Option Book Drag-and-Drop

Option books provide you with a drag-and-drop capability. Drag-and-drop is a method of grabbing an option, group, strategy, or book with the mouse, dragging it to a window, and depositing it there for display. You can drop a book element into options chart windows, quote windows, and other book definitions.

To drag and drop, position the mouse pointer over an element. Then click and hold the left mouse key. When you begin moving the mouse, the drag pointer appears, indicating you've successfully grabbed an object to drop:

You can drop any book element into an options chart window, or into a quote window. When dropping a book element into a quote window, make sure there are enough quote code groups in the quote window to accommodate all the open option positions. This is of particular importance where you are dropping a strategy made up of many positions.

Dropping a window into another book definition is also simple. Books are organized into a hierarchy. The parent element is the option book. A book consists of one or more strategies. A strategy consists of one or more groups. A group consists of one or more instruments. Given this hierarchy, it would seem as though you cannot drop a book into a strategy. On first inspection, doing so appears to create a "square peg through the round hole" phenomenon. However, you can drag and drop definitions across most levels of the book hierarchy.

You can always "drop up" the hierarchy, that is, you can drop a position or group into a strategy, or a strategy into a book.

You can also "drop across" the hierarchy. For example, you can drop a book into another book, or a strategy into another strategy. Dropping a book into another book adds the strategies of the dropped book to the current list of strategies in the target book. Duplicate strategy names, if any, are handled by appending a number to the end of the strategy name. Dropping a strategy into another strategy adds the transactions of the dropped strategy to the list of transactions in the target strategy.

Finally, you can "drop down" the hierarchy. Here, however, there is a very practical limitation. You can only drop a book into a strategy. No other downward movement is possible. Dropping a book into a strategy aggregates all the positions in all the strategies of the dropped book into the target strategy. This is particularly useful for conducting risk analysis of a given market on a firm-wide basis. For example, a trading desk manager can consolidate the books of his or her traders into one strategy. Then, using the sorting and grouping mechanisms, create a group that contains his or her total position in a given market, i.e., bonds. The manager could then drag-and-drop the bond group into an option chart to analyze the firm's risk exposure in the bond market.

Aspen helps you recognize when you can drop an element by changing the drag pointer when you cannot drop. When a target is incapable of receiving the object you are dragging, the drag pointer changes:

If you do not see the drag pointer change, you can drop.

If you attempt to drop an element into a window is not designed to handle multiple instruments (Time & Sales, News, etc.), you will generate a "Can't find window to drop Book into" message in the status bar. If you see this message, make sure the drag pointer is within the borders of the target window. If you still get this message, make sure the target window can accept multiple instruments.