Plot News indicator (version 3.0)

No, I'm not kidding.

I shut off PMs because I was getting too many programming requests.

Just to keep everybody happy, Plot News v3.21 is available again, here (along with its .mq4 source). But if you're running Win7, be warned that there's a risk that v3.21 can potentially damage your computer (unsolved problems that have been reported are listed in the link). I recommend that you use another news indy. But if you feel that you must use Plot News, go ahead. Just don't contact me if you encounter any problems. I don't run Win7, so I can't help you.

David

Thanks for your support.

What can I say. YAY! I seriously believe that there will be no damage... but just to be sure I'm running it on a xp vm. lol.

Phenomenal! Thank you!
That’s what cloning software is for. In case I install something that screws up my system. Had to re-image my PC yesterday. Part of owning a pc. I will take my chances.

Why people don ’t backup Their PCs is beyond me.

Again, thank you.

Aaaaah,working again! Total bliss.

Win7 x64

May the pips be with you David.

(Double post,yep. Just so happy)

Works just fine for me. Thanks for the help David!
_________________________________________
Steve Works
atube catcher download

Hanover, you're a Mensch!

Added something just the other day to the string in "Yahoo Mt4 Indicators and Experts" forum entitled RIP-FFcal - mostly between one Rademacher and WorldwideFX - saying I had not experienced any problem due to FF formatting on the 11th. (Turns out they now think it might be that FF was flooded out by Hurricane Sandy - probably - as I downloaded a day earlier than them and it workd fine.) - then went to download tonight and found on checking the chart vs. FF that the chart only gives my local time now. This was a surprise so went running to VO page and saw your Oct. 8 notice. (For the first time on sensing likely demise of Plot_News my heart did not race at all, because recent events and the increasing amount of red print at the top of your pages related to the subject had prepared me.)

Understand Lite Forex has a news indicator that plots something on the chart, but their's is the only other one I've ever heard of. Have never had an account with them, and since the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul it is illegal for US clients to have any overseas account. Which would indicate to me that, despite your protestations, there must be a huge market for Plot_News. As for any difficulty with using FFcal... Well trading is not an activity for complete simpletons (my own now six year learning curve nothstanding) and if people can master MT4 or even begin to have success with coding (Have done, largely thanks to your do-it-yourself alert builder, which got me started, going on to greater heights notably this weekend making much wanted improvement to one indicator...) then they can learn to operate the grown-up version of FFcal. I never bothered switching to the other version, so in my experience it has worked perfectly for six years straight!

Thanks for the feedback, Bruce. Glad to hear that the indy is working for you, and that you still find it useful.

I'm unwilling to market the indy, because it's value is dependent on data that is proprietary to FF.

David

(my bad connection just dumped the reply. back soon. b.)

Attached: zipped CSV file of FF calendar's news announcements between 2007-01-01 and 2012-11-30, timestamped New York time

Well, didn't get back as soon as I thought and now am doing internet correspondence which got backed up cause sometimes its difficult to start writing.

Right before the above aborted post, took myself to the NY public library to examine a Bloomberg Terminal and see what they offer in terms of plotting events on the chart. There was a forex trader there with his swiss non-MT4 platform on a device, and we had a long conversation. (have not written to him yet, he's next) He had a little difficulty pulling up the feature on Bloomberg but found and demonstrated it for me. It works almost exactly like Plot_News except you have to get "P", "F" and "A" from a space at the bottom of the chart, and the Bloomberg logos that mark the spot in the chart appear somewhat large and cumbersome vs. billiard balls set to zero. (the charts are of course much larger than my setup so this would probably not be a hinderance.) The logos are not color coded as to level of importance. Probably you don't have to download anything, and you can choose what level of importance is displayed just like Plot_News.

I have not looked at the initial purchase/rental cost of a Bloomberg Terminal lately, or the monthly fee structure, but believe it's substantial, and the point is that if Forex Factory were to offer FFcal & Plot_News for a small fee everybody would be using it!

Will not post excerpts from the Yahoo Group "MT4 Experts and Indicators" thread entitled "RIP FFcal", but most of the correspondence is by a couple of traders who purport to be professionals who are "trading in other people's accounts" and found download-excentricities of the calandar around the time of Hurricane Sandy inconvenient. (I didn't notice any but downloaded earlier than them.) Have saved one particularly telling post but won't post unless asked.

While it often appears diplomacy is not my strong suit am strongly inclined to try and impell this thing in the desired direction. (god knows there is plenty of software more complicated to use than FFcal that people learn to operate without requiring a full time Kindergarten teacher. FFcal needs but one tiny modification to access the platform in Program Files (x86) for Windows Vista and 7 and probably 8, and a similar modification, better, the same modification, for MT5. Understand MT5 can be made to convert MT4 indicators automatically.) So I'm wondering what to do next in terms of impelling things.

It should be noted that as the person who seems to want this thing so much I am probably the one who is least capable of paying at this point, though it would be no special effort, especially around the first of the month. And although it may be I seem frequently to "see things differently" and this may be the cause of all my difficulties in life - that and an apparent inability to impell anything anywhere by any means whatsoever - it seems to me that it should be pretty clear to anyone who's not right down delusional - including forex Factory and anyone else - that a Pay version of Plot_News is definitely long overdue.

Bruce,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

If your post is directed at me, then all I can say is that there is never likely to be a pay-for version of Plot News, or even a "desired direction". Some reasons:

1. No matter where the data is sourced from (FF, Bloomberg, whatever), there will always legal issues regarding the sourcing of proprietary data. I don't want to risk facing a lawsuit.

2. I don't believe that there's a lot of commercial opportunity for a product like Plot News. I know that Plot News has been downloaded 40,000+ times, but I've gradually come to believe that there are a HUGE number of both FF members and non-members who download any indicators and EAs simply because they are FREE, experiment with them, and then quickly discard them, especially if they find there's any kind of learning curve involved. Reading the posts in the Discussion forums tells me that many people are interested only in plug'n'play, color-by-number solutions; if there's any learning required, they quickly lose interest. When Plot News no longer worked due to a change in the FF calendar format, I received less than 10 messages/e-mails asking me what had gone wrong. Hence I believe that less than 100 traders, and probably even less than 50, actually use it on a day-to-day basis.

I developed a commercial product that IMO is massively more useful than Plot News. It's been available for almost 2 years and has been downloaded less than 1,000 times. That tells me that the vast majority of folk (who visit FF) are interested only in FREE products. IMO the biggest reason that MT4 is so popular is because it's FREE. People don't want to pay money for superior products, especially while they're learning to trade, and experimenting with different strategies. There are at least three other FREE news indicators available on FF; the one developed by euclid is particularly good IMO. There's no reason to compete.

3. I am busy working during the day, and developing EAs in my spare time, since I don't have the time to trade manually. I likewise don't have the time to undertake other software projects. I've also lost a lot of the motivation that I previously had, to contribute much to FF.

Thanks for your long-time interest in Plot News. I don't plan to support it much, going forward, other than for my own use, and for die-hard users of the product like yourself. Like I said, I don't have the time or motivation to do so, especially after Win7 has caused me so many problems. If Plot News does RIP on FF, it will be one less thing that I have to bother myself with. LOL.

David

Oh Dear. Yeah, but what if, for instance, FF solicited you to provide the indicator in useable form for their own purposes. It's far from inconceivable. Yes, Euclid's indi looks neat and organized in the pictures (tho didn't plow through the instructions and know i don't want all that stuff on my chart, even for the one-minute stretch I have it down to M5 to check coming events.) but the fact that a company like Bloomburg, and maybe only Bloomberg - the one worldwide premium professional trading info provider - has come up with an indicator that in its user interface is so exactly similar to Plot_News would indicate to me that there is some agreement here, among professionals, that this is the most effective way of viewing coming events for purposes of active trading. Forex Factory is known, probably as much as anything, for its calendar. That's probably where a lot of people ar drawn into using the site. Seems to me having a premium indicator for all those free forex platforms (probably way more than there are Bloomberg Terminals) would be a feather in their cap. B.

Well my thanks to you David regardless. I have very happily used it for years but I fully understand your position.

I have now swapped to Tim Morris's NewsCal which is quite similar in some ways.

All the best,
AltosT.
Brisbane, Aus.

This really is too bad. I remember using the indicator, it does consume a lot of CPU but it was an interesting concept regardless. I'll never understand when someone gets to take advantage of excellent coding for free, and then turns around and threatens the said creator.

Well if you download using FFcal by calling it up from your desktop once a week CPU is minimal. Of course the indicator on the chart uses like none. One later version which attempted to incorporate FFcal into the platform and automate it for ease of use may have used a lot of CPU.

On the other hand maybe FF would like to avail us of a free version.

I would be willing to write carefully crafted instructions for such a version - or rather streamline and codify what already exists - with FFcal being separate rather than incorporated into the platform. I see no reason why the instructions would fail to be fail safe - that is foolproof, in terms of people not being able to figure out how to download the data and attatch the indicator. Think FFcal would work well with the installer, as a standard computer program, with a desktop icon to activate.

This of course would be dependent on hanover agreeing to modify the part of FFcal that places the news.cvs file in the platform so that the path can be varied by the user to access the desired directory on different versions of Windows, and he as already indicated he's through with supporting Plot_News, so in this way I'm kind of begging for a slap-down.

Whereas I'm fairly ignorant in terms of computer science someone could probably go over the instructions to eliminate any embarrasing telltale signs. Am however not so up on the other quantitative side of FFcal, but this has been described in detail by hanover and the people who seem to want quantitative info about events are usually the type that understand that readily. Am mostly - and think this is true of your average FF reader - interested in something that shows, on the chart, the points in time where the events occur. This one feature saves a lot of screw-ups for me, and enables a lot of trading opportunities.

Tho as I've mentioned people do not always see things my way, I don't see how, if the above mentioned indispensable attributes of Plot_News are enumerated to them, FF could fail to show some interest.

Another option would be for FF to provide the news.cvs file updated at certain intervals on their website. Then all the user would need to do is put it in the right file. Though I must admit I stil derive pleasure from running FFcal six years on. Shure beats email, or trying t write posts on FF. But i never run it more than necessary: if two platforms have the same 0 hour I copy the file!

This would involve modifying the indicator Plot_News so it's possible to vary displaying of events by timeframe, whereas it already has provision to vary by level of importance. for

Hanover, yes, of course, this is all directed at you, though probably you've already considered more possible scenarios than I can think of. Still, when I get an idea in my head...
it usually fails to materialize. (Lucky for Plot_News I am not one who would benefit other than by continued use of the program or it would certainly be doomed.) Still, if FF is already the premier forex site it seems to me they could definitely solidify their position by offering Plot_News. B.

you are over thinking this.

why would ff get into software and open a door to a whole slew of issues? why would ff start providing a service that explicitly makes it so that people have less need to visit the site?

"you survive because you make them need what you have, and then they have nowhere else to go".

I don't think so...