Trading panel and hotkeys

The trading panel is where you trade the armed stock by hand: set a size, choose limit or market, and buy, short, sell, cover, flatten or cancel. Every action also has a two-key hotkey.

The header and button rows

Arm buttons and the status strip

• AUTO - LONG and SHORT arm and disarm the automatic long and short engines, each on its own. Green means armed, red means that side will not open a position by itself; the number in brackets is how many positions are open. Turning one off never asks and never touches open positions. Turning one on checks the risk limits first and then asks you. See arming.
• The large line shows the armed stock and what just happened to it, for example a fill.
• 1m vol is the armed stock's volume so far in the current 1-minute candle, green or red with the candle.
• The LULD part shows the stock's limit-up / limit-down band when one applies (market hours only), or the halt view when it is halted.
• SLIPPAGE is the live spread: the ask minus the bid, in dollars and as a percentage, with the bid and ask beside it. It turns amber when the spread is 1% or more.

Order size row

Limit or market (LMT / MKT)

• LMT (the standard) sends a limit order priced through the market by your entry offset, so it fills like a market order but never worse than the price plus the offset. It works in every session: premarket, market hours and after hours.
• MKT sends a market order. Market orders only work in regular hours, 09:30 to 16:00 New York time. Outside those hours the click is refused and the desk tells you why, with regular hours shown in your local time; the tick turns amber while that is the case.

Both go through the same checks: risk limits, the halt refusal, and the other safety checks on the order path.

Resting rail

Tick RESTING and a rail appears on the ladder and the chart at the live price. Drag it, or type the price in the box beside it.

• Below the market, a BUY can rest there (green). Above the market, a SHORT can rest there (red). A limit on the wrong side of the market would fill at once, so the rail's position decides which side can rest; dragging it through the price flips it.
• The BUY and SHORT buttons then say RESTING or NOW, so you can see which you are about to send.
• On a maker/taker commission schedule a resting fill can be commission-free; one that crosses the market is not. A resting order may never fill: that is the trade-off.
• The resting rail is for manual entries only. Automation and the fleet price their own entries.

BUY and SHORT

BUY LONG and SHORT are faded until a stock is armed, then read BUY ABCD and SHORT ABCD. They send the size from the order size row as a limit or market order, as the LMT / MKT tick says. They send straight away and do not ask for confirmation.

The second line on SHORT shows the borrow status for the armed stock: locates: 300, easy to borrow - no locate needed, no locates available, not shortable, checking borrow..., or in paper paper - no locates needed.

Manual orders are not blocked by the automation settings. They still pass the risk limits (live only), and the desk refuses a new entry on a halted stock.

The eight buttons

The eight buttons under BUY and SHORT can be changed in the HOTKEYS window (action, label, colour, size, order type and offset). Out of the box they are:

FLATTEN ALL, LIQUIDATE ALL and the two cancels act on the whole account including the fleet. The other buttons act on the armed stock.

Ask before sending and double-click

• Ask before sending shows a yes/no box before you close or cancel: closing a position, FLATTEN ALL, LIQUIDATE ALL, cancelling orders, and before a double-click send. It does not ask on BUY, SHORT or their hotkeys, and automatic entries never ask (arming is their gate).
• Double-click sends orders is off by default: double-clicking a scanner, watchlist or gapper row only arms that stock. When ticked, the same double-click also sends a buy at your order size.

Both are saved with the profile.

When an order is refused

• Order REFUSED - bigger than buying power. Orders bigger than your buying power are still sent, and the broker decides. If the broker refuses one for buying power, a window says what the order needed, your buying power as the desk last read it and how long ago, and the most shares that would fit.
• Order REFUSED - needs locates. If the broker refuses a short for locates or borrowing, a window shows the order, the borrow status, the locates you hold and the broker's message. It opens every time for a manual short, and once per stock per session for an automatic one.
• Every refusal is also written in the order log with the broker's reply.

Open trades window

The OPEN window lists your open positions: symbol, side, shares, entry, last price, the stop-loss and take-profit trigger prices, and profit or loss in dollars and percent. Double-click a row to close that position.

Hotkeys

Every action has a shortcut of at least two keys (a modifier such as SHIFT, CTRL or ALT, plus a key). A single key is refused because these keys send live orders. Hotkeys never fire while you are typing in a box. CTRL+SHIFT+F4 opens the window where you change them.

Window and tool shortcuts open a window and can never place an order, so they are not listed in the HOTKEYS window.

The bare keys F1 to F5 used to send orders in much older releases. They are still caught, but they only tell you which two-key shortcut replaced them - they never send anything.

Which position a key acts on. BUY, SHORT and CLOSE act on the armed symbol - the one named on the BUY and SHORT buttons. SELL ALL longs, COVER ALL shorts, SELL 50% (ALL), FLATTEN ALL, LIQUIDATE ALL and the two cancels are account-wide, the fleet included. While Ask before sending is ticked in the trading panel, each one still asks first.

Your order shortcuts are saved in shortcuts.json and the eight buttons in hotkeys.json, both beside config.ini, so they survive a restart and an upgrade.

Using the HOTKEYS window

• While the window is open your shortcuts are suspended: nothing fires an order until you close it.
• Press SET beside an action, then press the key combination. If the combination is already used, the desk asks whether to move it. Escape cancels.
• TYPE sets LIMIT or MARKET for each order action. A LIMIT works in every session. A MARKET order works 09:30-16:00 New York time only: pressed outside those hours, a BUY or SHORT is not sent and tells you why, and a SELL, COVER, CLOSE, FLATTEN or LIQUIDATE asks whether to send it as a LIMIT instead.
• SIZE (BUY and SHORT) can be a fixed number of shares, or blank to use the order size row.
• The eight buttons table changes the buttons under BUY / SHORT: ACTION (each action is listed once), your own LABEL, COLOUR, SIZE and UNITS (shares, or a percentage of that position), TYPE, OFFSET and its own KEY. OFFSET takes cents, or a percentage written with %, and an exit can take both (written 3+1%) and goes at whichever is further through the market; it is greyed where the button prices nothing of its own. SIZE is greyed on actions that take the whole position. WORKS reads any session for a limit and 09:30-16:00 NY for a market order, and turns amber while market orders are closed.
• SAVE keeps your changes for the next session. RESET ALL puts the defaults back (nothing is written until you save). CLOSE closes without saving.

Short selling and locates

To short a hard-to-borrow stock, your broker must first find shares for you to borrow: a locate. Easy-to-borrow stocks need no locate. What the desk can do depends on your broker: a broker without a locate service in the desk shows that in the window, and nothing is requested.

• The LOCATES window lists the scanner's top 10 with your broker's borrow status (EASY TO BORROW or HARD TO BORROW) and locate price per share.
• Type any symbol and press ADD; REFRESH asks again for every row.
• Quantities are in lots of 100. BUY always asks first, with the total cost.
• YOUR LOCATES lists the locates you hold today. SELL sells unused locates back where the broker allows it; SYNC reads the locates your broker says you hold.
• In paper, prices are shown and nothing is bought; paper shorts need no locates.

In the AUTO/BOT window, Locates for armed with SET and CLEAR lets you record locates you obtained elsewhere, so a short can use them.