Some feedback on FM 2018 beta

[Djobydjoba]

Hello Mark,

Back to feedback #4 of this topic, there's only one relative strength investment in my portfolio for which the autoscaling doesn't work very well. For all the others, all is good.

Strangely, there wasn't any autoscaling issue with this investment in FM 2016. Here's a screenshot in FM 2016:
https://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/4575 ... 1h3501.png

In the global settings, it was set to two price digits only. The Number of Y-axis labels was set medium.

In FM 2018, with the same settings, and all checkboxes checked in the autoscaling options (to have the same autoscaling behavior than in FM 2016), here's a screenshot:
https://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/2200 ... 1h3502.png
It lacks of horizontal Y-Axis lines. I've tried to play with the Number of Y-axis labels option and number of price digits, without luck.

When zooming to the last 12 months : https://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/4807 ... 6h1701.png

Do you see any particular reason for this rendering and the difference with FM 2016?

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Yes. In 2016 we determined the Y grid step size, ignoring the resolution being printed on the Y axis. You'll notice in your 2016 image all the labels read the same value "0,00". This doesn't make sense to have multiple lines with the same label, so we made it so that the minimum resolution of a grid is the resolution of the label. It isn't determining the resolution itself, it is limiting it to your setting for "decimal places" under "Options / General Preferences... / Display". So, if you want more grids you can increase the number of decimal places. You can see in those 2018 graphs they are all at the limit of decimal places (0,0002 0,0003 0,0004 etc). It doesn't add in another line at 0,00025 because of the limit on the decimal places, and the restriction to not label more than one grid with the same value.

[Djobydjoba]

Hi Mark,

Thanks, I hadn't tried with 6 price digits with this investment. The scaling is OK with 6 digits.
As I prefer not to display 6 digits, I had an idea of a little trick:
- Create an investment "B" with only two prices : in 1980, price 100. In 2050, price 100.
- Create a new investment with the command Create Investment from Investments = the relative strength investment with the display issue * investment B.
-> the relative strength prices are multiplied by 100, the scaling is OK with 4 digits!

Doing this, I came across a little bug with the command Create Investment with Investments:
1) Create an investment with only one price in it, a price of 100 for the date 01/01/1980
2) Using the command Create Investment from Investments, create a new investment = the created investment at the previous step * another investment (this one regular, with more prices in it).
3) Click OK to validate the command -> nothing happened and the window doesn't close. Click OK again, and again..
4) Click Cancel to close the window, refresh the portfolio editor -> the calculated investment is created, potentially several times. But the auto-update list is not updated with the new investment.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Thanks for the bug report. I see this too, and we'll get it fixed.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Beta 3 is now available. The 2 issues you reported from Beta 2 should be fixed. You might also want to check out the new feature similar to Create Investment from Investments called "Create Blended Investment". This allows you to combine multiple investments by percentage.

[Djobydjoba]

Hi Mark, great addition the blended investment! These new commands on calculated investments in FM 2018 will be very powerful/useful, thanks very much.

There is a case where FM asks to save the portfolio at exit and the asterisk (*) still doesn't appear in the title bar. It's when an existing investment is used as a destination investment and a new entry in the auto update list is created. This applies to the two commands "Create Investment from Investments" and "Create blended Investment".

Personal thought: I've always thought that the name of menu entry File > File Operations doesn't describe very well the commands that are in. For the most part these commands are not about doing some operations on investment files on the hard disk, at least not directly, right?
File > "Investment Operations" would seem a more appropriate name?
These are powerful commands. Be able to create relative strenght / spreads / custom indexes investments and graphs is something no often found amongst the competitors, and certainly not with the flexibility Fund Manager offers. They deserve to get some visibility.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Glad you like the new feature. Thanks for pointing out the missing * issue, we'll get that fixed. I can see your point about the name of this menu command.

[Djobydjoba]

Hi again Mark,

I found the reason. I have a second monitor, the strip occurs when it is disabled (Windows key + P, then "Computer only") and Fund Manager is maximized in the main monitor.
When the second monitor is disabled, if I close FM and restart it the strip is here too. So the second monitor must be activated for no strip.

Not sure if it is new to FM 2018 as the second monitor is quite new in my computer setup.

For the record, issue (thin strip on the right side of the screen) reproduced with a fresh instal of FM and fresh portfolio in another computer with dual screen configuration (secondary screen off and Fund Manager maximized on the main screen).

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Thanks, I was able to reproduce this here as well. I looked at it for a bit, and believe it is some issue within Windows or the graphic display driver. The fact that it takes a restart to fix this problem, and just exiting and re-starting Fund Manager doesn't fix the issue, makes me believe the issue is within Windows/driver. I debugged it some, and the child windows (graph/report/portfolio editor) are 4 pixels narrower when maximized while the computer is in this bad state. The parent window is correctly sized and doesn't change when in the good/bad state.

[Djobydjoba]

You must be right, driver or Windows related. There is another program installed in my computer that has the same issue: XnView. But the majority are just OK.

[Djobydjoba]

Hi Mark,

In the Portfolio Manager, when the columns are moved / resized, the changes are saved even in the portfolio isn't saved at exit. Is it by design? Personally I would prefer an explicit saving because there are some situations where we want only to try some changes, or display / move some columns temporarily for a maintenance task.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Okay, thanks for the feedback. Yes, this is by design. Some preferences are application global, and these are saved in the registry and not your *.mm4 portfolio file. This falls into that category.

[Djobydjoba]

Hi Mark,

I've found partially the solution with columns templates. But the width of each column is not saved in the template though. So this could be another suggestion: memorize the widths too in column templates. Thxs.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Okay, thanks for the feedback.

[Djobydjoba]

In the Rearrange Investment Order window, when an investment is drag fastly and sustainably in a large list (my list is 1000 investments), a bug might appears with the appearance of many horizontal lines in the list:
https://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/3804 ... 2h2501.png
Then, the whole program becomes unstable/unresponsive.