Release Notes

2.0.386 - 2024-09-26

CXA multi-day orders.

Added

Cboe will support multi-day orders on selected CXA-only listed instruments from 30th September 2024, meaning CXA orders will not necessarily be purged at the end of each day.

This version of Spark will show order age for applicable CXA orders from that date.

Fixed

Crash when viewing charts.
Crash when restarting with PDFs on screen.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.384 - 2024-09-12

Emergency bug fix for VMS name change.

Fixed

Crash at startup.

2.0.383 - 2024-09-10

Chart drawing bugfix.

Fixed

The previous version accidentally removed price, time, and point chart drawings. Please contact us to have thse drawings restored.
Rows were not highlighting properly when mousing over.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.381 - 2024-09-05

VWAP and performance anchors.

Added

You can now set a start time or reset period for VWAP and performance indicators.

Changed

Reset the change color of all panels in the minibar that are showing the same instrument when moused over.

Fixed

Crash when waking from sleep.
Crash after removing smartlist configs.
Parse HH:MM times when minutes are zero.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.378 - 2024-07-17

Bug fixes.

Fixed

Market Announcements could be empty at startup if filtered by type or commodity.
Market Announcements should use consolidated quotes.
Missing short selling data for recently listed stocks.
Excessive memory use required cache to be cleared.
Crash when removing stocks from large watchlists.
Crash when editing chart indicator value.
Windows: possible fix for crash at startup with older Intel GPU.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.375 - 2024-06-06

Filter by Commodity. RTD for 32 bit Excel.

Added

Filter by Commodity: smartlists, news, market trades, and tickers can now be filtered by commodity exposure.
Windows: 32 bit Office support for RTD. If 2.0.373 did not work with your version of Excel, stop Excel, upgrade Spark, and activate the Spark add-in again - Spark.xll should be the 32 bit version now.

Fixed

Various bug fixes.

2.0.373 - 2024-05-17

RTD Server for Excel.

Added

New RTD Server for Excel. See RTD.

2.0.371 - 2024-05-09

Bug fixes.

Changed

Nav charts are now adjusted.
Announcement change-since figures are now adjusted.

Fixed

Make new groups for grouped panels when copying desktops.
Crash with multiple trade lists on screen.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.370 - 2024-04-27

New Software Signing Key.

Changed

This release of Spark uses a new Software Signing Key. Please contact us if you have any problems installing this release.

2.0.369 - 2024-04-26

Changes to Market Cap and ETFs/Funds.

Added

New Market Cap tooltip showing the change in market cap relative to traded volume and value.

Changed

Market Cap figures now use the auction price when in auction, like the last and change figures.
The "Funds" type has been merged in to "ETFs" due to an upcoming ASIC change.

Fixed

HTTP streaming problems.
Reduce memory usage for long running sessions.
Windows DDE: could stop updating when only synchronous requests are made.
Windows DDE: date fields changed to YYYY-MM-DD in previous release in TSV or CSV format (not Excel); changed back to DD MMM YYYY.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.360 - 2024-03-23

Short Selling Data.

Added

Short Selling trading data is sourced from ASX around 11am and Short Held data is sourced from ASIC around 11:30am.

See help for more.

% Held Short, Change in % Held Short, and Days To Cover are now available in smartlists and watchlists.
- They may not be visible if you have customized your layouts.
Order by % Held Short, Change in % Held Short, and Days To Cover.
Filter by min/max % Held Short and Days to Cover.
View the change in % Held Short over day/week/month or year.
Mouse over the column to see more information. Hold control to see a daily chart of Total Held Short and Total Traded Short alongside Daily Volume.
Colourized % Held Short added to quotebar.
- This is controlled by a preference that is off by default to avoid affecting layouts.
% Held Short indicator on end of day charts.
Daily Short Traded Volume indicator on end of day charts that includes total held short.

2.0.355 - 2024-02-17

Bug fixes.

Added

Copying smartlists and watchlists to the clipboard now includes Buy Volume and Sell Volume.
Code lookup settings are now saved in the config (per screen).
Relative Volume tooltip now shows the final predicted volume for the day.

Fixed

Note was truncated in Relative Volume popup during closing auction.
Update market announcements when relogging in on a different day.
Reset colors of linked panels when mousing over minibar.
Dropping instruments on linked panels did not update other panels.
Depth and Announcement settings were cutoff when zoomed with common settings bar.
Smartlist and Watchlist announcement filter by report code could miss stocks that had historical announcements loaded.
Announcement headings were not displayed in narrow windows.
Ticker was not showing CXA trades when filtering by watchlist with consolidated on.
Disallow quick popup when zoomed.
Crash when dragging layout to a different screen with a zoomed window.
Crash when clicking on minidesktops.
Crash when undoing to an empty announcement document.
Crash when shift clicking on alert pct defaults.
Crash when shift clicking on intraday chart period with a default period of less than one minute and a range of greater than one day.
MacOS: Crash after sleep.
Windows: Crash at startup on older Intel internal GPUs.
Windows: Crash in Nvidia drivers.
Windows 7: Quit at startup if Platform Update is not installed.

2.0.350 - 2023-09-22

New depth functionality and bug fixes.

Added

New depth setting "Scale" under Cap Bars will scale the order volumes to the maximum visible volume when checked (default) or to the maximum volume overall when unchecked.
New preference to animate the last trade price on depth charts (default) or to jump immediately to the latest price.
/. (slash dot) will restart depth replay from the most recent replay start time or pause time, allowing you to loop the depth replay.
Pressing space will hide the prompt if the prompt is empty and it's not a quick double press.
Legacy preference to use the old hand drawn font on non-high-DPI displays or on high-DPI displays with 200% scaling, with fallback to the system Tahoma font on Windows.
Try to improve legibility of font sizes 1 and 2 at low dpi.

Changed

Tighten depth bars when uncapped.
Depth chart recent trade price markers are now vertically ordered by time.
Depth chart last trade price line moves slower to avoid flicking between prices of trades in quick succession.
Username and password fields are stripped of leading and trailing whitespace.

Fixed

Charts could be saved such that clicking the scroll-to-current arrows did not move the chart to the current time.
Very thin horizontal lines were not visible on candlestick charts.
Nav chart range buttons were not showing for depth and announcement tools in popups when common setting bar is enabled.
Windows: account for Windows 10 fixed border when not showing titlebars.
Windows: update refresh rate after moving window to different monitor.
Windows: PDFs would not render after graphics device lost.
Windows: fixes for adding/removing monitors and external graphics cards.
Crash when using multiple graphics cards.
Crash when reconnecting.
Crash when run for multiple days without restart.
Crash when dragging stock to alerts panel on different desktop in minibar.
Windows 10/11: render PDFs on the same graphics card of the window.
Windows: Crash when using software rendering.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.334 - 2023-08-05

Bug fixes.

Fixed

Crash when reconnecting.

2.0.333 - 2023-08-02

Bug fixes.

Fixed

Sort scans ordered by delta changes as soon as deltas are updated.
Crashes when reconnecting.
Windows: fix position and size of windows at startup.
Windows DDE: allow for exchange to specified anywhere after code in topic.
Windows DDE: Crash when conversation removed while disconnected.

2.0.328 - 2023-07-24

Bug fixes and minor improvements.

Added

New setting to draw auction bars in front of orders on depth charts.
Memory usage improvements.

Changed

Ignore CXA calculated values for stocks that are sent at 15:59:10. They could set the last figure to an invalid price until a subsequent trade.
On first login on a new computer, full screen updates will be chosen by default on Apple Silicon Macs and Windows PCs with graphics cards that have at least 3GB of dedicated memory.
Windows DDE: do not update DDE queries during login/recovery.
Windows: Spark will now automatically logout:
- 5 minutes after the display turns off if there are no DDE connections
- as soon as the laptop lid is closed (and the display is off, and the user is not present)
- when you logout of Windows
- when you sleep or hibernate Windows

Fixed

Tickers were stopped when window deactivated.
Visible documents could be purged from cache when reconnecting causing them to fail to draw.
Multiple documents on the same screen sometimes failed to draw.
Crash when adding a drawing to chart of a global index.
Crash when opening or restoring a window at the same time a session resets.
Crash when reordering watchlists.
Crash when all other sessions load before the default session connects.
Crash when setting watchlist from the menubar.
MacOS: "Auction Bars" did not fit at font size 7.
Windows: fix for blank screens after sleep/lock.
Windows DDE: Experimental: detect when Excel drops updates under heavy load.
Windows 7: Crash when viewing multiple documents.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.315 - 2023-06-15

Bug fixes.

Fixed

Windows: popups were not drawing correctly with full screen updates.
Windows: PDFs could disappear after sleep or minimize.
Windows: DDE Price field was not consolidated.
Windows: DDE was returning the first watchlist or smartlist if the intended watchlist or smartlist was not found.
Windows: Crash when restoring a minimized window.
Crash when copying chart data.
Crash when derivative expires.
Various bug fixes.

Changed

Windows: DDE will return a single #N/A cell to Excel when the response has zero rows.
Windows: DDE will block the conversation while waiting for history to load from server.
Say "Loading Markets" when logging in instead of "Recovering".

2.0.310 - 2023-06-05

Fixes for GPU crashes and DDE problems.

Added

/o and /c to move to the opening and closing auction times when replaying depth.
Summary of changes is shown when checking for updates.

Fixed

Workarounds for slower GPUs.
Extend price drawings from previous days into today charts.
Unable to remove not-found stocks from watchlist via keyboard.
Unable to undo removing not-found stocks from alerts via keyboard.
Crash when removing non-existent stock from watchlist via keyboaord.

Windows DDE fixes for Excel

Truncate times to the second, do not round based on millisecond.
Times are now back to just time of day, not date plus time to avoid Excel precision problems.
Added BuyDate, BuyTime, SellDate, SellTime to complement BuyDateTime and SellDateTime.
Fix connections not updating when query cell was deleted then recreated with different case.

2.0.309 - 2023-05-31

New trade drawing on depth charts, DDE updates.

Added

New depth chart options for trades: Normal for trade bars the same width as the order bars and behind them. Brighter for brighter white and slightly wider. Needle for thin line in front of order bars.
Windows DDE: Added native Excel DDE table format for faster updates. Dates and times are numbers and will need formatting. Empty fields (e.g. auction price when not in auction) are blank which Excel converts to 0, fields of not-found stocks are #N/A, invalid fields are #NAME?.
Windows DDE: New preference to format empty fields as #N/A which can be tested with ISNA().

Changed

Always use the ASX trading state when consolidating.
Show the Update Available notification on the clock, menubar, toolbar, or ticker, depending on what's visible. Clicking "Not Now" will hide the notification until after close of trade or for two hours, whichever is later. Checks now happen during trading.
MacOS: allow tiling. Note that the Spark window must be able to shrink to half the screen width for it to be available in Split Views.
Rename auction bar "Threads" to "Needles".
Show announcements prior to 10am on the left edge of miniquote charts.

Fixed

Stocks from ASX or CXA warrant markets were migrated from Spark 1 as equities and appeared as not found in watchlists.
Shift // to make all depth replays live.
Shift clicking on Faster/Slower will sync depth replay times.
Show Surplus column when watchlist order is Auc Surplus.
Draw CXA bids in front of ASX asks when they overlap but ASX is not in auction (and the bid volume is less than the ask volume).
Refilter market announcements when exchange is changed by keyboard.
Aggregated depth values skipped the first level.
Incorrect bid and ask for options/warrants.
Show announcements on miniquote charts when stock hasn't traded.
Show update speed on all replaying depth windows when changed with shift.
Windows: Crash when viewing PDFs on a GPU that does not support DirectX 11.1.
Crash when removing delisted stock from watchlist.
Crash when dragging a stock to a watchlist in the minibar.

2.0.306 - 2023-05-19

Added

New preference to only show the price of the last trade on depth charts.
Clearer errors when unable to connect to login servers or streams, stop trying after 15s, and automatically launch troubleshooting help if it's the first login.
Click and drag the trade prices in the depth table.
Prompt now has history. Use up/down arrow to scroll through entries, e.g. to edit a depth replay time. Use ? to continue a search (which will cause further scrolling to scroll through the search results).
Shift Enter to set all tools to the current stock.

Changed

The depth replay time highlighted on charts now jumps between periods (to the middle of the bar) rather than smoothly plotting each second. It will jump to the gap between bars if there is no trading at the time.
First Trade Delta will use CXA open price until ASX opens.
Remove trade separator lines from depth charts, make trade bars more transparent.
Show order age for executing orders.
Only show direction highlights for price column of depth tool's trade table.
Stop depth replay when copying from depth tool that isn't replaying.
Rename auction bars "Equal" to "Normal" and "Lines" to "Threads".
Make auction exec bars on depth chart more like Spark 1 when auction width is Normal.
Ticker speed should be more consistent across different screen resolutions.
Hide similar state changes on tickers for consolidated stocks.
Darken dark mode legacy hilight watched color.
Resync all tools on desktop when unzooming.
Remove both the CXA and ASX stock from watchlists if either is removed when consoldating.
Hide CXA dual listed stocks in speedlist when consolidating (or change to ASX).
Change to the ASX stock when a tool is showing the CXA stock and consolidation is turned on.
When clicking or dragging CXA dual listed stocks from the alert list, use the ASX stock instead when consolidating. CXA stocks are still available in alerts when consolidating.
EMA smoothing is fixed at 2 and cannot be changed.
Windows: Make order separator lines on depth charts more transparent.
Windows DDE: empty fields are now blank.

Fixed

Show CXA orders at the ASX auction price as surplus on depth chart (i.e. non-executing).
Make auction execution bars transparent when auction bars are equal thickness.
COT on live depth when aggregated might not show all trade breaks.
Shift Enter when entering a depth replay time.
Update smartlists and watchlists on scroll.
Alerts couldn't be created if no defaults were set.
Differentiate sensitive announcements when watched stocks are highlight by legacy grey row.
Was not able to remove CXA stocks from watchlists when consolidating.
EMA starts at 0. On intraday charts, this would be the first trade today or 90 days ago.
Remove all alerts did not work.
Undoing alert removal would reset it.
Reset when changing back to depth that was paused or replaying.
Windows: detect when vsync is unavailable and force a short sleep.
Crash when clearing desktop while showing quick popup.
Crash when defocusing tool while showing dialog.
Crash when relogging in when last config was saved while focused tool was culled during desktop resize.
Crash when undoing/redoing removal of unlisted stock from watchlist.
Crash when hovering over a depth level that is removed at the same time.
Windows: reopen the window if the graphics driver hangs for ~2s.
Windows: crash in Intel GPU driver when device lost when minimized.
Windows DDE: crash when requesting exchange field with version query or if the stock was not found.
Various bug fixes.

2.0.297 - 2022-05-01

Fixed

Various bug fixes.

2.0.296 - 2022-04-29

Changed

Replay logging is disabled for test users.

Fixed

Crash when using Spark on a remote desktop.

2.0.295 - 2023-04-25

Fixed

Crash when undoing new alert.

2.0.294 - 2023-04-21

Added

Drag a watchlist to the speedlist section of the toolbar to set the speedlist.

Fixed

Pressing space twice would always freeze depth regardless of interval between presses.
Unable to click on announcement icons in smartlists in very small windows.
Announcements were not showing when hovering over nav charts in the common settings bar.
MacOS: unable to restore minimized windows.

2.0.293 - 2023-04-19

Fixed

Crash when searching for more than 4 keywords.

2.0.292 - 2023-04-18

Added

Experimental: Support Windows on Arm cpus.

Fixed

Windows: the number of pages in a PDF could sometimes be wrong.
Navigating a pdf in a document popup with the prev/next buttons when using the common settings bar would skip a page.
Ignore ASX Only setting in depth tool when showing a CXA-only listed stock.