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Welcome
to the TradeStation Technologies, Inc (formerly Omega
Research, Inc) family. By
purchasing a TradeStation Technologies product, you will distinguish yourself by
using the best investment analysis tool in the industry.
Your TradeStation Technologies product, referred to as the
TradeStation Technologies Platform, is made up of three components:
·
ProSuite Desktop
·
TradeStation Technologies Research GlobalServer
·
EasyLanguage PowerEditor
The
TradeStation Technologies GlobalServer is a data collection and storage utility.
The GlobalServer enables you to collect data from a
real-time/delayed data source, as well as an end of day source.
When you first run ProSuite (or any of its component products,
ie, TradeStation, OptionStation or RadarScreen), you’ll be asked to
set up your GlobalServer. Once
you do that, you can essentially forget about the GlobalServer.
It will collect, store and manage your data in the background as
you perform your analysis using the tools in your ProSuite Desktop.
You can modify the settings in the GlobalServer at any time, but
it has been designed to require an absolute minimum amount of attention.
The
ProSuite Desktop is where you will do most of your work.
When you first run ProSuite, you’ll create one or more
workspaces; in those workspaces, you’ll create TradeStation price
charts, track price quotes, build, monitor and analyse options
positions, and/or build and track your trading strategies using the
different windows and utilities available in the ProSuite Desktop.
The ProSuite Desktop provides you with hundreds of built-in
trading signals that you can combine into viable strategies using
StrategyBuilder. You can
also open third-party applications within the Desktop.
The
EasyLanguage PowerEditor is the full-featured editor you will use to
write your custom trading ideas using EasyLanguage.
When you want to develop your own custom trading signals, or
write your own analysis techniques (eg, indicators, Position Search
Strategies, ShowMe studies, PaintBar studies, etc.), you’ll be using
the PowerEditor. The
EasyLanguage PowerEditor verifies EasyLanguage for you and turns your
EasyLanguage statements into analysis techniques that ProSuite can use.
The
PowerEditor enables you to import/export analysis techniques and
provides the EasyLanguage Dictionary, an EasyLanguage reference tool
that enables you to paste into your analysis techniques (with proper
syntax) any of the over 300 reserved words, thereby shortening your
learning curve and simplifying your work.
Few
endeavours reflect the nature of capitalism and the entrepreneurial
spirit as well or as completely as trading.
But too often the promise of financial independence and fast
profits results in lessons paid for with quick losses and
discouragement.
These
initial losses have been described as tuition costs for knowledge that
can only come through experience. Your
broker can’t prepare you for the first time you score a ten-bagger and
feel like you can do no wrong, only to give it all back in the very next
trade as you let your emotions creep into your decision process.
New and experienced traders alike make mistakes and learn the
costly answers to questions like:
·
What markets should I trade?
·
When should I buy or sell?
·
When should I take profits?
·
When should I cut my losses and close a trade?
·
When should I increase/decrease my trade size?
·
Should I buy an option or just buy the stock?
And,
these are questions you must ultimately answer yourself, because the
right answers for someone else might not be the right answers for you.
The best answer is to develop an approach that suits your
personality and style, one that you are comfortable with, and most
importantly one that makes money. And
then stick with it.
ProSuite
2000i consists of three integrated modules.
·
TradeStation 2000i
·
RadarScreen 2000i
·
OptionStation2000i.
TradeStation
2000i
Here’s
where strategy back testing becomes very important.
With TradeStation 2000i, you can determine that an idea does or
doesn’t make money before you risk a dime in the markets.
The key here is to remove the emotional aspects of trading—the
influences of fear and greed that get in the way of your trading
success.
For
example, let’s say that you think MSFT often goes up in the first few
days of each month, when 401(k) money flows into mutual funds and the
funds add to their position in MSFT.
With TradeStation, you can not only test to see if this is true,
but also refine the idea to generate the highest potential return.
Answer
these key questions: has this approach worked in the last several years? And, if so, should you buy on the last day of the month in
anticipation of the inflows, or wait until the 1st market day of the
month? Should you buy with a market order, or a stop or limit order?
How long should you hold on to the trade?
1-2 days? A week?
Getting the answers to these questions is easy with TradeStation.
However,
even if a trading strategy has proven wildly profitable, it may still be
unacceptable for you to trade. With
TradeStation, you can view the strategy’s past performance and get a
better idea of what it may be like to trade the strategy.
For instance, suppose the strategy made a great return overall,
but at one point was showing losses for several consecutive months.
Ask yourself, would you have had the perseverance to continue
trading to realise the eventual profits, or would you have given up and
moved on just at the point when performance was about to rebound.
If
the “personality” of the strategy doesn’t fit within your
tolerances, chances are you should keep looking for an approach that
does. TradeStation’s
advanced strategy reporting and performance analysis lets you look at
more than just the bottom line, it lets you look at what it takes to get
there. It provides a clear
picture of the ups and downs and inevitable bumps along the way.
And, once you have refined your strategy to your satisfaction,
and found an approach that suits your unique style and preferences,
you’re ready to trade.
Again,
the key element here is that you are making all of your important
trading decisions while you are developing your strategy – not while
you are actually trading and are most vulnerable to the negative
influences of fear and greed. Automating
your completed strategy is just as easy.
TradeStation will monitor the markets you have selected and alert
you when to buy and when to sell based on your own trading ideas.
With
this strategy, we chose to trade MSFT; and often selecting stocks or
markets you’re familiar with is the way to go.
But, with so many potential stocks to choose from, might there
not be a better way to take advantage of this trading idea?
What if you had a list of the 5 stocks with the most
institutional accumulation—the stocks the mutual funds are actively
buying now?
RadarScreen
2000i
With
RadarScreen 2000i—The Ultimate in Real-Time Market Scanning—you have
this list! Or any other list! Just
add the Institutional Accumulation indicator and let RadarScreen sort
through the thousands of possible stocks to give you the top picks.
Let’s
say RadarScreen tells you that these stocks are IBM, LU, and MRK. Now we
have several stocks to use to test and refine your trading strategy
using TradeStation. Trade
them all or just trade the most profitable—you decide.
RadarScreen
will help you identify markets with any characteristics you can
describe. Maybe you have a trading strategy that works with very
volatile stocks. Or your
strategy involves trending stocks, or stocks that trade in a range. Use RadarScreen to identify stocks with these
characteristics, and then use TradeStation to develop and test your
strategy on these stocks. RadarScreen
will scan thousands of stock symbols to identify those meeting this or
any criteria you can think of.
OptionStation
2000i
Now,
suppose you don’t want to limit yourself to just buying IBM, LU or MRK
stock? Maybe you want to consider the limited-risk and potentially
unlimited profits associated with options trading. With OptionStation 2000i—The Standard in Options Analysis
Software—you can do just that.
Whether
you’re new to options trading an experienced pro, OptionStation
delivers an easy-to-use tool that lets you translate your trading ideas
into the best options to trade based on your market assumptions.
When
you get a buy signal from your strategy in TradeStation, OptionStation
enables you to run a position search to find the best way to implement
that trade. Simply run the
Position Search wizard, answer a few questions about your market
assumptions, and OptionStation returns a list of the best option
positions to take advantage of your trading idea!
Plus,
OptionStation will follow up by allowing you to further analyse the top
position choices to find the one position that meets your particular
standards. Then,
OptionStation will monitor that trade for you, and alert you when to
take profits.
Of
course, you could always begin your trading unprepared, testing ideas as
they occur to you by placing trades and awaiting the outcome.
Believe it or not, many traders take just this approach.
Or you can begin trading with ProSuite 2000i,
armed with sound, tested strategies.
Whether
it’s deciding what stocks to trade, knowing when to buy and sell, or
knowing how to best take advantage of a trading idea with options,
ProSuite 2000i offers the trading tools that put you ahead of
the crowd.
ProSuite
Desktop
Understanding
the Desktop
When
you start your Omega Research product, you’ll be looking at the
Desktop. In the Desktop,
you’ll be working with one or more workspaces, and it is in these
workspaces that you add windows, much like you add sheets to a workbook
when working in a spreadsheet application. Think of the Desktop as your overall organisational tool; it
enables you to specify overall settings for your workspaces as well as
the overall look and feel of your TradeStation
Technologies product.
For
example, the Desktop enables you to define how many workspaces to
remember in your workspace list, globally toggle title bars on and off,
set up your optional pager service, specify your full screen mode
options, and other such global features.
The full list of Desktop options is listed in Setting Your
Desktop Options.
Working
with Workspaces
Workspaces
help you organise your investment ideas so you can concentrate on
trading instead of searching for information.
Think of a workspace as a repository for related windows—a
place where you can put related windows together on your screen.
You can create a workspace to work with a particular stock, a
group of stocks, an industry, a market, or anything you decide you want
to work with together.
When
you first create a workspace, it is blank.
You then add windows to the workspace—charts, quotes, position
analysis, or any other window type (depending on the TradeStation
Technologies product you purchased). When
you want to analyse other stocks, industries or markets and want to keep
your ideas separate, you can create additional workspaces; the Desktop
makes it easy to switch between them.
You
will work in one workspace at a time (only one workspace is visible at a
time); this visible workspace is referred to as the current workspace.
However, your TradeStation Technologies product monitors all open workspaces
for you, so while you are working in one workspace, your product is
actually monitoring activity in all open workspaces for you. And, there’s no limit to the number of workspaces you can
have open at one time (other than your computer’s resources).
Note:
To maximise your computer’s efficiency, keep open only the
workspaces you really need.
Working
with Multiple Workspaces
You
may want to have multiple open workspaces depending on the number of
securities, commodities, or other financial instruments that you track.
Your TradeStation Technologies product can monitor alerts and strategy
orders on open workspaces only.
Your
TradeStation Technologies product enables you to have an unlimited number of
workspaces open simultaneously, depending on the amount of memory and
resources available on your computer.
For efficiency, it is always a good idea to have only the
necessary number of workspaces open. By default your TradeStation Technologies
product displays a tab for
each open workspace. The
tabs appear at the bottom of the Desktop, as shown in the figure below. You can toggle the tabs on and off; see Setting Your Desktop
Options.
TradeStation
Technologies
GlobalServer
Understanding
the GlobalServer
The
GlobalServer is a comprehensive data collection and
maintenance application that collects and stores the market data used by
your TradeStation Technologies applications. The
function of the GlobalServer is to store financial data so that your TradeStation
Technologies product can quickly access this data for market analysis.
Your
data may be collected by a third-party data feed, such as BMI
Bonneville. No matter where
the data comes from, it’s stored and converted into a readable format
by the GlobalServer so it can be used in any of your TradeStation
Technologies applications.
The
list of symbols for which the GlobalServer collects data is referred to
as your symbol portfolio. Your
portfolio contains the symbols for which you want to collect price data.
If a symbol is not in your portfolio, the GlobalServer will not
collect data for that symbol. For
more information pertaining to the symbol portfolio, see Building Your
Symbol Portfolio in the GlobalServer.
The
GlobalServer manages a tremendous amount of data. It is able to do so by
using powerful databases that manage exchange settings, symbol settings,
and more. Examples of such databases include the Symbol Dictionary and
Exchange Dictionary. For
example, when you add a symbol to your symbol
portfolio,
it is added along with specific settings, which are retrieved from a
database known as the Symbol Dictionary.
In
addition to the Symbol Dictionary, the GlobalServer references a Holiday
List (a listing of all holidays on which each exchange is closed) and an
Exchange Dictionary (a listing of all exchanges, their session times,
their delay schedule, daily settlement collection time, and more).
By using the power of these databases, the GlobalServer is able
to collect and manage a tremendous amount of data efficiently and
accurately.
EasyLanguage
PowerEditor
Using
the EasyLanguage PowerEditor
One
of the most powerful features included with your TradeStation
Technologies product
is the ability to create your own analysis techniques.
You can then test your trading ideas and develop winning trading
strategies.
EasyLanguage
is a combination of simple words, operators, and punctuation used to
create sets of rules or instructions that your TradeStation
Technologies product
follows to perform one or more tasks based on price data.
The
EasyLanguage PowerEditor can be thought of as a special word processor
that allows you to write analysis techniques in EasyLanguage.
Most word processors include a spelling and grammar checker. The EasyLanguage PowerEditor contains a similar feature that
ensures your analysis technique contains all the appropriate words and
grammar structures. The
process of checking your analysis technique is known as verification.
EasyLanguage
is comprised of simple words, operators, and punctuation that allow you
to create sets of rules or instructions that your TradeStation
Technologies application follows to perform one or more tasks based on price data.
When you verify an analysis technique, you are making sure that
the words and grammar used in your analysis technique are correct. If an analysis technique contains incorrect EasyLanguage
grammar and/or spelling, it will not verify and you will not be able to
apply it to a chart or grid.
There
are several aspects of the EasyLanguage PowerEditor that you can
customise. For example, you can change the appearance of the
EasyLanguage PowerEditor by changing the font, background colour, and
syntax colouring. You can
also specify the type of tab style, function key settings, and method of
displaying verification errors.
Using
the EasyLanguage Dictionary
The
EasyLanguage Dictionary contains all of the reserved words and functions
that can be used in the EasyLanguage PowerEditor.
The EasyLanguage Dictionary is organised by category so it is
easy to find the words needed to express your trading ideas.
This dictionary also provides notes, examples, and parameter
values to help you quickly understand what each word means and how the
word can be incorporated within your analysis technique.
In
addition, you can search for specific words using the Find feature.
The EasyLanguage Dictionary is tightly integrated with the Online
User Manual so that you can easily receive additional documentation on a
specific function or reserved word.
If
you have any further questions regarding ProSuite (or any of its
component products, TradeStation, OptionStation or RadarScreen) please
email your query to sales@qbl.com.au.
ProSuite
home page
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