eTradepad is a great tool, it lets you price, build strategies, strip pricings, compare prices and save quotes for later use. The tool is very rich and there are few things to know about it if you want to maximize its usefulness. Here’s my 10 things to know about eTradepad for a better you!
1. Finding a field name in eTradepad
Let’s start with the basics. When writing code, sometimes finding a field name is not obvious. Of course, one could always use the right click-Field-Plain name but you can’t copy it. So I prefer to use formula editor-customize on the field to have the field name and its string directly in the formula editor
2. Comment code
This is very very important: always comment your code. Especially when you put in a workaround or something not obvious. You could think that it will guarantee your job but it will effectively guarantee that you won’t remember your code in couple of months. And that if you go on holidays, people will need to get in touch with you to understand what is happening
3. Macros
You can create macro buttons in eTradepad. You basically attach some code to them and you can then add them at the bottom of your screen. Macros are very useful when the user wants to have some things changed all in one go
4. Workflow refresh
The button to have when doing pretrade workflow. (it sits at the very end of the list of action buttons: wkf: XML refresh). This button refreshes the pretrade code and applies it. So rather than starting a new session every time you need to try out some pretrade, use that button
5. Formula debugger
Hopefully everyone knows about it now but the formula debugger (Help-Monitor-Formula debugger) brings a popup with the executed formula as well as boolean statements and values loaded into variables.
6. Viewer
You can turn your etradepad into a viewer. The look would be like a pricing matrix. For example option maturity on the top, swap maturity on the left and premiums as the output. The development is relatively recent and can be triggered from the external settings of the notepad you’re in.
7. SCF … Don’t
SCFs are a no go in eTradepad. If you do need to use them, test, test, test and re-test. They are not all supposed to be used in the context of eTradepad. Choose an additional flow or any other solution instead of using them
8. Text area
With Mxpress, Murex did a great job at educating people to use the text area. It can give a nice text description of the payoff that the user is currently pricing. It can also be copied into the clipboard if the info needs to be sent to customers
9. Archiving
When awaiting for a customer answer or to share a pricing, Archiving is a great tool. It lets you save a pricing (either privately or publicly) so you can re-use it for later. It is much lighter than saving a dedicated notepad for each pricing you want to keep. In terms of maintenance, it is much easier to clean old archives as opposed to old notepads
10. Excel paste special
Really love this function. If you’ve got a correctly formatted excel (and preferably a notepad with horizontal display), you can paste from Excel into Murex creating new entries (aka new pricings). For that you need the action Paste Special and choose to create new lines. Very useful if sometimes you need to price a set of trades external to Murex.
What about you dear reader? Was this useful to you? Any other tricks to give away?