Macrobond 1.10

The new version can be installed directly via the Macrobond platform by clicking the yellow line that appears on the screen or by selecting Check for update on the Help menu. If you need assistance, a description of how to upgrade is provided by the IT-department, which may be found here. Simply click Upgrade for further instructions.

Selection of new functionality

Multiple chart panes

Charts can now have multiple panes. Each pane has a separate y-axis, but a shared x-axis.

You can add and remove panes in the Graph layout dialog.

Calculated series

You can now take any time series calculated in a Macrobond document and define an in-house series based on those calculations. When you use the time series in a document, the observations will be calculated based on the current data.

To create a calculated time series, select a series in a Time table and chose “Save calculation as in-house series…” from the Edit or context menu. The calculations will be stored as a special copy of the document.

When you edit a calculated time series, you will see the document where the series is defined. You can then make changes to the document and also define several time series to be published from the same document.

New Statistics and Detrend analyses

We have renamed the analysis formerly known as “Statistics” to “Statistics (old)”, which you might still find in old documents, and replaced it with two new analyses: Statistics and Detrend.

The new Statics analysis allows you to add several statistics for each series. You can specify the estimation sample range for each calculation and also determine if the resulting time series should cover the whole range or only the estimation range.

There is also a new method in Statistics where you can draw a line between two points on a graph.

The Detrend analysis can remove components such as the linear trend, exponential trend and the mean.

The new Cross variance analysis

With the Cross variance analysis you can calculate one of three matrices: Covariance, Correlation or Regression slope. The elements of the matrix are the pairwise calculation of the selected method.

In the Matrix presentation, you can highlight the lowest and highest values. You can also reorder the rows and columns.

Search for similar series in other regions

There is a new Action that can be used to search for corresponding series in other regions. This works for series that are identified as region key series in our database.

Change regions

When you use series that are identified as region key series in our database, there is a new feature that helps you replace the series in a document with the corresponding series for another region.

The command “Change region…” on the File menu will bring up a dialog where you can change to another region.

Additional modes in the Yield curve analysis

With the option called “Rates at a future time” we calculate forward rates that start at the point of the maturity length that you provide. This will, in essence, give you a view of the yield curve at a future point in time relative the observations.

For instance, this chart shows what the yield curve of January 2013 looked like in January 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The second option allows you to calculate the forward rates between the instruments.

Improved relative points in time

In earlier versions you could specify a relative point in time like -36, which is interpreted as 36 observations before the end. The drawback is that the actual length is then dependent on the frequency.

We have now added support for writing expressions such as: -3y, -3q, -3m, -3w and -3d. There is also a new user interface to help you out.

Select columns visibility, order and formatting in the Table presentation

In the new “Change table layout” dialog, you can select what columns that should be visible, in what order to show them and how numbers are formatted.

Warning about discontinued series

Discontinued series are now marked with red in the Series list and formula editor. The tooltip contains information that it is discontinued.

When a document contains one or more series that have become discontinued, there will be a yellow stripe notification. You can dismiss this warning by clicking on it. If more series becomes discontinued in the document, the warning will be displayed again.

Specify the DPI when exporting a chart image

When exporting a chart bitmap image (PNG) you can specify another DPI than 96, which is what is used on the screen. By using a higher DPI you get an image with higher resolution, which might make it look better when scaled or printed. The drawback is that the image file will be larger.

Excel UDF functions

We have added three functions that can be used in Excel spreadsheet formulas: MbndGet, MbndDate and MbndMeta. These can be used when you want to get a few values from a time series, such as the last value. For example, to retrieve the last value or the “eur” time series, you can use this expression in Excel:

=MbndGet(“eur”)

If you want to download large parts of a time series, you should use the Macrobond Data sets as before.

For more details, see the Getting started document.

Source, Unit and Region as optional data in Excel

You can now select to include information about the source, region and unit when downloading data in Excel.

Selection of new content

World Oil data from JODI

JODI Oil consists of data from more than 90 countries or regions and the members of the six pioneer organizations (APEC, EUROSTAT, IEA, OLADE, OPEC and UNSD) that participate represent over 90% of global oil supply and demand. For more information about JODI please visit http://www.jodidata.org

The database consists of:

• Ten product categories: Crude Oil, NGL, LPG, Naphtha, Gasoline, Kerosene, Kerosene Type Jet Fuel, Diesel Oil, Fuel Oil and Total Oil
• Seven flows: Production, Demand, Refinery Intake, Imports, Exports and Closing Stock Levels
• Data in three different units: barrels, barrels per day and tons
• Data for more than 90 participating countries
• Data from January 2002

The series have been integrated in the existing Tree structure for each country under for instance Foreign Trade or Stock Levels/Inventories. It is also available in: Economics – by source > JODI (Joint Organizations Data Initiative).

Financial Instruments from ICAP

World class data for the G7 countries and the Nordic region available in our new ICAP add-on database. The database covers a multitude of OTC interest rate instruments, with an emphasis on interest rate swaps, denominated in eight currencies and priced in several different geographical locations as well as other types of data like FX spot and FX forwards. The almost 35 000 available daily frequency time series have extensive history and are updated throughout the day as different markets closes.

The database includes:

• Bonds – corporate, sovereign and US agency
• Currency spot and forward rates
• Deposit rates, FRAs and repos
• Basis swaps and cross currency basis swaps
• Inflation swaps
• Interest rate swaps
• Swaptions, straddles and cap/floor
• Overnight indexed swaps
• Swap spreads

Minor additions

Increased coverage for Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Georgia and Colombia. Added Milwaukee PMI, selected items from the ECB SAFE Survey, BIS private credit data, the CFTC TFF report and increased coverage of investment fund balance sheet data from ECB.

Soon to be released

Consensus estimates from Consensus Economics as an add-on database.