Chapter 13. The Alert Machine

Alerts let us know if our conditions for buying or selling have been met. ErlangerQuote has some of the most sophisticated alerts on the market today—including, as we have seen, the ability to turn any column into a complex alert formula with custom colors and text messages. 

We have seen how to easily add alerts to quote sheet columns, but there are two additional methods of creating alerts.

Add Alerts Add Alerts are similar to QCharts alerts, you can add them to a Simple Pending Alert window. When triggered they move into the triggered area of the Simple Alerts window.

Easy Alerts Easy Alerts are a powerful library of pre written alerts you can add to a quote sheet or chart as a color study. This is the lazy man's starting point for alerts.

Add Alert…

In Chapter 5 Formulas Matter, we learned how to create an alert to a quote sheet by simply adding a formula in a quote sheet column so that it evaluated to true or false. We used right click Column->Insert Formula Column. That caused an Alert to be generated if the conditions where met and would additionally cause a recording of the event to be displayed in the Alert List window.

There is another kind of Alert you can generate that does not initially live in a quote sheet (though it can be directed that way, as we will see later). This alert, by default, lives in an Alert window (not an Alert List Window), which looks like the figure below:

This window records all Simple Alerts that are pending. When they are triggered it moves them to the Triggered area for review, giving you a convenient way to manage and examine your alerts. This is compatible with the QCharts Simple Alerts. However there are a few fundamental differences between QCharts and ErlangerQuote Simple Alerts. For example, to add a simple price alert in QCharts you double click on a row in the Quote sheet, one with a symbol. Up comes the Alert dialog, where you enter the price at which you want the trigger.

ErlangerQuote works differently.  In ErlangerQuote you right click on the chart near where you wish to put your price alert, and select Add Alert. But there is a more beautiful thing here. Suppose you have a simple chart with a study on it like the one below for HGSI with a 50-day moving average.

Now suppose you wanted to add an alert that went off when the close of HGSI dropped below the 50 day moving average. Here is how to do it with no typing: click the chart right under the 50 -day moving average, near the current right side of the chart, so that you are close to the last day.

The menu below should appear when you right click and select Add Alert. In the Add Alert submenu you can see that the menu has remembered the location of the mouse when you clicked on the chart. It is showing four pre built Alert formulas waiting for you: Last > 136.75, Last < 136.75, Last > MOV(Close,50,0,d), and Last < MOV(Close,50,0,d).

These formulas are all set up for you, and all you have to do is select one. For example, suppose we selected Last < MOV(Close,50,0,d), figuring if we drop below the 50 dma we are in trouble and want to know about it.

 

After we selected Last < MOV(Close,50,0,d) the Add Alert dialog box below appears. Here we have an opportunity to modify various parameters of the alert before adding it to the Simple Alert window or just click OK and accept the way it is.

You can see its symbol is grayed out, but its sound, alert colors and description are blank and are ready to be filled out. It’s also possible in this box to modify the custom alert formula from that which we have in the box. Here you could change the price alert, the size of any of the formula parameters, and so on.

Remember this is an Add Alert; so its target is not a quote sheet but rather a Pending Alert window. Still from this box you can assign any sound you want to the Alert, an Optional Description that will appear in the Alert window, as well as assign the alert FG and BG colors.

As soon as we click OK we will get a new item in the Alert window, as shown below. You can see that our alert has been added to the Pending area of the window. When it is triggered it will move to the Triggered area.

The Alert Window

There are a number of operations that can be done in the Alert window. If you right click on an alert you will get the menu below. Alert Preferences will bring up the property dialog for naming the alerts and setting their colors. Add Alert lets you add an alert directly to the Alert window without the need to click on a chart. Edit Alert brings up the Add Alert dialog box shown previously while Delete Alert removes an alert from the Triggered or Pending area. Delete All Alerts, Delete All Pending and Delete All Triggered are for deleting all the alerts at the same time. Reset Alert will reset the alert and allow it to be triggered again.

Now you have seen how to use the Add Alerts feature. While it’s important to be able to add custom alerts based on formulas, studies, or simple comparisons with a fixed number (Last>50), what would be nice is to have a complete library.

Easy Alerts

Easy Alerts are named that way because they represent a "library" of pre written alerts that you can add to your quote sheets or charts as color studies. You can also add them to the Pending Alert window.

To make an Easy Alert:

  1. Select Alerts->Easy Alerts… from the main menu
  2. Right click on a chart and select Add Alerts…
  3. Right click on a quote sheet and select Add Easy Alert…

If you have done any of the three operations above you will get the Easy Alerts dialog box shown below. Here the alerts are divided into these basic types:

 

These items have small + signs that, when clicked, open them up like topics in outlines, and list the actual formulas.

In the figure below we have clicked on the + sign in front of the Moving Average category, opening it up and revealing the collection of Moving Average formulas. We have clicked on the formula called Price Crossing Below MA. The actual mathematics of the formula appears in the field in the lower portion of the dialog box. You can, at this point, change the value in the Interval Box and the Interval in the formulas will automatically update. To change the period or length of the formula you must delete the old values (here 10) and add the new values (say 50) if you wished this to be a 50 day MA rather than a 10 day.

Now that we have selected a formula we like from our Easy Alerts Library, we are ready to decide where we want it to use it. That’s the purpose of the Add dropdown menu shown in the figure above. Notice there are three areas in the menu divided by horizontal separator lines. The top section shows:

Add a Simple Alert for:

The first item, Add as Simple Alert for NASDAQ: HGSI means that this alert will be added to the Pending Alert window as a simple alert, as we learned previously.  The example below shows the new Alert that has been added.

 

Add to Current Chart as Color Study

The second way you can add your Easy Alert is as a color study. If you select Add to Current Chart as Color Study from the Add dropdown menu, you will see the alert appear as a study at the bottom of the active chart. Below you can see how the Price Crossing below MA appears on the active chart for Human Genome Sciences. The formula requires that the price be above the MA on the previous day. As you can see the green bars perfectly coincide with these events, showing us the formula works. You can now click on other tabs in the chart window and you will see how this study works on other symbols.

 

Add to Any Quote Sheet in Workspace [As Alert Column]

The second area of the Add dropdown menu allows you to add the Easy Alert to any quote sheet that is currently in the workspace. The menu item Add to Quote Sheet Plugins 1 will add an alert column to that quote sheet called Prices Crossing below MA, as shown in the figure below.

If we right click and select Column->Formula Properties we get the standard dialog box with the name of the formula highlighted in the Name field. From this dialog you can save the formula for later use or modify it.                

Add to Any Chart in Workspace

The third area of the Add dropdown menu allows you to add the Easy Alert to any chart that is currently in the workspace. The menu item Add to Chart Apple Computer Daily will add an alert color study to that chart called Prices Crossing below MA.

As you can see from this short lesson, Alerts are very powerful and easy to direct to any object in a workspace you wish.