Watch List Change

Replace 'Last 3 Months' column with 'Todays Change'.

Yes, would be much more useful.

Amen, ditto, yes please. Please !
I have found over time the current columns are next to useless for (meaningful) information at a glance, unless my head is immersed in iPredict routines and I have supporting charts/tables - and frankly there are not enough interesting contracts to warrant iPredict sustaining that level of presence in my life.

The harder I have to work to determine what's happening with my contracts the less inclined I am to bother. The less I bother, the more meaningless the displayed information becomes. The less inclined... It's a progressive slide toward sign off.

I'm not suggesting my departure would be a bother to anyone, but there's a reasonable chance others also not wholly addicted to iPredict fare encounter the same barrier to continued interest, and if the hope is to encourage more traders it may be something to look at.

Anything that makes it easier to track what's happening to your own contracts day by day/hr by hr will, I suspect, enhance iPredict's appeal beyond the illuminati.

Agreed, particularly with MotC. This is a huge problem and should be a top priority IMO.

It's a disheartening start to the day when my stock portfolio shrinks and I have no idea why. Most commonly my losses occur across a number of stocks, or one particular stock where I have a large holding shifts by a small amount. Either way, the main stocks that are bleeding generally don't show up in "Most Traded" or "Big Movers".

Instead, as I scan down each of my stocks in my portfolio page, I am forced to try to remember where each individual stock was priced yesterday, or look for "red returns" that seem out of whack. Neither method is particularly user-friendly, especially when it comes to a stock that is losing money fast.

Today's change (or "Movement in last six hours" or something similar) would solve that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 01:38PM by gr.

This would probably be difficult to implement, but in my opinion, the best option would be to have customizable columns. Then users could select what they want - eg. change for last hour/6 hrs/day/week/etc. as well as highest buy and lowest sell offers (which I would love to see on my profile!). Preferably for all the sections on the profile.

@MPSL we have asked for your option many times and what you suggested is probably the ultimate. My idea is to try and get one thing done on its own in the hope it may actually be achieved.





edit: spelling. I've now got to do 100 lines 'I before e except after c.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 11:55PM by ORACLE.

@ORACLE Right. Yeah, it seems like what you're asking could be done very quickly and easily. And I'd really like to see it happen.

I've asked for it before too. It really is essential when you hold 70+ positions...

Of 21 stocks on my Watchlist the "Last Month" column shows price movements for 19. The "Last 3 Months" column does not show any, demonstrating that it is, effectively a redundant column.

It is time to put it to good use as a "Todays Change" column and clearly, this is support for this concept.

I find it very hard to believe that this will be difficult to achieve and as we are now faced with paying fees this is surely, a justified bit of recompense.

Note that if you place an active order, eg one on the order book, then you will get a Today's Change column.

So if you want to see Today's Change for your 21 contracts, simply place orders for them on the books. If you don't want it to be a 'real' order, just place them as buy or sell at 0.0001 / 0.9999 as appropriate with a volume of 1.

However the fact that this code functionality already exists, suggests that it would be very trivial to hook this up instead of the "last 3 months" column we have.

Lanthanide Wrote:
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> Note that if you place an active order, eg one on
> the order book, then you will get a Today's Change
> column.
>
> So if you want to see Today's Change for your 21
> contracts, simply place orders for them on the
> books. If you don't want it to be a 'real' order,
> just place them as buy or sell at 0.0001 / 0.9999
> as appropriate with a volume of 1.
>
> However the fact that this code functionality
> already exists, suggests that it would be very
> trivial to hook this up instead of the "last 3
> months" column we have.

There shouldn't be any need to go to this sort of trouble. It's a bit like hiring a farm worker to work your horse and plough then getting in the harness yourself.

I agree, but that doesn't mean that this isn't an interim option until admin takes these suggestions on board.

Also I don't really see that much of a difference between watching a stock and placing an order for 1 contract at 0.0001 cent away from what you think the final outcome will be anyway (or in the case of the party vote stocks, an essentially impossible outcome like 0.9999).

Lanthanide Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I agree, but that doesn't mean that this isn't an
> interim option until admin takes these suggestions
> on board.

Yep. A totally kludgy workaround, but given no indication that the repeated requests for this feature are even noted let alone likely to be acted upon, it might be the only option.

However, given the point made, that this code functionality already exists, one has to wonder what determines the priority given to different requests.

It certainly seems that some are given favour and some ignored, with no apparent rhyme or reason.
If nothing else it would be nice if - having set up a Requests page - serious requests got some form of timely acknowledgement, the way many other more trivial postings do. How long does it take to write "Thanks. Noted. Can't do it for... this reason or that reason"

I believe many of these things have in fact been highlighted and acknowledged.

A while back there was a rank-list produced by users as to where development resources should be directed.
Admin has made numerous explanations as to why developer resources are limited.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2011 06:26PM by TraderV.

TraderV Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I believe many of these things have in fact been
> highlighted and acknowledged.
>
> A while back there was a rank-list produced by
> users as to where development resources should be
> directed.
> Admin has made numerous explanations as to why
> developer resources are limited.


Fair comment to a degree TraderV but, that rank list now goes back some time and we are now paying fees that weren't being paid back then. Developer resources ay be limited but the change being asked for should be a very low drain on said resources.

@Oracle
True.
There has also been considerable increase in money flow of late too. So hopefully it won't be too much longer before a few new features can be rolled out.

Date Total Net Worth
15/11/2011 $416,978.74
15/10/2011 $339,866.29
15/09/2011 $320,947.23
15/08/2011 $298,058.82
15/07/2011 $288,323.49
15/06/2011 $276,591.65
15/05/2011 $267,511.68
15/04/2011 $256,381.88
15/03/2011 $249,108.25
15/02/2011 $243,873.05
15/01/2011 $240,949.04

New money should not only mean the funds to do it, but also the desire to keep the punters happy and coming back for more.

Honestly, I've done quite a bit of webdesign in my life and while I haven't looked into how this site is set up, the change you guys (and I) are asking for should be very simple to implement. I'm talking less than half an hour for someone familiar with site, an hour for someone who's not.

I don't know what the going rate for webdesigners is at the moment, but 20 heavy traders paying their $5 a month in trading fees would more than cover it.

I could be wrong, the way this site is made could be FAR more complicated (or simple) than it needs to be. But if that's the problem, they'll want to improve the site at some point. So I would say cut your losses now, and rebuild the site so it's exactly as complicated as it needs to be (ie any change to the site can be implemented by someone who is experienced with the programming language(s), but contracts and other site features can be opened, closed, added, removed, edited and changed quickly and easily by the admin). They'll have to do it one day, the earlier the better.

But I don't think the admin reads the feature request section any more. I asked for clarification about how rounding works on another thread a week ago, but haven't heard a reply. This isn't even really a feature request, just an information request. I don't think these posts are being read.

I think most traders visit the site more than admin does.

I'm not sure fee revenue would be all that high. The greatest source of income would be interest on cash deposits, but realistically that's not going to be a huge amount of money.

Personally I wouldn't have expected any feature rollouts prior to the election anyhow, given that development obviously went into the elections site and you possibly wouldn't want to be changing this site prior to election day for the simple reason that you would probably piss alot of people off (who would then be on here complaining) if something got through beta-testing and then didn't work.

Total now up to $441,561.71. +$24k in 2 days.

Wonder if the new/noob money explains the 95 @ 0.9941, 100 @ 0.997 and 51 @ 0.9998 buys on the TAPE.NORELEASE contract today. Seems odd that someone who knew what they were doing would risk ~$246 for a few cents return.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2011 11:58PM by Lanthanide.

I don't think that has to be all deposits. Human trading is not zero sum since the market maker is involved.

Total now. $459,360.85 +$18K from yesterday!

18k from yesterday! I wonder how much to implement the chage I've suggested.

iPredict can't just spend the deposits that are made; they are held in trust and must be retained - under both the Terms of Service and the FMA regulation (declaration and exemption notice). iPredict is only entitled to the interest, and can't touch the deposits.

So let's assume the $77000 increase in total net worth over the last month is all from deposits (which is far from clear, given the loss-making nature of the market maker).

And to be really generous let's assume the $77000 was all deposited a full month ago.

Charitably assuming iPredict get 4% p.a. (National Bank's highest call account rate where the trust account is held) on that $77000 iPredict's extra income over the past month has been a whopping... $257. Before tax.

(About now someone's thinking of working out the interest on the whole lot. But what's important is the increase, since if iPredict were struggling to fund improvements before - which has been said - only the increase in income matters. 4% on $416,978 is $16679/year before tax. The deposits are not a cash cow.)

2% withdrawal fee for people who make profit and also up to $60 capped annual fee per trader.

iPredict also runs advertising, although not much on the site currently (seems to be an ad for their own show), they do have ads on electionresults.co.nz.

Presumably they're paying money for the Stratos show as well. How much does a single episode of the stratos show cost? How much would it cost to put in a Daily Movement column in the watch feature?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2011 08:39PM by Lanthanide.

Lanthanide Wrote:
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> How much would it cost to
> put in a Daily Movement column in the watch
> feature?


What I have suggested is only a change parameters for an existing column I would have thought. However, I do admit, It's not an area I'm familiar with.

I do find it frustrating having 22 entries in my Watchlist and not a single item in the 'Last 3 Months' column. What is the point of a column that rarely does anything when, a 'Todays Change' would be in constant use.

Lanthanide Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 2% withdrawal fee for people who make profit and
> also up to $60 capped annual fee per trader.

Yes, there are all sorts of revenues. My point was that the "look at all the deposits coming in! why can't ipredict afford x?" that crops up on the forums from time to time is bunk. Deposits can't fund anything.


As for the costs of developing and operating IT - most people outside the industry underestimate this immensely.

However, I agree that the request in this particular thread should be a small one (it is front-end, not in the trading engine or database). You do have to factor in the familiarisation time if you are bringing on someone new (probably a day or two minimum) plus testing time which pushes the time up a bit.