Click on the Inter Economy command to display a work page containing comparison price charts of representative commodity or financial instruments for six countries' economies:
The Inter Economy work page allows users to quickly compare various national markets using commonly accepted benchmarks for three types of financial indicators:
Three tabbed pages compare the six economies on the basis of Stock, Bond and Foreign Exchange performance.
The benchmark economic indicators displayed for each national market are arranged into three tabbed pages, each page containing a the same group of charts comparing the market performance of the benchmarks for each of the six markets.
For each market a representative Stock index, Bond and Foreign Exchange quotation has been selected for display. The following paragraphs describe the benchmarks that are currently in use.
The following table shows the default Stock index that is displayed for each market:
Market | Default Representative Index Symbol |
United States | S&P 500 Cash, trading on CBOE as SPX, quoted in US dollars |
Australia | S&P/ASX 200, trading on ASX as XJO, quoted in Australian dollars |
European Economic Union | DAX.Index.EUREX Cash, trading on EUREX as DAX-Cash, quoted in Euros |
United Kingdom | FTSE.100.LIFFE Cash, trading on LIFFE as LFT-Cash, quoted in Pounds Sterling |
Japan | Nikkei.225.SGX Cash, trading on Singapore's SGX as SNI-Cash, quoted in Japanese Yen |
Canada | S&P/TSE Composite Index, trading on TSX as TSX, quoted in Canadian dollars |
The default representative symbols can be changed. Select a chart, then begin typing the new symbol, the New Chart dialog box will open, click OK to replace the default chart with the new symbol.
User defined symbols can be saved in the .ies file created using the Save Inter Economy Screen as... command in the Action menu.
The .ies file can later be applied to replace the Inter Economy default screen. For information on saving and applying .ies files, see Save and Apply User Settings, below.
Note - The symbol and other display items, for example captions, can also be changed in the Settings dialog, see description below.
The following table shows the default Bond that is displayed for each market:
Market | Default Representative Quote Symbol |
United States | US.T-Bond.CBT SpotV, trading on CBOT as US-SpotV, quoted in US dollars |
Australia | 3yr.Bond.SFE, trading on Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) as ANY-SpotV, quoted in Australian dollars |
European Economic Union | Euro.Bund.EUREX SpotVCash, trading on EUREX as FGBL-SpotV, quoted in Euros |
United Kingdom | Gilt-Long.LIFFE SpotV, trading on LIFFE as LGL-SpotV, quoted in Pounds Sterling |
Japan | 10yr.Jap.Bond.SGX SpotV, trading on Singapore's SGX as SJG-SpotV, quoted in Japanese Yen |
Canada | 10yr.Canadian.Bond.MONT SpotV, trading on Montreal Stock exchange (MONT) as WCB-SpotV, quoted in Canadian dollars |
The default representative symbols can be changed. Select a chart, then begin typing the new symbol, the New Chart dialog box will open, click OK to replace the default chart with the new symbol.
User defined symbols can be saved in the .ies file created using the Save Inter Economy Screen as... command in the Action menu.
The .ies file can later be applied to replace the Inter Economy default screen. For information on saving and applying .ies files, see Save and Apply User Settings, below.
Note - The symbol and other display items, for example captions, can also be changed in the Settings dialog, see description below.
The Forex tabbed page allows users to quickly view the relative performance of the currencies of the six major economies.
The following table shows details of the default foreign exchange quotations that are displayed for each currency:
Market | Default Representative Quote Symbol |
United States | US.Dollar.NYBT Cash, trading on NYBT as DX-Cash, quoted in US dollars, see explanation below |
Australia | Aust$-us$, reported on the FRX 'exchange' as FXADUS, quoted in US dollars |
European Economic Union | Euro-us$, reported on the FRX 'exchange' as FXEUUS, quoted in US dollars |
United Kingdom | Brit.pnd-us$, reported on the FRX 'exchange' as FXBPUS, quoted in US dollars |
Japan | Jap.yen-us$, reported on the FRX 'exchange' as FXJYUS, quoted in US dollars |
Canada | Can$-us$, reported on the FRX 'exchange' as FXCDUS, quoted in US dollars |
All the exchange-rates (except for the US dollar) are calculated in relation to the US dollar, and are expressed in US dollars and/or cents, i.e. the US Dollar is the base currency.
Obviously the US dollar cannot be compared with itself, consequently Your SOFTWARE uses the New York Board of Trade's U.S. Dollar Index (USDX) as its default barometer of the current level of the U.S Dollar.
The USDX index is computed using a trade-weighted geometric average of six currencies. The six currencies and their trade weights currently are: Euro- 57.6%, Yen- 13.6%, Pound- 11.9%, Canadian dollar- 9.1%, Swedish Krona- 4.2%, Swiss Franc- 3.6%. The USDX futures have traded exclusively in the NYBOT currency markets since 1985.
For the other exchange rates, no specific marketplace exists. Current exchange rate price data is collected from banks and other institutions involved in currency transactions and reported by data providers.
In Your SOFTWARE, exchange rate price data is sourced from the FRX 'exchange' which is in fact a continually updated database, as currencies are not traded on any specific exchange or market.
As with Stocks and Bonds, users can insert alternative benchmarks for the foreign exchange quotations.
Refer to the previous topics for details on changing, saving and re-applying the user defined benchmarks.
Note - The symbol and other display items, for example captions, can also be changed in the Settings dialog, see description below.
Your SOFTWARE's standard Charting Function Bar is available for use with each individual chart:
The charting tools function in the same manner as for other charts.
First select the chart, the selected chart will have a peach colored outline. Once selected, apply the tools from the function bar to the selected chart.
The chart display interval, also known as the charts compression, can be altered by the interval selector.
By default the interval is set to Weekly.
Users can change the interval to Daily, or Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly.
These settings can be saved in the .ies Inter-Market Screen template.
Click Action to open the Action menu:
The Action menu has five main sections:
This saves any changes to the screen as an Inter Economy Screen file (file extension .ies).
If the screen had not previously been saved, it will prompt users to enter a name.
This has the same functionality as the save button in the function bar.
In addition to the Captions, Symbols and Layout that can be changed in the Settings dialog for each chart the symbol, colors, chart type, etc. can be altered, and chart indicators and Hi-Lites can be applied, and all the changes can be saved in a market screen settings template.
The process is similar to saving and loading a chart template.
First make all the user defined changes.
Then select Save Inter Economy Screen as... from the Action menu.
Enter a meaningful name in the dialog box and Save in the default location, or specify an alternative location.
The template will be saved as a file with the .ies file extension.
While the default settings will be applied to each Inter Market work page, previously saved Inter-Market screens can easily be applied.
First open the work page, then select Load Inter-Economy Screen... from the Action menu.
Select the .ies file from the folder in which it has been saved.
Click Open to apply the settings to the charts on the current Inter Market work page.
Select a chart and open the Action menu.
The Actions for "Symbol" command will be populated with the symbol of the selected chart.
The submenu will contain commands to open other functionality for that symbol.
Click the Reset button to return to the original default display of the data.
The last command on the Action menu is the Settings command.
This dialog contains controls to customize the data and display of the Inter-Economy work page:
For each of the three tabbed pages there are commands to change the following items:
Type in a new caption to appear in the title bar of each chart.
Change the symbol and display a different benchmark for the individual market.
Choose between Horizontal (default) or Vertical.
This affect will be more pronounced when the user manually resizes the individual charts by dragging their borders.
The settings can be saved as an Inter-Economy Screen template (file extension .ies) file and reapplied to Inter Economy screens in the future.
Refer to the Save As.. and Load User Settings section.