2008-Dec-09

News -
• 2009-Sep-08 SendMessage.php AJAX CAPTCHA verification now works in Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Opera.
• 2009-Aug-16: New (as yet unreleased) features in StrategyExplorer (SX)...
  • SX supports strategies with four options (e.g. Condors, Iron Condors, ...)
  • It's resolution aware, so plots on VGA capable devices will have more detail.
  • It's extensible. Strategies are specified in a Strategies.txt file so you can edit quantity, buySell (long/short), price, putCall, strike, and the strategy name. You can add strategies of your own and exchange them with friends.
  • Strategy names can be from any Windows Mobile supported unicode character set, so they can be internationalized.
  • SX saves the state of changes you make to strategies in the GUI (overwriting Strategies.txt). Original values are saved in StrategiesOrig.txt so you can restore them as needed.


• ToDo List...
  • Whole site menus are dysfunctional in Chrome. Menu upgrade needed.
  • Build a standalone version of HedgeExplorer that is resolution aware and supports spreads with four options (e.g. condors & iron butterflies)
  • Ditto for NH and its embedded HX.
  • Add Roll-Geske-Whaley American call and Geske-Johnson American put valuations in OptionAnalyzer?
  • Redesign NH's database to store options by underlying and index them by expiration date (possibly also by strike price) for a speed-up in ComboBox loads in HX.


• 2009-Jul: Various updates to webpages and store.


• 2008-Dec: The StockManager (SM) handheld client has been shelved due to a need for server sessions lasting over a minute. Portions of SM may be incorporated in a desktop product, still being scoped.


• 2008-Sep: A StockManager is brewing - its unique capability is the computation of portfolio volatility, expected return, and Value-at-Risk across confidence intervals and time for the user portfolio and a mean-variance optimized (MVO) portfolio (according to Sharpe’s Modern Portfolio Theory).
  
  StockManager juxtaposes user and MVO portfolio weights by issue in one tab with Value-at-Risk plots of the user and MVO portfolios at 0.9, 0.95 and 0.99 confidence intervals in another tab. Users can thereby compare the risk/return of their current portfolio against the MVO portfolio to prioritize transactions that maximize expected return while minimizing systematic risk. StockManager also scatterplots stocks in volatility-return space allowing users to rapidly identify issues with high Sharpe ratios.
  
  These assessments are possible given server supplied mean returns, variances, and covariances computed from historical stock prices. Naturally, StockManager also provides portfolio views (PortfolioNavigator, PositionTranscripts, Positions Dialog) equivalent to those in BondManager and NillaHedge.
  
  Hidden entries in the store and a stealth version of the installer are complete.


• 2008-Feb-11: Previously mentioned VS8 release mode anomalies have been addressed. All products have been re-enabled in the store.


• 2008-Jan-02: The store is fully rigged and operational. Dive! Dive! Dive!


• 2007-Dec: Informally announced the PocketNumerix line to: CNET, Engadget, GeekZone, Handster, HPC.net, KillerMobile, MobileTopSoft, PC World, PDA Street, PocketPCSoft, SquirrelYourNutsOffshore, WM6Software, and Ziff-Davis (PC Magazine).

Known issues in current release products -
1. On Windows Mobile 5 and WM6, NillaHedge, BondManager, and StrategyExplorer don't always relinquish control of the up/down arrow keys when the application loses focus, so hardware key events may be routed to a background application rather than the application with foreground focus.

Short term ToDo list -
• Corporate marketing, completing work on StockManager, documentation, release, announce, ...

Longer term possibilties -
1. Expand the support white paper on Modern Portfolio Theory.
2. Finish writing support white paper on Post-Modern Portfolio Theory.
3. Add options database indices to improve ComboBox load times in Explorer dialogs for NillaHedge power users.
4. Multi-database capability in BondManager and NillaHedge.

Several of the following have been subsumed by the server side of (yet to be released) StockManager and may not ever see the light of day outside of that context.


5. A webpage providing Markowitz volatility, RiskMetrics style EWMA volatility, Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, ... for stocks.
6. A price correlation/covariance server, e.g. stock vs. stock, stock vs. market indices (SPDRs)?
7. Modern Portfolio Theory and/or Post-Modern Portfolio Theory risk-return analysis?
8. Value-at-Risk assessment (Delta-Normal or something more sophisticated)?