Commsec Iress - All comments welcome

[trillionaire#1]

Anyone else have a problem with the java update not working. Can't for the life of me get iress up and running.

i had several hours of pain trying to get it working also.
wouldnt work with mozilla,finally using internet explorer,then clicking tools ,
pop up blocker,pop up blocker settings,allowing www.commsec.com.au and
www.comsec.com.au,removed previous java programs and installing the latest one,it now works fine.
hope this helps,im no computer expert but thats about all i did.

 

[moXJO]

i had several hours of pain trying to get it working also.
wouldnt work with mozilla,finally using internet explorer,then clicking tools ,
pop up blocker,pop up blocker settings,allowing www.commsec.com.au and
www.comsec.com.au,removed previous java programs and installing the latest one,it now works fine.
hope this helps,im no computer expert but thats about all i did.

Thanks I will give it a try. Spent most of last night going through and changing settings. Comsuc is about as much help as a poke in the eye.

 

[cutz]

G'Day,

In the pop up allow list make sure you allow this source, *.iress.com.au

 

[cuttlefish]

Well I mucked about with it a bit over the past few weeks, and used it on friday to put trades through. I spent some time over the weekend setting up different tabs for different activities - that seems like a useful feature. I'm not looking forward to the first day of having to rely on it. It seems very flaky (falls over when I open PDF documents, logs me out sometimes etc.).

Things I'm missing:

* Overlap not being shown in the depth during matchups (does at least show the match price and volume).
* full width view of 1 minute charts (need to move out to 5 min to get full view)
* lines on dailyl/weekly charts not showing up on intraday charts, and also having to redraw the lines all the time.
* daily charts only go out to 1 year - but at least the monthly's show full data
* total volume on bottom of depth screen (anywhere to see this?)
* pricing in cents is annoying and a potential gotcha - will have to keep a close eye on this


Can anyone tell me what the color coding in the depth screen means? - some price lines are black, some red, some green - is this reflecting the latest change in that line (increase/decrease in volume etc.?). If so thats quite handy.

I hope it handles high levels of activity, and doesn't fall over 10 times a day that will really get annoying.

I guess I'll give it a week or two and see if I get used to it. If its stable and performs thats the main thing I'm looking for.

Overall I don't like the concept of a browser based user interface - I'd far prefer a desktop application.

 

[sails]

Well I mucked about with it a bit over the past few weeks, and used it on friday to put trades through. I spent some time over the weekend setting up different tabs for different activities - that seems like a useful feature. I'm not looking forward to the first day of having to rely on it. It seems very flaky (falls over when I open PDF documents, logs me out sometimes etc.).

I've been having stability problems since the last two java updates. I sent an email to the iress help desk some time ago and they just re-stated their standard stuff which I had already done. I use Iress on the laptop (with a 2nd monitor) and I think I may need to upgrade memory on it. If it remains unstable, I will be more persistent with Iress (and broker if necessary) until I get the answers I need. Will let you know if I get any answers.

Things I'm missing:

1. Overlap not being shown in the depth during matchups (does at least show the match price and volume).
2. full width view of 1 minute charts (need to move out to 5 min to get full view)
3. lines on dailyl/weekly charts not showing up on intraday charts, and also having to redraw the lines all the time.
4. daily charts only go out to 1 year - but at least the monthly's show full data
5. total volume on bottom of depth screen (anywhere to see this?)
6. pricing in cents is annoying and a potential gotcha - will have to keep a close eye on this

Have numbered your points above to make more sense of my replies:

1. Not sure what you mean by overlaps during matchups. Can you explain?

2. I find 1 min is fine early in the day, but agree, by the end of the day you have to go to 5 min to get the full day's view.

3. This is annoying - I agree. Also, you will find the daily charts don't dynamically update as the intra day charts do. You have to click on "request" to get the updated daily bar/candle. Same with weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.

4. Agree and would be nice to get a bit more

5. Not that I know of. It is possible to get market depth totals by hovering the mouse over the bid or ask quantity at any point in the queue. Another useful feature if you are into watching market depth is if you left click (I think - Iress isn't loaded up at the moment) on large quantity in level two depth, it should highlight it. You will then get a message if the volume is moved or traded.

6. Definitely is a gotcha to watch. My Iress does show the total amount for the trade and I find that a good safety check. Now that I have a few trades going through IB as well as through Iress, I have found using the total amount in both a good safety check.

In addition, I would really like to see more intraday data available than just for the current day. I have been asking about this since first starting with Iress a few years ago, but I guess there are not enough people requesting it. I don't see why they can't do it as they have all the data stored anyway. You can go back a long time in "Course of Sales" and all the historical trade into is there.

I was told some time ago that Iress was originally created as online trading software which brokers could use. Probably explains why their charting is fairly basis. Perhaps if a few of us started putting in requests, they might look at improving these charting levels.

Can anyone tell me what the color coding in the depth screen means? - some price lines are black, some red, some green - is this reflecting the latest change in that line (increase/decrease in volume etc.?). If so thats quite handy.

It's all in the help files. By memory, I believe black means quantity is unchanged. Red means some quantity (orders) has been removed and green means more orders have been added. In the Traded column, I believe black indicates that the price of that order is the same as the previous traded price. Red means it is trading lower than the last. Green means higher. As I don't have Iress loaded, I'm going by memory. Will check it later - have to go out for a while.

I hope it handles high levels of activity, and doesn't fall over 10 times a day that will really get annoying.

I guess I'll give it a week or two and see if I get used to it. If its stable and performs thats the main thing I'm looking for.

Overall I don't like the concept of a browser based user interface - I'd far prefer a desktop application.

Iress has a help desk email - get them to help you as it appears Commsec support may not much idea about Iress according to previous posts here at ASF. In a hurry now, but I think I posted the link earlier in this thread.

Hopefully, with so many Commsec users, perhaps Iress will use the additional income to fix up some of these areas. Apart from the issues you raise, it has been the best available for trading options for some time, IMO

 

[cuttlefish]

Sails - cheers for the comments above - the tip about the volume when hovering the mouse over solves one of my missing things and also the comment about being able to monitor single orders changing is also useful. Cheers also for the gotcha on the daily chart updates.

One thing I have noticed is my options orders are going through to market more quickly and also in protrader, not sure why, but I found that my outstanding orders took a long time to update and I often had to shut down and restart protrader to amend an outstanding options order which was pretty frustrating.

The overlap thing I'm talking about isn't really that big a deal - but in protrader it coloured in all of the buy and sell orders that were in the overlap during the matchup period so it was easy to see which orders were contributing to the auction price.

Actually after half a day of using it properly with multiple tabs setup I'm starting to get used to it. It also hasn't fallen over once as yet. (I know I can make it fall over by opening a PDF news report but I'm just opening those from the comsec site instead). So maybe it will grow on me ...

Wow and as I'm typing I just got an alert that some volume in the queue had shifted (thought I'd try it out) - thats pretty neat actually.

 

[sails]

...The overlap thing I'm talking about isn't really that big a deal - but in protrader it coloured in all of the buy and sell orders that were in the overlap during the matchup period so it was easy to see which orders were contributing to the auction price....

Thanks for the info on the overlap feature - yeah it's not something I've ever seen on Iress. Only the match price and surplus volume (only works in conjunction with match price).

If only one software package could do everything, it would be wonderful! I use Bourse Data to fill in the gaps for Iress charting.

 

[fringedweller1]

i have just posted in stock chat a-h regarding BPT,
I am very interested why an order to buy was excuted way below the current share price at the time:
Source comsec:
Trade of BPT occuring on Monday, 02 Feb 2009
52 Week
Time Price Volume Value Condition
04:22:45 PM 0.775 8,998 6,973.45 XTET OS
04:20:29 PM 0.810 138,642 112,300.02 XTSXOS
04:13:25 PM 0.760 15,000,000 11,400,000.00 XTOS
04:10:22 PM 0.810 4,177 3,383.37 XT
04:10:22 PM 0.810 1,765 1,429.65
04:10:22 PM 0.810 15,681 12,701.61
04:10:22 PM 0.810 12,554 10,168.74
There where outstanding orders for .78 and above at the time:
Number Quantity Price
1 1,246 0.805
2 67,724 0.800
3 21,690 0.795
3 38,640 0.790
4 225,774 0.785
2 32,000 0.780
6 51,850 0.770
4 66,400 0.765
2 26,000 0.760
5 122,112 0.755

How can this buy proceed without the others being filled first getting the best for the seller

secondly as this is XTOS and the volume is quite high "15,000,000 would they have access to info not yet disclosed

 

[cuttlefish]

Large crossings - pretty hard to tell what they mean - certainly nothing untoward about it though and they're not uncommon. The price is negotiated - any attempt to buy or sell 15 million shares on market in one day would push the price up or down dramatically - so if its not just a portfolio reshuffle within one company but is actually a crossing between two parties they would have negotiated the price beforehand.

 

[sails]

Those that are new to Iress - are you aware that you can move the column headings around? I think Iress automatically save the changes. Just click on the heading and drag it where you want it.

Also there are often other headings not displayed. Right click anywhere on one of the column headings and it will show you anything still available to be displayed. Headings can be customised by moving headings you don't want into this list.

 

[cuttlefish]

Does anyone know if its possible to see whether orders were partial buy fills or partial sell fills in the course of sales data? In protrader this was indicated with G or F codes next to the partial fills - it was pretty handy.

 

[cuttlefish]

Well its only taken 3 days and I'm already feeling pretty comfortable with this.

The way I set the different tabbed windows up over the weekend is working well - one tab for each of the companies I trade options over, one for equities, one for news/alerts/watchlists, and one for option and equity order statuses. I've put a few equities and options trades through and apart from the cents thing catching me out occasionally and a few of the other things already mentioned, its been stable and performing well.

I'm feeling pretty relieved I thought it would take much longer to get used to it.

 

[reckoner]

Has anyone got a URL that can be used to launch comseciress straight from the desktop without having to go through a few screens on the comsec page?

Starting CommSecIRESS from your desktop:

Make a shortcut to

firefox.exe -new-window "https://www.comsec.com.au/Private/WebIRESS/WebIRESSPost.aspx"

You have to be already logged into your commsec account for this to work though.

I have written a greasemonkey script for firefox that automatically logs me in so that i can have IRESS up and running with only one click from the desktop.

I can post files along with an icon if anyone is interested.

 

[AlterEgo]

Starting CommSecIRESS from your desktop:

Make a shortcut to

firefox.exe -new-window "https://www.comsec.com.au/Private/WebIRESS/WebIRESSPost.aspx"

You have to be already logged into your commsec account for this to work though.

I have written a greasemonkey script for firefox that automatically logs me in so that i can have IRESS up and running with only one click from the desktop.

I can post files along with an icon if anyone is interested.

You shouldn't have to go through Commsec at all. Go straight to the IRESS website logon: https://web.iress.com.au/secure/form.asp

Logon needs to be in the format username@company

This was something I learned when using WebIRESS with AOT, and it still works now even though they are now taken over by Commsec. I still use 'aot' as the company part of the logon. You may need to use 'comsec' or 'commsec' - dunno, just try it. I'm also now using WebIRESS with FPMarkets, and this works with them too, just using 'fpmarkets' as the company name.

Let me know if it works for you.

 

[reckoner]

You shouldn't have to go through Commsec at all. Go straight to the IRESS website logon: https://web.iress.com.au/secure/form.asp

Logon needs to be in the format username@company

This was something I learned when using WebIRESS with AOT, and it still works now even though they are now taken over by Commsec. I still use 'aot' as the company part of the logon. You may need to use 'comsec' or 'commsec' - dunno, just try it. I'm also now using WebIRESS with FPMarkets, and this works with them too, just using 'fpmarkets' as the company name.

Let me know if it works for you.

Whilst logged in my username appears to be XXX@COMMSECIRESS.

This does not work through the web.iress.com.au website. I think they have disabled it for commsec clients.

 

[AlterEgo]

Whilst logged in my username appears to be XXX@COMMSECIRESS.

This does not work through the web.iress.com.au website. I think they have disabled it for commsec clients.

Hmmm, I thought that would work. It works for both of my other accounts. Maybe this COMMSECIRESS is different to normal IRESS somehow - I've never used it. I thought COMMSECIRESS would be the same as the AOT version of IRESS, since Commsec only introduced IRESS after they aquired AOT. FPMarkets version of IRESS is an improvement over the AOT version (some extra features), but both work directly through the web.iress address for me.

 

[sails]

Hmmm, I thought that would work. It works for both of my other accounts. Maybe this COMMSECIRESS is different to normal IRESS somehow - I've never used it. I thought COMMSECIRESS would be the same as the AOT version of IRESS, since Commsec only introduced IRESS after they aquired AOT. FPMarkets version of IRESS is an improvement over the AOT version (some extra features), but both work directly through the web.iress address for me.

From some of the posts on Commsec Iress, it appears Commsec have changed some things. It appears that those with Commsec Iress have to enter a password every time they place an order. I was with AOT when Commsec took them over (didn't stay though) and have been with a couple of other brokers using Iress since then and have never had to enter passwords for every trade.

Also, it appears that the order status window may be different. Who knows what else they have done to it and why they would want to mess with a perfectly good platform beats me.

 

[AlterEgo]

From some of the posts on Commsec Iress, it appears Commsec have changed some things. It appears that those with Commsec Iress have to enter a password every time they place an order.

That would suck. I don't have to do that with either of my accounts.

I was with AOT when Commsec took them over (didn't stay though)....

I stayed, and it has continued to work the same ever since. Nothing changed with the trading platform after the takeover. But now I'm mostly using FPMarkets IRESS platform - it has some extra features like OCO orders, and I can trade shares and DMA CFD's on the one platform.

 

[sails]

That would suck. I don't have to do that with either of my accounts.

I stayed, and it has continued to work the same ever since. Nothing changed with the trading platform after the takeover. But now I'm mostly using FPMarkets IRESS platform - it has some extra features like OCO orders, and I can trade shares and DMA CFD's on the one platform.

Hmmm - wondering if AOT customers got to keep the original Iress and all else get the changed version.

I left because because, IMO, the changes in fees for option exercise/assignment were to become unacceptably high under Commsec and really didn't like their customer support.

 

[paulchow2k]

AOT customers gets to keep the original Iress. No password required to buy or sell.

Hmmm - wondering if AOT customers got to keep the original Iress and all else get the changed version.

I left because because, IMO, the changes in fees for option exercise/assignment were to become unacceptably high under Commsec and really didn't like their customer support.