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DollarLink News -- December 31, 1997

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Enhancements Added

Custom Trading Hours for Custom Indices

With the expansion of telecommunications, the world is becoming more of a global village, and trading is becoming a 24-hour phenomenon. For example, we now have the S&P overnight market that starts shortly after the U.S. market shuts down and continues through the night until the U.S. market reopens the next morning.

Granted, trading volumes in these markets are quite a bit lower than in their traditional counterparts, but the trend is definitely up.

In DollarLink, the default trading hours for custom indices (i.e., the hours during which the custom indices are periodically recomputed) are the combination of stock and commodities trading hours as defined by the user in the SETUP program. In order to improve the effective use of custom indices and to make them more flexible, we have modified DollarLink to allow the user to specify custom trading hours for a custom index.

Thus, for example, you may have a custom index whose components are U.S. stocks, and therefore, trading hours are between 9:30 am to 4:00 pm. At the same time, you may want to evaluate another custom index between the hours of 3:00 pm and 9:00 pm because you are following some overnight market.

 All you have to do to redefine trading hours for a custom index is press the number 4 while in text mode and while the cursor is on the custom index symbol. DollarLink will display the definition of that custom index and will then ask you if you want to change its trading hours. If yes, it will then ask you to enter the start hours:minutes and the end hours:minutes. That's it. From then on, that particular custom index will evaluate only during the specified set of hours. You can change these custom-hours definitions at any time.

 The custom trading hours definition for each specific custom index is kept in separate .HRX file in the main DollarLink directory. For example, if you have a custom index named $$ABC , and you have defined custom trading hours for it, there will be a file called $$ABC.HRX in the DollarLink directory. If a custom trading hours definition file is deleted, DollarLink will then revert to using the default stock and futures trading hours as specified in SETUP for that custom index.

Update Availability

This update is available to all active DollarLink customers. (Active customers include all renters, all purchasers within the last 12 months, or purchasers who have paid the $300 support fee within the last 12 months. Contact us if you wish to check or change your status.)

Get More Power

Many of our customers are still using 486- and 386-based computers (a few are still -- believe it or not -- using 286-based computers!) to run DollarLink. There is nothing wrong with that and DollarLink should still run fine on these machines. However, DollarLink does run much faster on, say, a 166 or 200 MHz Pentium. This appearance of more effortlessness makes the trading life of the person using DollarLink easier because it allows him to concentrate more on the trading rather than the effort of the computer.

We are not trying to be salesmen for the computer industry, but there has never been a better time to get more computing power for the buck. Firms like Compaq, Dell and Gateway -- and many others -- are killing each other through competition by introducing very powerful and -- unlike in the past -- fully loaded PCs for about $1300 or less. This week, for example, Hewlett-Packard introduced a 200 MHz Pentium-based (the main processor is made by Intel, not the inferior AMD or Cyrix) complete PC for $800. That's without a screen, so with a decent monitor this machine will cost around $1100. That's incredible value when compared with what it cost just a year or two ago.

If you have an older PC, you should definitely consider upgrading your hardware because of this very recent development in the computer marketplace.

Newsletter Distribution Policy

Starting in 1998, we will only send the DollarLink newsletter to active customers. (Active customers are defined as all renters, all purchasers within the last 12 months, or purchasers who have paid the $300 support fee within the last 12 months. Contact us if you wish to check or change your status.)

You can still read the newsletters, free of charge, at our Web site. We have been posting the newsletters there for over a year and will continue to do so. The address on the Web is

http://www.dollarlink.com/news.htm

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