spazzy252

Point and Figure Charts Course by Wyckoff Analytics
 
http://ow.ly/huPt30nU7Ac
 
Thought I had shared this but forum search engine says not.

I am posting rmo system which I was able to educate based on following thread
 
http://indo-investasi.com/showthread.php/26902-Learn-Edu-me-101-Ninjascript-C
 
This has been a hell of a thread where I actually learned something useful about education.
 
This is famous rmo system popularized by metastocks several years ago, it is not current one they are using. Code for this has been available publically online for several platforms except ninja and system posted on bigmike does not work as good as original. System was done privately for ninjatrader by a friend who actually introduced me to this.
 
I've been using this for over six months now for day trading usa futures, mostly couple trades a day with pretty good results on three minutes charts, I have not tried it on other time frames, it worked for me therefore I just kept going, I also use it for stocks on daily charts. It is self explanatory you buy when everything is in your favor and sell when everything aligns, I usually take first signal in the trend, place stop nearby high or low, profit taking depends on market volatility and I admit I am not consistent on taking profits. You have to find your own stops and profit targets
 
I enclosed two screenshots in the downloadable zip file to illustrate. Link is below.
 
https://www.sendspace.com/file/eqiiyo
 
I hope it will be useful for someone.

TRy this: https://www.sendspace.com/file/qm41fm
 

Guys as I said you will get the updated version of OBEL as well as the real-time OBEL prototype, just have a little bit patience. I will get to it in a few weeks, hopefully by the end of this month.
 
FXTrader78, as for the calculation just scroll back a few pages to the fall of last year when I came to this thread. I think I was quite verbose when I was first researching this whole thing, then figuring out myself the actual precise formula as well as the CME documents and the reasoning behind this all as to why it actually works. So if you sacrifice some of your precious time and effort to read through all that you will get all the information you ever needed (plus a lot of redundant gibberish, but that's just a natural downside of an internet forum).
 
By the way, there is also one mystery that I never figured out and I guess we will just never will, and that's why OBELs seem to work in this actual implementation, a "traditional" implementation as I call it. Because, you see, all the reasoning (manipulating the security instrument rate, or its respective option derivative, so that one or another can be quickly bought or sold and/or executed to make a quick profit; bear in mind it's american options) makes perfect sense, at least to me, for what's happening in the real-time. If you were watching the YouTube videos where I was showing the real-time OBELs (the dots) you could have seen that most of the time the options kept their distance from the underlying (as if they were kept on a stick of a specific length; actually options pricing is rather a non-trivial discipline, there are many various models like Black–Scholes and whatnot and actually I never really found what particular formula is CME actually using) but sometimes, quite rarely, the options stopped moving and allowed the underlying to come to it and touch it, sometimes even to cross it. At that particular point in time the option could have been exercised in profit ("in the money"). But that was usually only for a very short time and then the underlying went back to "at the money" and the options then acted as rather a strong barrier.
So all this was kind of amazing to watch and it made sense (at least to me) but that's for what's happening now, that is for the real-time options prices and thus real-time OBELs. What I never understood and it keeps baffling me is why do the traditional OBELs work, because those ones are calculated from the last settle value. The last settle value is nothing else but simply the last value of the previous trading session. There is no mystery to the settle value. Anyway it's from the last session close, so the respective (today's) OBEL is calculated from the last session close data. Now why would the OBEL calculated from yesterday work today? Why would big players today manipulated the underlying today according to the options price from yesterday, a price that just happened to be the last price in yesterday's session (i.e. the settle value)? Why would they take that information into account, why would they care about some yesterday data at all? Doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe, just maybe, if the settle value had some special meaning, some special calculation, i.e. if the settle was somehow "a sum" of the yesterday options trading, then it could have been somewhat meaningful to use that information for today's trading. But it's not a special value, it's just the price of an option that happened to be the last one before the session was closed. Well, if you look at it from a different perspective it being the last value does bear some special meaning, it's the price where the trading session eventually "settled". But to me this would mean something special only if the underlying stopped trading at the same time as well, which is not true in case of forex that's 24/5. If you accepted that idea you would be saying that 2/3 of everyday forex trading is meaningless and doesn't affect anything, which seems like a very radical idea, to say at least (or is it?). That's by the way the reason why so many of those indicators, pivots and other nonsense that was made up tens years ago in stocks and equity markets do not and can not work in forex, because those markets did have an exchange, thus did have a solid world-wide accepted times for the beginning and end of each day trading session, so "yesterday" term had a meaning.
Anyway, I would like so much to discard the whole OBEL idea as just a coincidence with no real usability but the data (what you see on the charts; even those charts you and San4x showed here a few posts back) that just seems to me as too much of a coincidence.
[spoiler=a possible explanation]The only somewhat reasonable explanation I could think of is kinda conspiratory-ish: they do it on purpose, it's just a purposely built manipulation to catch the little fish, the same way as the whole "forecasting forex quotes by looking at currency options volumes" nonsense. They just purposely make it look like an egg can and does have any influence on the chicken who laid that egg. Purely illogical nonsense.
But I am trying to not discuss trading here anymore because using a logic, a common sense and the brain is what some people here (whose ideas and understandings about their surroundings are based on wishes and make believes, instead of the reality) puts into a frenzy mode and they go berserk, with blood in their eyes. As one person put it in the e-mail sent to me, it would surely be comforting if it worked like that but a normal person when facing the reality that disproves this comforting wish will just accept the facts, wake up and move on. On the other hand I guess it may be hard to stay normal when you have your own substantial amount of money bet on it. But just because you are personally involved is that an excuse to stop behaving normally and logically? I remember a person who, years back when the attacks to 1.6 EURUSD were happening, after one of the rebounds went short and he kept it open even though the price continued north. He kept it open for months, being in thousands pips minus, thousands bucks loss. The loss amounted to several months of salary for him so it was quite a substantial and he just kept it open, no matter what advices and explanations he was given by the others in the group, he didn't listen anything that wasn't "compatible" with his wish (that is that the price will go down). He somehow thought that as long as he keeps it open he will not loose his money. He wasn't able to comprehend the simple fact that his money was already long time gone. Well, I would partly blame Metatrader for showing the extremely misleading "balance" value. Some other trading platforms don't show it at all, they only show "equity" and it's much more clear people. But anyway, his totally irrational behavior was spectacular to watch. He didn't sleep well, sucked at work, didn't tell his wife, his mood was getting worse and worse (lately it wasn't even possible to talk to him at all, he responded "don't disturb me, I am focusing on the charts", as if his watching the price could somehow make the price to change the direction) but he just didn't close the position no matter what. My understanding is that, psychologically, when the loss reaches some size (in his case because he didn't put an initial SL in place) it just doesn't matter anymore, it's no reason to behave logically anymore because the loss is already too big to swallow so you just turn into a gambler and just hope and pray. It's the same for the criminals, once you kill the first person there is no reason for stopping, the outcome when get caught will not get any worse.
To tell the truth, questions without clear answers like these make me to be very thankful that I am not a trader and don't have to live in this terrible uncertainty and make decisions based on guesses, let alone to bet my money on it, and for the same reason I admire all of you who actually do that because I wouldn't be able to do what you do. That's why I am trying to help you from my programming perspective.
 
If what I wrote above seems confusing and incoherent to you just read the past posts here and watch the videos and you will understand what I was talking about. Of all trading ideas and "indicators" I have seen and encountered in this crazy trading world the OBELs are probably the most powerful and, for once, they are not a total "wish come true" nonsense. The only thing even better is my UDC FAT (not very modest statement, I know) but that's only logical because it uses OBELs as a filter so it's naturally superior. But you will get UDC FAT on your screen soon too, so you will see yourself. I just hope my "soon" will not turn out to be a Blizzard-like "soon" (http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon).

Hi everyone, just a little update about what's going on here.
 
I temporarily suspended the UDC FAT visualization as it's being reworked and the new version is so much better that I found it misleading to keep the visualization of the old version up. When the update is done the web will be up again and I will start working on the native UDC FAT client for Metatrader so that you will be able to get all the data on your trading terminal with the very low latency. There is also some progress with the synthetic ultrafast data feed I mentioned earlier, it will be integrated into UDC FAT. I am quite excited about it as it have the depth of the market and is faster than virtually any broker's datafeed. Another news is that after the UDC FAT is finally done and you get it on your terminals, then at least for another half a year I keep it that way and will not go forward with it in terms of offering it to the institutions for sale. I want you to enjoy it for some reasonable time before I sell it and I am in no need to hurry, so that's probably a good news for you. I will make a new thread about FAT anyway, when the time comes.
 
I also decided to follow up on my OBEL work here and release the updated version after all. I will just have to find the time to do that. Together with traditional OBEL I plan to release the prototype of the real-time OBEL that you could have seen in UDC FAT visualization. That's for two reasons: for one CME announced that they are going to retire the CME datasuite product that I was using to get the realtime OBEL data from (http://datasuite.cmegroup.com/dataSuite.html?template=opt&productCode=6E&exchange=XCME&selected_tab=fx) and the other reason is that even if they kept it I would have to remove it from FAT anyway due to potential legal issues. It's actually quite funny because they were planning to retire the CME datasuite on Friday last week but last minute they moved the deadline to the end of September. So I want to release the realtime OBEL so that you can enjoy it while it is still available and kinda datamine their website (as it is quite intensive network-wise). I will make a new thread with both OBEL as well.
 
Lastly, I started working on another project for this community, this one will be a big one and hopefully helpful to the biggest group of people here. For that I will open a new thread too.
 
Lot of plans, only if I had the time for everything. It will all take a while, remember this all is just a side activity of mine, but I am positive it will happen in terms of one or a very few months (definitely the realtime OBEL thing must go soon). So stay tuned.

The method I use to trade around these levels include price action (Pin Bar, IB) and the use of regular & hidden divergences of an oscillator on timeframes 15 minutes and above.

ACCUMULATION points in Options Levels barriers.
 
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/8581/gggggggggggggggggggggg3.gif

Look how close the accumulation points are from our options levels,
always exactly before a huge spike.
 
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4272/optionsp.gif

EURUSD M15
 
=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/9/optionsx.png/]http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/1471/optionsx.png

URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/850/clusterdelta1.png/]http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/3849/clusterdelta1.png[/url

Hi everyone, just to explain what going on on the chart.
 
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/9849/bigph.png

I've made another little discovery that indicates that the realtime options webpage (http://datasuite.cmegroup.com/dataSuite.html?template=opt&productCode=6E&exchange=XCME&selected_tab=fx) is really realtime. The reason is that there is another CME webpage using the same engine but showing the 6E futures quotes and that webpage really does show the data in the real time. That other webpage is this: http://datasuite.cmegroup.com/dataSuite.html?template=nfx&productCode=6E&exchange=XCME&selected_tab=fx and here is the screenshot with the proof: http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/1803/eurusd6e.png (upper left is NT with realtime datafeed and bellow is mentioned webpage showing the same data updated at the same second).
 
So it looks promising. I am looking forward to start working on it as soon as I finish the statistics indi.

Should the intraday options quotes prove to be useful, here is an idea what more could be theoretically done.
 
If there is enough interest I could buy CME datafeed and relay it from my server directly to your Metatrader's OBEL engine so you would have OBEL data in the true real-time. Of course since we would have the CME datafeed we could use it for other purposes too, like showing other CME quotes within the Metatrader, using the volumes data etc.
 
I have quite powerful servers I am using for my programming work housed in a data centre so if I devoted one of them to this "project" I could also offer some VPS services as a side effect because the server would be hugely underutilized otherwise. Since the servers have 1Gbps Internet connection it might be interesting. And of course some other associative features, like a chat room or a forum, trading signals, statistics etc.
 
The downside is that it (redistributing the CME datafeed, and thus everything resulting from it) would be illegal and I can't obviously jeopardize my well established business, nor my name, so it either would have to be for a closed group of reliable members, or I would have to disassociate myself from the server so that if it blows it wouldn't get back to me. One way how to do that is to put indo-investasi IP address in front of my server so that all the traffic would go from you to indo-investasi server and only the indo server would know IP address of my server. That would require a willingness of indo staff and probably would increase the expenses and caused some additional data delay. Other way could be to get some homeless from a street to sign a housing contract, though this has caveats of its own.
 
There are also other ways, but I am afraid less probable. Since some people already do trade with CME they already have the datafeed, so they could in fact act as the "data providers". I would program a little tool for them that would gather the data in their trading station and send it to my server. But it would be risky for them, there would be an additional delay and it would work only if their trading station is running.
 
This is just an idea for the future, it's not sure it will ever happen, but I am throwing it into the air just so that we all could think about it in the meantime. If you are interested in this idea and are willing to contribute, you can start researching what all datafeeds from various redistributors are available and what is their cost, so that we could get a better idea about what would it take.

While working on adding those index and energy instruments into OBEL engine, I've made a little but very interesting "discovery": we can get the OBEL values from CME website in almost real-time!
 
Look here (what we are interested in is the "last" value):
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/euro-fx_quotes_globex_options.html?exchange=XCME&foi=OPT&venue=G&productCd=6EZ2&underlyingContract=6E&floorContractCd=ECZ2&expMonth=201212
 
So far, for today's trading we have been using OBEL data from the last closed trading day, that is the data delayed by quite many hours. With this, we could use the data delayed no more than 10-15 minutes. I could easily draw Call and Put lines for up to 4 Strikes on the chart, live.
 
Furthermore, it seems there is a separate data from Open Outcry session (the first one is from globex):
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/euro-fx_quotes_openOutcry_options.html?exchange=XCME&foi=OPT&venue=F&productCd=ECZ2&underlyingContract=EC&floorContractCd=ECZ2&expMonth=201212
 
It may be interesting to compare the data from globex and outcry, their correlation and what is their impact on spot Forex. So much possibilities to explore here.
 
 
fxnizar: definitely keep all your suggestions in mind and remind me of that when the OBEL statistics indi is finished.
 
 
EDIT: so it seems that open outcry quotes are not being updated on the CME web, but that's ok, globex trading is bigger anyway.
 
 
So I am thinking about reading this options quotes table every minute by the OBEL engine. From there I would reformat the numbers as follows:
- "high", "low", "prior settle", "last" => into FX quote format
- "change" => into a number of pips
 
and display them (still done from within the engine) together with "volume" and "last updated" in the form of a mini-spreadsheet. At the same time export the latest "last" into global variables that in turn would be gathered by the OBEL indi and drawn onto the chart as lines.
Sorry if it sounds too complicated or confusing but it will be pretty neat.

Udc,
 
Thank you for all your hard work and providing such an invaluable tool to the trading community. I would like to see the data like that in the table. Is there a way for you to add a couple calculations within your table for an example the Put/Call ratio for both volume and OI? This would help for quantifying & measuring market sentiment.
 
Thank You,
Spazzy252

OBEL engine v1.05 & OBEL v1.05
 
Changes:
 
OBEL-engine
 
The engine now properly gets the data for all 5 available trading days, for both expiry months, for all 6 trading instruments. In the CSV files, the data is stored in reversed chronological order (the most recent trading day first) so the format of CSV files is compatible with previous versions.
 
The engine can now detect what timezone your computer is in and from there it calculates the offset from your local time to UTC time (a.k.a. GMT time). If the autodetection doesn't work properly you can turn it off (parameter AutodetectLocaltimeToUTCoffset) and set the offset manually (parameter LocaltimeToUTCoffsetInMinutes). For example, if you are in GMT+1 timezone then your offset to UTC is "-60", if you are in New York then your offset is "300". But the autodetection should work so you don't need to set anything.
The current value (either manually set, or autodetected) of LocaltimeToUTCoffsetInMinutes is printed out to the experts log when the engine is attached to a chart so you can check it.
 
Since the engine now knows what time it is, it will dig into CME website only during the settlement publishing times. The mechanism is like this: when the engine is attached to the chart it gets the data from CME website immediately, no matter what time it is. If no error happens during the process (if it does happen the process is repeated in 2 minutes) the engine checks whether we are in the settlement time range (14:00 - 18:00 CT, that is 20:00 - 24:00 UTC). If so, the next run will be in 5 minutes (parameter RefreshEveryXminutes). If we are not in the settlement time range it then check whether all the data we have is "final", that is "last updated 6:00 PM". If not, the next run will be in 5 minutes. If we do have the final data the next run will be scheduled at the nearest 14:18 CT (20:18 UTC) in the future (the data is published at 14:17, 14:30, 15:00, 15:20 and 18:00 CT).
 
The whole engine now runs in an infinite loop so it doesn't need a new tick to be triggered. That's important if you want it to get the final data on Friday because the data is published when the market is already closed for the weekend and thus the engine wouldn't work had it relied on a tick triggering.
 
The log messages "Possibly new CME data" are turned off by default and can be turned on by a new parameter Verbose.
 
OBEL
 
The indicator now reads and displays the OBELs for all 5 available trading days with distinction between the regular CME market hours (7:20 - 14:00 CT) of which the OBELs are calculated and the rest of the day where the lines are drawn with lowered color intensity controlled by ProtractedLinesIntensityRatio parameter (0.7 by default, that is 70%).
 
Indicator by default checks for changes in the CSV file every 2 minutes (parameter RefreshEveryXminutes) and repeats the process in 1 minutes if no file is found.
 
To draw the lines at the correct time the broker charts timezone must be detected. This can be done only when market is open and thus the broker is announcing its time. The detected offset from UTC to broker's time is then stored into a global variable (named "OBEL_UTCtoBroker_12345678" where the last part is the account number) so that the indicator would work also during the weekend. If the indicator is attached to a chart on the weekend and the global variable is not found (and the autodetection is turned on) the alert message is shown.
If the autodetection doesn't work properly you can turn it off (parameter AutodetectUTCtoBrokerOffset) and set the offset manually (parameter UTCtoBrokerOffsetInMinutes). For example, if your chart is in GMT+1 timezone then the offset from UTC to your chart is "60", if you are in New York then your offset is "-300". But the autodetection should work so you don't need to set anything.
The current value (either manually set, or autodetected) of UTCtoBrokerOffsetInMinutes is printed out to the experts log when the indicator is attached to a chart so you can check it.
 
 
Download link:
http://www.directmirror.com/files/LRXWLFM4
http://mir.cr/X308JBJM

Now this is what I was talking about:
 
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/3097/obel5daysdoneright.png
 
We start 5 finished trading days ago (that is Monday on the picture) at 7:20 CT (broker charts timezone taking into account) and from there we draw OBELs to 14:00 CT because from that time segment are OBELs calculated. From 14:00 CT to 7:20 CT next day (Tuesday) we draw protracted lines with decreased color intensity (adjustable, of course; I was unable to properly draw dotted lines so I had to settle with lowered intensity). Then again the same process until the most recent finished trading day (Friday) where we not only draw protracted lines to the 7:20 CT next day (today, Monday - the ongoing trading session; the weekend is detected) but we also draw from 7:20 CT to 14:00 CT (in the future) the dotted lines. As soon as 14:00 CT happens and CME publishes todays data and we get them then all dotted lines disappear and will be replaced with regular OBELs calculated from today's session which will again be protracted with lines of lowered color intensity up to 7:20 CT tomorrow and from there to 14:00 CT there will again be the dotted lines. Hope it makes sense.
 
In case you don't see the whole picture, here is the url: http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/3097/obel5daysdoneright.png

Back to the subject. The intestines of both engine and indicator are reworked, I am now properly getting and locally storing the data for all 5 recent trading days:
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7727/obel5days.png
 
By the way, on the next to the last picture, with OBELs from Thursday 11/01/2012, notice the particularly strong OBEL at 1.2852 how long it resisted on Friday during post-NFP shakeout. I was watching it live and it was really interesting. The USDJPY analogy OBEL was at 80.667 and that one resisted successfully.
 
Now all what I need is just to put the lines into the correct time segments where they belong, considering your broker charts timeshift. And since I will be handling the timezones I will also make the engine to grab the website data only between, say, 14:00 and 18:30 CT, that should do. Then the statistics indi will become the topic of the day.

OBEL v1.01
 
Changes:
 
Just a visual improvement - now you can selectively choose from the following list what information you want to see in the description:
 
- Options trade date
- Options expiry month
- type of the Option (call/put) of which the OBEL is calculated
- OBEL price
- prior day OI
- estimated volume
- original Strike and Settle values (in round brackets)
 
You can display any combination of those, or you can of course choose to not display any description at all.
 
 
Download link: (contains both OBEL and OBEL-engine)
http://mir.cr/MX6KASA9
http://www.directmirror.com/files/1II6HTNT
 
 
This is probably as good as it gets using the information from the CME website. It's not perfect, though, because they show there the OI information 1 day older than the Settle value. For example, if the most recent closed trading day is 2012-10-29 then the website shows the Settle from 2012-10-29 but the OI from 2012-10-28 (hence "prior day OI"). So if you are using MinOI filters you are in fact filtering Settle levels from yesterday by the OI values these levels have got the day before yesterday.
 
Now, why doesn't CME show OI values from the same day as the Settle values? I suspect they do it on purpose to make it harder for people to utilize these information via automated processing. Because at the same time the website is updated they also publish the daily bulletin package in the form of PDF files and there they do show the OI values from the same day as the Settle values. So it just must be malice on their side and it's a s.t.u.p.i.d one actually because extracting information from a PDF is not fundamentally difficult, it's just a little bit more inconvenient. If I happen to have enough time to do that (unfortunately not anytime soon) I may just do that, it will have to be a standalone solution, though, it will process all utilizable PDF files from the package (that will make spazzy252 happy as he wanted to use the OBEL values for other instruments and on different trading platforms) and it will produce CSV files the same way as the MT4's OBEL-engine does now.

A strategy thought
 
Here is a strategy thought. You most probably already figured it out yourself, but here it is anyway, someone might find it useful.
 
People develop strategies around these levels, e.g. trading retraces or breakouts. But you may go a different way and instead use these levels simply as an additional filter in your existing strategies. What do we know about these levels? The price may react to them (it may bounce back, stall, or quickly break through them) or it may entirely ignore them.
So realistically speaking, there is a chance that the price will bounce back, or stall and then bounce back due to the loss of momentum. Now, if your existing strategy is based on very short trades, like scalping, and it tells you that right now it's a good time to open a position, but at the same time you see a level nearby in your direction, you may consider to pass and not open the position. It may, or may not, increase your winning rate.
Or, if the level is far enough you may open a position and use the area around the level as a target.
Also, it may be useful to set the MinOI parameter rather low (minimum is 1) for these purposes.

You don't need to try any different setting combinations, just read the error: "dll calls are not allowed". Then allow them and you won't get that error.

OBEL v1.00 + OBEL engine v1.00
 
Here goes the first public version of OBEL (Options break-even levels).
 
I separated it into two parts: an expert advisor "OBEL-engine" and an indicator "OBEL". The reason being, compared to the scripts and expert advisors the MT4 indicators are not multi-threaded. Instead, they all run in the same thread as the main program. This is quite dangerous as every computing-intense piece of code can virtually freeze the whole Metatrader. Now, even though the whole downloading/processing/saving cycle takes less than 10 seconds per instrument even those few seconds may be crucial if you just at that moment want to close a position, let alone a rare case when due to some kind of timeout (harddisk, network, remote CME server) the program would hang for a longer period or even indefinitely. Therefore I've made this part of the code in the form of expert advisor to stay safe. So what you need to do is simply to attach the EA to any chart, no matter of what symbol.
 
 
OBEL-engine
 
 
Description
 
OBEL-engine is an MT4 expert that at given interval periodically downloads and processes CME Options settlement data from the following web pages:
 
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/australian-dollar_quotes_settlements_options.html
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/british-pound_quotes_settlements_options.html
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/canadian-dollar_quotes_settlements_options.html
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/euro-fx_quotes_settlements_options.html
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/japanese-yen_quotes_settlements_options.html
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/g10/swiss-franc_quotes_settlements_options.html
 
The Options data is downloaded for the most recent trading day and the nearest month expiry, and if they differ also for the nearest quarter-month expiry. Within the processing the data is unified to the format CME maintains in the respective daily bulletin PDFs, then the break-even points are calculated (for an explanation see post #820), converted to the FX format if necessary (i.e. JPYUSD -> USDJPY) and finally stored locally as CSV. The filename convention is OBEL_symbol_date.csv (i.e. OBEL_EURUSD_2012.10.24.csv).
 
When the new data is downloaded, it is first compared to the previously gathered data and processed only if the data seems to differ. Due to the fact that CME web pages are dynamically generated it may happen that the webpage differs in the HTML code although the actual Options data does not differ. That's why there is a second level verification after the data is processed and when it turns out the data doesn't really differ the locally stored CSV files are not overwritten. Hence the log message "Possible new data gathered" followed by "No new data found".
 
OBEL-engine is quite talkative during its work, all its messages can be found in the experts log. Optionally the verbosity can be increased by enabling the GetHTML logging. Also, all the log messages can be completely turned off by another option.
 
At the first sight it may seem unreasonable to download the web pages repeatedly throughout the day as the Options settlement data is supposed to be published only once a day, but in fact according to the CME the data is published and republished repeatedly (preliminary version, final version) so instead of handling the timezones in order to determine what time of your local computer corresponds to the CST times I just let it do the downloading continuously to make sure that I have always the most recent data. In you are concerned about the amount of Internet traffic you can enable the GetHTMLverbose parameter and see how much data is actually downloaded in every cycle and adjust the RefreshEveryXminutes parameter to your needs.
 
Parameters
 
RefreshEveryXminutes (15) - the interval to download web pages (applies only when the whole process finishes with success; in case of any kind of error the process is repeated in 5 minutes).
GetHTMLverbose (false) - the option to show messages related to the downloading.
Silent (false) - the option to turn off all messages.
 
 
OBEL
 
 
Description
 
OBEL is an MT4 indicator that periodically reads the local CSV files and draws the lines according to its settings. You can choose whether to draw the break-even lines for the nearest month expiry, or the q-month expiry, or both. You can have lines of up to 5 different thicknesses and for each thickness you can set a different color, all that separately for Call type and Put type of lines. You can choose whether the selected colors will get their intensity adjusted based on the ratio of given OI compared to the maximum OI found and this intensity adjustment can be based on either linear or logarithmic function.
 
When determining what thickness and color should a level be drawn with, the first highest matching criteria will be used. For example, if MinOIforWidth1=300, MinOIforWidth2=1000 and MinOIforWidth3=2000, and given level has OI 1900, the Width2 parameters will be used.
 
Furthermore, you can choose whether or not to show the text description for each line and what this description should include. Also, you can choose whether the lines will be drawn on the background (beneath the chart candles) or foreground.
 
Last, but not least, you can choose whether you want the indicator to redraw the lines every time it checks the file, or only once it detects a new data. This can be useful if you for example want to temporarily move or even delete some line(s) just for a little while until the next file-check (RedrawOnlyWhenNewData is disabled), or for as long as no new data is found (RedrawOnlyWhenNewData is enabled).
 
Parameters (except the self-explanatory ones)
 
VariableColorsAdjust (1) - if UseVariableColors is enabled, this parameter determines the curve used for the color intensity calculation. Minimum value is 0.001 which results in a linear function where the intensity of a color is linearly proportional to the ratio of given OI to the max OI. Higher the value is, more the function becomes logarithmic so that even low OI lines will be visible.
RefreshEveryXminutes (5) - the interval to check the file for a possibly new data (applies only when the whole process finishes with success and the data found - regardless whether new or old - is relevant; in case the file does not exist or the data is not in the correct format the process is repeated in 1 minutes).
 
 
Download link:
http://mir.cr/WLANRJW0
http://www.directmirror.com/files/OPPR02QR

I've added an option to automatically adjust the intensity of a color based on the ratio of given level's OI compared to the highest call/put OI:
http://imageshack.us/a/img829/9806/obelvariablecolors.png
 
Nearly finished.

Tpo
 
Before I finish the OBEL (Options break-even levels) indicator here is something what you might find interesting and perhaps useful to use together with OBEL: TPO (time price opportunity) indicator. Basically what it does is showing the areas where the price was most often in given period of time.
 
On the picture you can see a silver dash line indicating the TPO levels calculated from the last 7200 minutes (5 days) and a gray dot line showing the same from the last 1440 minutes (1 day):
http://imageshack.us/a/img72/4526/optionstpo.png
 
It's taken from here: http://fxcoder.ru/indicators/tpo, all credit goes to the russian guy, I just changed the defaults and added an option to show a trendline instead of just a simple horizontal line so the line is only as long as is the data segment that it uses for calculation. You can get the modified version from here: http://pastebin.com/dKSCxm7H. When attaching multiple instances of TPO to the same chart keep in mind that the "Id" variable must be different for each instance.

This is quite understatement, I would say it's a mess. They have the same table on the website and in pdf so you would logically expect to find there the same values in the same format. Values are the same but the format is not. Out of 6 currency pairs only in 1 case the format really matches. In other 4 cases the website table has inexplicably an additional zero in the strike column (e.g. instead 1050 there is 10500) and in 1 other case the website table has again inexplicably the settlement price shown as a thousandth of what is in pdf (e.g. instead 3.10 there is 0.00310). If they at least had the different format same for all the pairs then that might be perhaps partially understandable but almost every pair on the website has values in "differently different" format. It just makes you wonder how something like this could have ever happened and more importantly why don't they fix it.
 
 
Anyway, what tradershare indicated - to have different colors for Calls and Puts - seems as a good idea so I added this feature. Now the closest month is green/red and q-month is darker green/red. Also I added option to show the original strike and settle values in round brackets for reference.
 
Here is what it looks like on all 6 supported pairs (all in default setting MinOI=300, except on USDCHF I set MinOI=1):
http://imageshack.us/a/img90/5554/audusdn.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img62/1824/eurusds.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img72/272/gbpusdf.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img24/145/usdcado.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img571/9789/usdchfi.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img21/6749/usdjpyj.png
 
Now it shows correctly the break-even levels in the exact way as they are supposed to be calculated, without any arbitrary changes. That's also how it should be correctly called - Options break-even levels.
 
What's interesting, if you think about it, is that those levels are calculated from friday's settlements but if you look at the charts they pretty much work even for the previous days, kinda backwards in time. In other words, they don't change significantly from day to day. Which is a good thing because it means that if the level was good not only friday but also for several days before then there is quite a chance it will be good even monday (the next day).
 
So it seems this one is close to be finished, I will release it probably next week.
 
 
spazzy252: I think it could be doable to grab txt files from ftp.cmegroup.com via external DLL and then process them similarly to what I am doing now, but I am not promising anything. In any case, give me the list of instruments you would like, where I can find their respective txt files with the settlements info and also give me the respective Metatrader symbol names so I could match them together.