FreightWaves has made some of the biggest additions to the user interface to date by adding shades of red to the heat mapping feature and offering two new watchlist formats. New data points have also been included in this week’s release.
Map Improvements
Heat maps now offer shades of red for the indices that have negative values. This makes visualizing wide ranges of data far easier. Indices like Headhaul Index and the Outbound Tender Rejection Index change values will now have markets that are negative show up in red making it far easier to isolate positive or negatively moving markets.
In addition to the color offering, users can now change the date of the data set by clicking on the date value in the upper left corner of the map. Looking at data as it changes can provide insight into how the national market is changing over time. Picking out geographic trends is now easier than ever.
Watchlist Improvements
The “Tree View” watchlist display option has been added. Choosing this option when creating a watchlist will organize the indices from largest value in the upper left corner to smallest value in the lower right corner. The markets or qualifying regions will also be sized according to relative value to the data set. Larger valued granularities will have bigger boxes. The heat map feature will also be active in this view with positive changes represented in green and negative changes in red.
The “Scrolling Ticker” display type has also been added. Choosing this option will pull up a scrolling ticker like the ones seen on financial networks. Adding this to your dashboard or personal pages will allow you to view more information in a single page than ever before. This feature allows the user to create custom watchlists with unlimited information.
New Data
We have also added a few new data points this week by adding to the energy dataset. The Brent oil region price per barrel and the Brent-WTI spread or price difference have been added. Both values will be of interest to anyone who follows the oil and energy markets.
Weekly rail carload volume organized by commodity and North American country (Canada, U.S., and Mexico) have been added. The commodities offered, and corresponding ticker values are listed below.
Rail Traffic Originated by Grain – RTOGR
Rail Traffic Originated by Farm Product (Excl Grain) – RTOFP
Rail Traffic Originated by Metallic Ores – RTOMO
Rail Traffic Originated by Coal – RTOCO
Rail Traffic Originated by Crushed Stone, Sand, and Gravel – RTOCS
Rail Traffic Originated by Non-Metallic Minerals – RTONM
Rail Traffic Originated by Grain Mill Products – RTOGM
Rail Traffic Originated by Food Products – RTOFD
Rail Traffic Originated by Primary Forest Products – RTOPF
Rail Traffic Originated by Lumber and Wood – RTOLW
Rail Traffic Originated by Pulp and Paper – RTOPU
Rail Traffic Originated by Chemicals – RTOCH
Rail Traffic Originated by Petroleum Products – RTOPP
Rail Traffic Originated by Stone, Clay, and Glass Products – RTOSG
Rail Traffic Originated by Coke – RTOCK
Rail Traffic Originated by Primary Metal Products – RTOPM
Rail Traffic Originated by Motor Vehicles and Parts – RTOMV
Rail Traffic Originated by Iron and Steel Scrap – RTOIS
Rail Traffic Originated by Waste and Scrap – RTOWS
Rail Traffic Originated by All Other Carloads – RTOAE
Rail Traffic Originated by Intermodal Containers – RTOIC
Rail Traffic Originated by Intermodal Trailers – RTOIT
Weekly barometers have been added. Now users have access to the dryvan (DFBV), reefer (DFBR), and flatbed (DFBF) DAT barometers each week as opposed to each month.
Additional improvements
A few other quality of life improvements are included in this week’s release:
– Date selection feature now has two boxes to make selecting a beginning and end date easier
– Algorithmic watchlist “Top Movers” has been limited to OTRI, ITRI, OTVI, ITVI, HAUL, and TLT indices
– Added an “X” button within the symbol search box to allow current search term to easily be cleared.
– Bug fixes