have a lot of nice features, but they have a “frequency centric” approach.  You must pick the frequency (e.g., 1 minute or daily) and then the  chart then picks the duration (e.g., 5 days or 254 days).   This is bass ackwards—I want to pick the duration and then have the package provide the maximum frequency it will deign to provide—the higher the better.
  • Slow initial startup time.   Even with a brand new computer the package takes a long time to startup.   Switching layouts, or loading the layout from the central Schwab server extracts additional time.  They have added a “quick launch” option on the settings, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.
  • The colored “link” symbol in the upper right of many tools locks all tools to the same ticker if the link symbol is the same (see on right of picture below).  Generally if I open multiple tools I”m comparing things so having them all sync’d to the same symbol is counterproductive.  So far I haven’t found a good use for this link.

Some tips:

  • Typically I’m using multiple computers in the course of a day so I use the save as / load from Schwab server capability located under “file” on the main window.  This keeps my layout consistent between computers.   This should be a default choice for the user—local or server based layout at startup.
  • If you find yourself frequently flipping between different tools (e.g., watch lists and charts), consider putting them on different tabs.  This avoids a lot of tool finding and you can flip contexts with a single mouse click. These tabs can be put on different displays if you have them.
  • If you are running an older version  I recommend you upgrade.  You don’t have to remove your current version of Street Smart Edge, you can download the new version from the Schwab site and install the newer version.  I haven’t lost any settings Your current settings may be lost, so be sure to save all your layouts, chart settings, watch lists, etc., before you upgrade.  Your current version shows up in the upper right hand corner of the application.

Wish List

  • Charts for options that have expired
  • Option charts using mid price (halfway between bid and ask) at some reasonable frequency, like 15 minutes, instead of relying on trade data which is infrequent for most options that are offered

Performance notes

  • I continue to see poor performance on option chains on my Windows 7 based machine.   There may be some correlation between lack of performance and number of charts/overlays that are running—even if not visible.  Try getting rid of unneeded charts and overlays on those charts, even if the overlays are currently not enabled.

Summary of Defects (in my opinion)

  • Greeks on $VIX options are incorrect
  • Charts setups don’t remember that mode has been set to bar format.  They always go back to candlesticks on new charts
  • Uncapitalizing letters that are typed in as capital
  • Updating to 1.14.99 does not seem to work from within a running version of SSE.   I had to download it independently.

 

Schwab’s StreetSmart Edge arrives!

 
Sunday, June 26th, 2011 | Vance Harwood
 

Notice: There is a new xversion (build 1.6.16.0)  of StreetSmart Edge available on the Schwab web site.  If you are using an older version I recommend you upgrade—Schwab has fixed a fair number of problems with this newer release.  You don’t have to remove your current version of Street Smart Edge, you can just download and install the new version.   Your current version shows up in the upper right hand corner of the application (see the picture below).

See here for an May 2011 review on Street

Smart Edge.

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..

Early observations:

Schwab beat their “Coming in March” claim by at least a day in introducing their new StreetSmart Edge product in February.

After a 16.5 MB download I was up and running—slowly.    My 3.3Ghz single processor machine with 900Meg of RAM does

not meet Schwab’s minimum requirements of a dual core processor with 2 Gigabytes of RAM.   They warned me and continued to load and run the program—which I appreciate, but clearly snappy performance is going to going to require a substantial hardware upgrade.    Even my 64 bit  2.4 Ghz quad core machine with 5 Gbytes of RAM falls slightly short of Schwab’s recommended configuration.

I only had a few minutes to try out this new platform, but there were a couple of pleasant surprises.   Schwab has included the notion of midpoint pricing into their quotes.  So instead of just getting the bid and ask prices, they also provide the price halfway in between.   This can be very useful with lightly traded stocks and options.   Also there are option charts,unfortunately limited to no finer than daily frequency, but still a step forward.

Two quick disappointments: their VIX options chains are still pretending the cash VIX index (Schwab symbol $VIX) is their underlying rather than the volatility futures they are truly based upon (this totally corrupts their Greeks) , and there doesn’t appear to be a way to easily download chart data into a spreadsheet.

A couple things I’ll look at next:

  • Are watch lists/settings  dedicated to specific computers, or are they tied to the account?
  • Are the Greeks on weekly options calculated correctly?

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The Schwab StreetSmart Edge ramp up continues

 
Friday, February 18th, 2011 | Vance Harwood
 

Schwab continues to roll out more information about its new trading platform.  This website adds some demos, system requirements, some FAQs, and an invitation to join a live webcast on March 8th.

In the FAQs, Schwab says there are no plans to retire StreetSmart Pro, but there are no such assurances about StreetSmart.com.   Hopefully Scwhab has designed StreetSmart Edge so that it can evolved into a browser based tool like StreetSmart.com, otherwise they will be supporting 4 different trading platforms:  Schwab.com,  StreetSmart Pro, StreetSmart.com, and StreetSmart Edge.

Fidelity is pushing their new browser-based ActiveTraderPro.com, a new take on Active Trader Pro® . I looked at this package a few weeks ago and concluded that it didn’t offer much yet, but  they are continuing to improve it.

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Schwab’s StreetSmart Edge™

 
Monday, December 5th, 2011 | Vance Harwood
 

Update: Please see here for more recent information.

A few observations:

  • The package is designed for multiple monitors.  Each layout can be on a different screen
  • The colored “link” symbol in the upper right synchronizes tools to the same ticker.  If you want multiple charts on the same layout for different tickers you should select different link symbols for each one.
  • You can save layouts to the “Schwab Server” instead of the local machine.  This feature allows you to share the same layouts amongst multiple computers you might use in course of the day.

The StreetSmart Edge™ video quick start package is good.  The segments are clear and short.   I often hate these things, but this one was well done and worth the time to watch.