Smart Tape

In the classical variant of the widely famous instrument, a trader sees an orders flow, divided in parts (e.g., one market order of 100 lots might be displayed as a 100 separate prints). Such a display method makes it almost impossible to read the tape because of the high quantity and speed of prints, that is the reason why there are so few people capable of reading the tape.

The main advantage of our variant of Smart Tape is the option to group the received ticks (large quantity of separate limited prints) in such a way that the trader sees the market orders in their full volume.

There is also a filtration by volume system. This allows to see at any point in time, what traders with different capitalization are doing.

To open this module, use:

1. Smart Tape Hot Key button.

2. Open menu, Smart Tape tab.

The Instruments manager will open next:

In the following window, choose the instrument from the All Instruments list tab, or from the Favorites list tab.

*Adding instrument to the Favorites list tab is described here:Instruments manager.

The Smart Tape window will open next.

1. Time – time of the trade execution.

2. Price – price the trade was executed at.

3. +/- UpTick & DownTick correspondingly*.

*Is also determined based on the previous trades prices (different from the last one). Pluses and minuses (and the numbers next to them) show the number of successive Up/Down ticks.

4. Vol – volume of trades.

5. Bid –the best price of buy after the trade.

6. Ask – the best price of sell after the trade.

7. Size – sizes of Bid and Ask correspondingly after the trade (for Russian instruments this data is not synchronized with the market).

8. Avg – average volume of a print in a trade.

9. ОІ – displays a change in Оpen Interest (for Western instruments, this column will be displayed as zeros, more details here).

10. Strength of buys/sells indicator.

11. Speed – indicator of the tape speed.

12. Freeze – allows to “freeze” (stop) the tape (the same button “unfreezes” it).

13. Display the tape above other windows.

* MM –Market Maker or ECN.

*The MM column is not displayed on the following image, but it can be setup via the context menu.

To invoke the context menu, right-click on the tape:

Сolumns – setup of tape columns.

Settings – invoke the tape settings window.

Change Instrument.

Change layout.

Clone window.

*The tape also has the option to setup the order of the columns (left-click on the column name, and without releasing drag it to the desired area of the window) and their width (also with the help of the mouse).

Let’s take a look at the tape settings: for this, in the context menu, choose “Settings”, after what the Tape Settings window will open.

The following window has 4 tabs with settings:

• Visual Settings.
• Filters.
• Alerts.
• Templates.

*To activate the settings, press the Apply button.

To save click the Save As Default button.

To end the setup, click OK.

Let’s take a look at the tape settings in more detail:

Visual Settings.

Buy/Sell Indicator:

Buy/Sell Width – width of the buy/sell strength indicator.

Show Buy/Sell Indicator.

Buy Sell Interval (filter speed setup) –influences the buyers’ and sellers’ strength indication. The higher the parameter, the less sensitive the indicator is to new changes.

Colors:

Above Ask and Below Bid – this color setup allows to highlight the background of the trades at prices higher that the Best Ask and lower than the Best Bid in the tape.

Alternative BackGround Color – color setup of the alternative background.

BackGround – color setup of the background.

Between color – with the help of the following color setup it is possible to change the display of the background on the trades in the tape, executed inside the spread.

Buy Color and Sell Color – color setup of the buy/sell display.

Speed Color – color setup of the tape speed indicator.

Font:

Font Size – setup of the font size in the tape.

Other:

Price Digits – number of decimals in the price (value 0 turns off this option).

Show milliseconds (in the Time column).

Show Previous Level 1 Data –display Level1 data (Best Bid and Best Ask from the DOM). When this option is enabled, the volume will not be displayed, since the trade was not yet executed.

Filters.

Show Cumulative Ticks – the following option allows to setup the display of the aggregated trades. If this option is disabled, all prints are displayed separately.

1.Cumulative Trades Filters – there is a possibility of filtering by volume, which allows to determine the market players with different capitalization. Value 0 in the parameter of the maximum volume means infinity.

2.Separated Prints Filters – the following filter allows to highlight the separate prints in the specified range. Without the cumulative trades mode (combining separate prints to display the actual size of the market trades), large prints occur rarely, which means that a large market order was completely or partially fulfilled by a large limit order in the DOM. Thus, the following filter can reveal the fulfilled large limit orders. Value 0 in the maximum volume field means infinity.

*The following filter works only when the cumulative trades mode is disabled!

3.Level 1 Filters (Best Bid/Ask) – the following parameter filters prints, for which the Level 1 (Best Bid/Ask) values were higher that the specified values.

Open Interest

Show changes of open interest – allows to visualize the delta of the changes of the open interest. If the option is enabled, when a positive change in the open interest occurs, a “+” sign will be show next to the volume value, when a negative change occurs, a “-“ sign will appear.

Alerts.

In the following window, 4 filters can be setup.

Enable Sound Alert - on/off option.

Filtration mode – ability to filter the trades with 6 modes:

– Cumulative Trade

– Bid

– Ask

– Best Bid

– Best Ask

– Best Bid/Ask

Maximum Volume.

Minimum Volume.

Ability to filter the trades in the tape by volume (i.e., if a trade of a specified volume range occurs in the tape, a sound alert will sound).

Selection BackGround Color/Sound File – the ability to additionally highlight the volume filtration by the color settings.

Sound File – in the directory, where the platform is installed, there is a sounds folder, which contains audio files.

*To install the desired sound file, just copy the name of the file and insert it into the Sound File window.

*Additional information on setting up alert in the ATAS platform can be found here.

Templates.

The ATAS platform has the ability to save your tape settings into the templates.

To save the template:

• In the text field, enter the template name.
• Click Save button.

To load the template:

• Click the arrow on the right of the text field.
• In the dropdown menu, choose the desired template.
• Click the Load button.