Macrobond 1.22

We’ve just released an updated version of the Macrobond application. The new features you’ll have available when you update can be broken down into 1) features that make it easier to find and prep data, 2) new or expanded analysis methods, 3) Layout customization improvements (especially in bar charts), and 4) miscellaneous new features.

Related to Finding and Preparing Data

1. “Locate in Tree” Selects Series

Previously, the action Locate in tree that you get as an option after selecting a series in a document only located the category in the data tree where the series was located. Now, it also selects the first occurrence of the time series in the list of series below the data tree.

2. Options for Currency Conversion

We’ve added more options for how exchange rate conversion is done and changed the default for new documents. The currency conversion feature uses a daily exchange rate series available in Macrobond. When your series have a lower-than-daily frequency, there is a new automatic conversion method, described below. You can choose another method in the conversion settings tab in the Series list.

New Automatic Method and Additional Options

For new documents, the default setting will be Automatic. This means that the method will be decided according to the properties of the series. The base method will be Last for daily series and Last 5d median for other frequencies, but we also look at some additional properties: for Flow series and series that we know are sampled in the middle of the period or are averages of the period, we use the average exchange rate; if we know that the series is sampled at the start of the period, we use First 5d median.

Legacy Method

Previously, the automatic exchange rate conversion was done by matching the frequency of the series with a set of exchange rate series and typically only daily and monthly series were used. If there was no exact match with the frequency, a series with higher frequency was selected and the first value of the period was used. This method is still available and is now called Legacy. It will be the automatic method for all document created in the Macrobond application before version 1.22.

Layout Customization

1. Bar Chart Improvements

Set Bar Chart Width

The width of bar charts can now be fixed. You can now select to make the chart fill the width of the window, set it to a specific width or use the expanding mode, which means the chart’s width is simply  the sum of  all the columns of the chart.

When Fill or Custom have been selected, all non-text columns will be set to the proportional mode. You can adjust this and make only some columns proportional.

The proportions are used to determine the relative size when the size of the chart is changed.

Legend Spacing Options

We’ve also introduced a setting for the spacing of the legend elements as well as a setting for the distance between the legend and the graph area.

Option for Reversing Order of Rows in Bar Charts

There is a new setting for reversing the order of rows in a bar chart.

2. Text and layout in Presentation Documents

The new “Presentation notes” feature, that you can enable for a page, allows you to enter a short text note for each chart on the page.

You can decide where to present the notes relative to the charts on the pages.

New or expanded Analyses

1. Formulas

New Formula Functions

There are three new formula functions:

• LastNonForecast(series) – Returns the last value of the series that is not a forecast
• ExpandingPercentile(series, p) – Returns the value of the p:th percentile within a an expanding window (0 < p < 100)
• ExpandingPercentRank(series, value) – Returns the rank of a value in a series as a percentage (0..100) of the values in an expanding window

Additional Functions Take a Moving Window

A few more formula functions are now available in a version that takes a moving window: Sum, Mean, Median, HighObs, LowObs and StdDev.

2. Scalar: New Methods

In the Scalar analysis, there are two additional methods:

• Last non-forecast – The last value that is not a forecast in the series
• Nth last value – The nth last value of a series, where a value of 1 gives you the last value, 2 the second to last etc.

3. Rolling PCA: Cumulative Proportions

The cumulative proportions of the captured variance can now be calculated and selected as the output instead of the eigenvalues.

4. Slice: Improved Calculations and Added Labels

We’ve fixed some issues that the Slice analysis had with series containing a lot of skipped dates. We have also added week numbers as labels to weekly series, just as you can get month names for monthly series.

Miscellaneous Additions

Copy Special Favorites

In the window shown when you select Copy special for a chart, you can now select to save the selected settings as your Copy special favorite – including the type of copy and the size.

These favorites will then be available in the quick-access menu.

Send Chart to LinkedIn

Charts can now be posted to LinkedIn directly from Macrobond, similarly to what you can already do with Twitter. The command is on the File menu.

Attribute for Source Database

The new series property called Database contains the name of the database where the series is stored. For example, “Macrobond”, “Account in-house” or the name of your SQL database. You can use this in dynamic text.

Web API Provider

For a long time, you have been able to connect the Macrobond application to your internal SQL databases by using the SQL Database Connector. Now we have added yet another connector called Web API Database Connector. If you implement a specific REST based API in a web service, the Macrobond application can call this API to obtain and browse for time series. This is a bit more work on your side than connecting directly to an SQL database, but offers more flexibility when it comes to what databases it can connect to.

If you are interested in this functionality, please contact the Macrobond support team.