Will WS follow this in "Supported Symbols"?

See: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/general-motors-returns-p-500-184642563.html

Any news on this? Tonight's the cutover. I'd like my strategies to be using only supported symbols.

As you can see, GM is in and HNZ is out.

FYI, the list is compiled automatically after the data becomes available.

The point was for you to let Publishers know the WS symbol change plan ahead of the WS symbol change, not after the fact.

When a stock is dropped from the S&P 500, index funds need to divest of it, which may cause price movement. So, a strategy may open a position in it. But then WS drops the symbol. Having an open position, a Publisher then needs to hold the symbol in his WLP portfolio until the strategy closes the position, even months later, and remember to remove it then. It may get trickier if the strategy shorts it and later needs to buy an unsupported symbol. Closing an unsupported symbol did not work smoothly for WWAV shares related to Dean Foods (See Dean Foods Spinoff topic in this forum).

All of this complication can be avoided if WS communicates their planned symbol action in advance and a Publisher can follow suit on the same day. That's why I started this thread days ahead of the change.

Regarding:

QUOTE:
FYI, the list is compiled automatically after the data becomes available.

I don't understand what you mean. What data?

The list of supported symbols gets updated after a change to the list of components. This is an automated process. There is no way to know about a change beforehand and to communicate it.

Closing an unsupported symbol should probably work in the future, because we learn from our mistakes and fix bugs.

QUOTE:
There is no way to know about a change beforehand and to communicate it.

Not true, I both knew about it and communicated it.

Your automation is incomplete, IM(ns)HO. ns=not so. At the very least, the automation should, in some way, alert Publishers that the symbol list has changed. Extend the automation to generate a forum post indicating what was dropped and what was added. Or head the Symbol List web page with an automated maintenance log. As it is now, each Publisher needs to invent his own method to follow the supported symbol list in WLP portfolios, or manually follow up to see which of his signals "disappeared" because WS no longer supports the symbol (because that's what happens now, with no notice).

If you want WS to succeed, you must include the needs of Publishers in its design, or set expectations. "You will need to track the list of supported symbols daily."

From this and the Dean's Food experience, I would suggest adding another Forum category, “Symbol Changes and Corporate Actions”. This category would be of interest to Publishers and Subscribers, Subscribers, because they may wonder what to do about stocks they got through corporate actions. I only investigated the DF action because of the negative effect on my strategy. I think a Publisher or WealthSignals could initiate notification of those types of events, but WS needs to help in resolving them (as they did with DF). And for changes to the supported symbol list in WealthSignals, I only learned that DF was dropped and KSU added from S&P 500 through Cone's note, “For example, DF itself has been replaced by KSU in the S&P 500”, buried in the DF issue. The “Symbol Changes and Corporate Actions” category I suggested above would be the definitive place where WS could let Publishers know of symbol changes. The existing “Publisher’s Support” category would be, as most threads are now, for help in the authoring process.

QUOTE:
Closing an unsupported symbol should probably work in the future, because we learn from our mistakes and fix bugs.

Have you tested covering a short for an unsupported symbol?

QUOTE:
Not true, I both knew about it and communicated it.

You're missing the point here. You heard it in the news whereas our process is completely automated. A daemon obtains component lists on schedule and rebuilds the list of supported symbols after they get updated.

QUOTE:
At the very least, the automation should, in some way, alert Publishers that the symbol list has changed

Good point. Although I don't find the proposed ideas elegant, a really universal solution would be to set up an RSS feed with changes to the list of supported symbols. This has just been added to our enhancement request queue.

P.S. Meanwhile, many websites remain not RSSized. There are numerous browser add-ons solving the task of automatic webpage monitoring. Ranging from very simple to really powerful ones, they make it a piece of cake.

Answers to these questions would be helpful for me.

1. Does a Publisher need to keep alerts synchronized with the WS supported symbol list?
2. If so, what is the suggested procedure?

Just a reminder to give some answer to my questions at #8. Thank you.

If a symbol is not supported, entry alert is going to be rejected. A stock that your system is holding still can be exited. The "procedure" is individual and is up to the author.

OK

Regarding communicating WS symbol changes, you said,

QUOTE:
a really universal solution would be to set up an RSS feed with changes to the list of supported symbols. This has just been added to our enhancement request queue.

It's not really universal to me. I don't have an RSS reader. A free one I started to download wanted to update .Net components - too much risk of breaking something I really need.

For that reason, and to minimize my software footprint, I prefer my solution,

QUOTE:
Extend the automation to generate a forum post indicating what was dropped and what was added.

or both.

The author still needs to monitor when to drop a symbol due to open positions.

No need to install anything. There are dozens of web-based RSS readers, and more (like Digg Reader, AOL Reader) are yet to come and replace Google Reader.

Update

Almot forgot that modern browsers all have built-in support for RSS. For example, Opera comes with RSS reader, Firefox allows to "Subscribe to This Page..." if RSS feed is found on it etc. This is the most straightforward way.

QUOTE:
modern browsers all have built-in support for RSS

I can work with that.

We have discussed it and as an alternative to RSS, we may consider a notification in the Dashboard / email.