Chapter 3. Starting at the Beginning

Learn About the ErlangerQuote Interface

This section will familiarize you with most of ErlangerQuote’s functions, and will help you understand the actions required to use its tools.

The Workspace

Figure 1 below shows the elements that make up the ErlangerQuote application. Certain areas are highlighted in yellow and referred to throughout this document. Specifically, Menus, Toolbars, Market Clock, Memory Stats, Workspace Area, and Status Bar.

The toolbars can be moved from the toolbar area and docked in any area along the edge of the main workspace, or they can be allowed to float anywhere in the workspace area, like the Market Clock and the Memory Stats are shown. In the figure below there isn’t a workspace open yet. When you create your workspace you can create quote sheets and charts and other objects. ErlangerQuote is an MDI application and all objects are child windows of the main application. Therefore, other than three exceptions—the market clock, Alert window, and the memory stats—all windows are restricted to the workspace area and may not leave the frame that surrounds them (the workspace area). Grabbing the lower right corner with your mouse and dragging it can resize the main window. If you have two or more monitors your workspace can span across the entire viewable screen area, if you like.

ErlangerQuote supports both horizontal scrolling and vertical scrolling of workspaces. Therefore it is possible to make the ErlangerQuote workspace even bigger than your viewable screen size. Drag the lower right corner of the workspace window or any of the sides of the workspace to size it to any size you want it. Then the scroll bars (horizontal and vertical) can be used to move up and down inside the workspace. This allows additional quote sheets, charts, level II sheets, option sheets, and plug-ins to be all in one workspace. You may have multiple "sets" of sheets and charts along the horizontal axis, and click in the bar to move to them.

Figure 1 The ErlangerQuote Application Window

The Interface

ErlangerQuote uses the Office 2000 Interface. This interface allows ErlangerQuote to offer Toolbars—small floating "windoids" which can be moved, resized, "docked", and turned on and off. When you first start ErlangerQuote, the toolbars are docked under the main menu area beginning with File, etc. (You can even relocate this menu but it is not recommended.)

The dropdown View menu displays which toolbars are selected. A checked item on the menu means that toolbar is turned on. Try turning some of these on in the dropdown menu, and then go to the workspace and move them to new locations. To move the menu click on it’s the small vertical bar on its left side, it looks like a raised area. You can put the toolbars around the sides, the bottom or the top of the application. Menus can be set to Full menus, or to smart menus, where they will only show the menu items used most frequently. Lesser-used items are accessed by clicking on the double, down pointing arrows, at the bottom of the menus. Many people find that the smart menus get in their way, therefore turn on the Full menus and leave them that way.

Figure 2 View Menu

Customize

The Customize item near the bottom of the View Menu gives you the ability to add your own hotkeys, functions keys, change icons and do much more.

Customize Commands

The Commands tab shows the toolbar commands that are associated with the various categories, for example if you click on the File category you will see a list of all the items that are on the File menu and any associated toolbar.

Figure 3 The Customize dialog box

Customize Toolbars

The Toolbars tab shows the various toolbars that are used in ErlangerQuote, and allows you to disable or enable them. You can also select Show text labels from this dialog, which will put a text name under each icon in a toolbar. This makes it easy to read the name of the icon, but it also greatly increases the real estate used by the toolbars. You can create new toolbars from this tab but it is not functional at this time.

Figure 4 Toolbars tab of the Customize Menu

Customize Keyboard

This tab of the Customize dialog box lets you set up keyboard keys that will control commands in ErlangerQuote. In the example below we set the key sequence Control followed by N to mean new chart. Now anytime the user types Ctrl-N a new chart will be created. One must be careful when making new key commands that they do not conflict with standard Windows key commands. For example, Control + C means Copy to the clipboard in Windows so you would not be able to use these keys for Chart.

Figure 5 Keyboard tab of the Customize Menu

Customize Menu

The Menu tab lets you Reset any changes you have made to the menus, and also lets you control the animation when the menu is selected between None, Unfold (zoom from upper left corner), Slide (drop from top to bottom) and Fade (fade in and fade out). The Context Menus are disabled in ErlangerQuote. You can also control if there is a shadow behind the menu when it is selected.

Figure 6 Menu tab of the Customize Menu

Customize Options

The Options tab lets you control a variety of ways that the interface works. You can select if ScreenTips (what we call tooltips) are enabled. Tooltips are small popup windows that appear when the mouse is held over an icon for more than a few seconds, as shown below. They let you see what the icon controls.

Figure 7 Mouse held over chart shows Tooltips and Shortcut keys

You can select if the tooltips shows the shortcut key (if one has been created) when it pops up, you can enable large icons for people that have disabilities in reading, and you can set the interface to Look 2000, which gives the menus the look of Windows 2000. This will of course have no affect if you are already running Windows 2000. Finally you can set a checkbox that will enable menus to show recently used commands first and to show full menus after a small delay. This is how the Windows 2000 interface works, and was introduced in Windows ME. Some people hate this and others love it.

Figure 8 Options tab of the Customize Menu

Chart Toolbar

The Chart Toolbar is shown below. Each section is associated with ErlangerQuote chart features. A chart must first be in the workspace and then must be selected (its titlebar active or clicked) for the elements of this toolbar to appear, and not be grayed out or dim.

The first three icons in the chart toolbar control the type of chart: Hi-Low Bar, Candlesticks, and Line Chart.

Figure 9 Chart Toolbar

The next group of three icons let you turn the scale of the selected chart from Log to Auto Scale. Logarithmic changes the scale on the vertical axis to a Log scale.

A log chart has a non-linear scale such that the chart is divided into factors of 10; in other words the distance vertically from 1 to 10 is the same as 10 to 100. The value of this scale is apparent when you are viewing a very high priced stock with small price changes.

Auto Scale is a linear scale that automatically adjusts the chart size to take up the entire vertical span of the chart window.

You can move a chart up and down or left and right by clicking on the chart background, and getting the "hand" cursor, then dragging the mouse. You may also adjust the chart image by placing your cursor on the far right hand side and using the "hand" to size it vertically. You can stretch the chart if the hand is on the right side of the vertical Y-axis and you can move the chart itself vertically if the hand is on the left side of the Y-axis.

Auto Scale Price Data Only ignores the values of any indicators or studies you have on the price chart, making more of the price indicators occupy the space. For example the plot of a 200-day moving average might be well below the price chart. When autoscaled this would compress the price chart to make the 200 dma become visible. With this icon selected the moving average is not included and the data is therefore not compressed.

Breakout Bars enables candlesticks to be repainted in a color that stands out from the normal green and red bars. This is called the "neutral" color. You can access the color for the breakout bars in Chart Preferences. NOTE: A breakout to the upside is defined as the current bar closing greater than the high of the previous bar. A breakout to the downside is considered when the current bar closes less than the low of the previous bar.

Cursor Tracking and Cursor Window, toggle the cursor tracking and the cursor window. The Cursor Tracking turns on the pointer crosshair while the cursor window shows the values of the various items at the crosshair on the chart, and works as a dynamic legend.

Snapshot Window enables the snapshot field to appear on the chart. The default contains the four horizontal fields Open, High, Low and Close (Last), and Net Percent.

The next five icons control the (1) Spacing of the bars (2) Width of candlesticks high low bars that you may have selected. (3) The icon labeled Reset resets all the charts to their default spacing. The spacing of the bars becomes important when you are trying to see certain details in the pricing patterns. If the bars are too close together they can touch and the changes are not visible. These icons give you great flexibility in separating them for more accurate viewing.

The last two icons turn the Secondary and Tertiary overlay charts on and off (if they have been activated in Chart->Right click->Overlay Symbols…). The secondary and tertiary overlay charts are a 2^nd and 3^rd chart Symbol that you can plot on top of the main price chart. You define these charts using the Symbol Overlay menu item (on the chart's right click menu). Then you use the buttons on this toolbar to turn the overlay graphs on and off on the chart.

Expression Toolbar and the Symbol Interval Buttons

The Expression toolbar is perhaps the most used input tool of all the toolbars. There are two main features of the toolbar: (1) entering Symbols and intervals on charts and (2) controlling the color "grouping" buttons, which control what charts are updated when the Symbol or interval is changed from the dropdown menu. These buttons are a unique and very powerful feature of ErlangerQuote that allows the user to set up channels between groups of charts and quote sheets. These are detailed in the section The Unique Sym/Inv Color Group Buttons.

Symbol Dropdown Menu

Symbols can be entered in the Symbol dropdown menu when it has been activated by either right clicking on a chart or typing a number or letter in the field itself. The purpose of the dropdown menu is to make it easy for you to switch the Symbol that is displayed on a chart.

Interval Dropdown Menu

Time intervals are the amount of data in each bar and can be adjusted by the Interval Dropdown Menu as shown in Figure 3. Default Intervals are built into the Interval Dropdown Menu. Any time interval can be entered into the active window. Default intervals shown are in minutes. D is the Symbol for a Daily chart, W for weekly, M is for monthly, Y is for yearly. See the Formula Reference for details.

Figure 10 Expression Toolbar

Color Grouping Button/Dropdown

This is a very unique feature of ErlangerQuote that won't be fully appreciated until you have spent some time arranging your charts and quote sheets while trading. The Sym and Inv buttons on the Expression toolbar create a "channel" that links up with Sym and Inv buttons on other charts. By matching the color of the Sym and/or the Inv buttons on the Expression toolbar and a chart it is possible to channel or activate synchronized updating of charts with just one click. Changing the values in the dropdowns will change the respective value of the chart or a group of charts or a group of windows. The Expression toolbar can synchronize with Level II windows, Time and Sales windows, Charts, Browser windows, and Plugins. The white button means the window is active and all windows with the Sym or Inv buttons set to white will change when the Expression Symbol or Interval is changed. Sym changes affect windows in synch with the Sym color setting. Inv changes (in the Expression toolbar) affect windows with the same Inv button color setting. If you want to lock the Symbol or interval of a window, toggle the Sym/Inv buttons to black. Black buttons are effectively off. Thus, when you click the buttons to black on a chart, you are choosing to freeze that chart’s Symbol and/or Interval.

Grouping buttons are extremely useful, but while getting started we suggest you set them all to white. If you want a chart to not change, set its Sym button to black. Clicking once will toggle the buttons between black and white. Right clicking on the button will display the colors menu. In fact, whenever you have a question about any item in ErlangerQuote, Right-click to discover the additional features that may be there.

All - All Sessions

Checking the All box will turn on the All Sessions feature, which tells ErlangerQuote to use extended hours trading (pre-market and after-market).

Eighty-five percent (85%) of after-hours trading takes place during the first 15 minutes after the market closes. Soon, markets will be open 24 x 7 and we will have a hard time defining the open and close.

Line Toolbar

Lines and other special kinds of shapes can be drawn on charts (and indicators). The toolbar that controls this is shown below and is called the Line Toolbar.

Figure 11 Line Toolbar

The Line toolbar lets you select one of five different types of lines--Line, Ray, Extended, Retracement, or Regression--that can be drawn on a chart. You can put as many lines on a chart as you wish, in any combination. You can type text on your chart with the Text tool and then move the text around. You can set its font and color to anything you wish. Right click anywhere on the chart to deselect a text or line tool. Enable the price magnet when you wish the end points of lines to be snapped to the open, close, high or low of a candlestick or high low price styled chart.

The Line tool is used to draw simple straight lines on a chart. The Ray tool works like the Line tool but has a single ray that extends infinitely forward or backwards in time, depending on which direction you draw it. The Extended tool is like a Ray tool on each end of the line, so that it extends infinitely both forward and backward in time. The Retracement tool is completely customizable to any of the standard Fibanocci support/resistance levels, as well as user-defined settings

Market Clock

The market clock can be turned on and off from the View menu. The clock is set at a 24 hour Eastern Standard Time (New York time) and can be used to show the quality of your connection to the server farm. Right click on it to activate the property dialog box to change fonts, colors, alerts, and more.

Figure 12 The Market Clock

Memory Stats

Because workspaces consume Random-Access memory, it is important to know how much memory ErlangerQuote has available when loading a workspace. Information about memory usage is available in the Memory Stats windoid. The Memory Stats windoid displays the number of non-historical record sets your workspace is requesting from the server. These requests for data are for what is called non-historical information—information is like a snapshot and can be accessed quickly. Historical Recordsets, on the other hand, have time information, and they are delivered in a steady data stream. Fields such as Last, Moving Averages, Charts, Studies, and so on are historical data and take more time to load. The value displayed for Plugin cells counts the number of plugins that you have installed. A Plugin can be inserted in the Quote Sheet cells; therefore the Plugins of this type are similar to historical records and take time to load. Finally Free Memory indicates how much memory is available to the computer beyond ErlangerQuote and all other running programs. ErlangerQuote works best when this number is greater than 5K. You can use programs like MemTurbo (http://www.freemem.com) to force Windows to allocate more free memory to the operating system. Note this product is not needed for Windows 2000 and Window NT which have a more modern and robust memory system.

Figure 13 Memory Stats Windoid.

Miscellaneous Toolbar

The miscellaneous toolbar contains additional useful functions like the Undo and Redo icons (which only work with a Notepad object), the Next Server icon, the window Title toggle, the AutoCycler and the Pause AutoCycler icons. AutoCycle makes a quote sheet cycle through each row at the rate set in App Preferences. Using the Sym buttons on the charts, the AutoCycler can update any number of charts automatically. The AutoCycler is an extremely powerful feature. The Next Server icon will operate if you have logged into Quote.com with the Server dropdown menu set to <Default (Continuum.lst)>.

Figure 14 Miscellaneous Toolbar

Publishing Toolbar

The Publishing Toolbar is a special toolbar for authoring workspaces and lessons. If you would like to create multiple sheets, other ErlangerQuote users can easily open them by clicking on a button. More information is available in the Help Lessons under Authoring. The two links represent a button and a linkspace bar. You can make the button jump to another workspace. A more Involved exercise will allow you to add tabs to the linkspace bar. The VCR start, reverse, forward, and end are button types that ErlangerQuote can create, while the icon that looks like a table at the end of the toolbar is for creating a special Table of Contents file. Again, please consult the Authoring Lessons to see how to use these additional powerful features.

Figure 15 Workspace Toolbar

The Main Toolbar

The Main Toolbar contains access to the following important functions.

Understand that like all toolbars, these same functions can be found in the dropdown menus, too. This toolbar is just a fast way to access them and you can position this toolbar anywhere on the workspace for ease of use. To position when its "docked" on the edge of the screen, just click on the ridge that is on the left side of the toolbar and drag it to the center of the workspace. It will switch to a small "windoid" with its own title bar as seen below.

Figure 16 Main Toolbar

theGate

The first icon on the toolbar resembles a sunflower and brings up a Windows Explorer-like interface that is called the Gate. It is actually a path to our ErlangerQuote server. On it you will find workspaces authored by other users. These are sample workspaces that show off various techniques, libraries of indicator workspaces, and much more. You can publish your own workspaces to this server so other users can access them. When you go to the Gate to Publish (or Pubscribe) left or right click on the background in the right pane to activate the command menus.

File and Printing Stuff

The next two sections of the toolbar define icons that allow you to create New workspaces, Open workspaces on your hard disk, or Save workspaces that are currently open. There is also an icon to Print the current workspace.

Quote Sheet, HotList, Etc.

This is perhaps the most used area of any toolbar. It is where your quote sheets, charts and other objects are started. The little Q icon with a grid is where you click to start a new Quote sheet. The H with a flame is for starting a Hotlist sheet. The pi Symbol on the gird is for starting an Option sheet. The icon that looks like a bar code is called the Scanner. It allows you to create a scan of lists of stocks. The L2 icon begins Level II sheets. The icon that looks like a chart is for opening new Charts. The icon with the letter A in it is for creating a Notepad window in which you can write. The browser icon activates a Browser window, but you need Internet Explorer to do this. The world with a chain is for making a Weblink, which is a special kind of browser window. Clicking on this icon brings down the weblink menu. The last icon in this group is the wrench, which is the fast way to get a list of the currently enabled Plugins.

Alert and About

The next icon that looks like a Red sign turns the Alert window on and off, while the small speaker is for enabling or disabling the audio from alerts. When the small speaker is depressed it means that the audio is on and when it’s up it means it’s off. The About box will give you information concerning your version of ErlangerQuote.

ErlangerCast Window and ErlangerCast

The icon that looks like red Erlanger will create a ErlangerCast window for chatting and sharing charts and quote sheets among room members. The witch's hat is for ErlangerCasting a quote sheet or chart.

Workspace Toolbar

The Workspace Toolbar is for saving the locations of various workspaces and to allow the user to open them with a single click on the tab that holds the name of the workspace. When a workspace is open in ErlangerQuote, click on the Plus (+) Symbol at the left of the workspace toolbar to add that workspace to the Workspace Bar. The name will be the same as the name that the workspace is saved under so don’t make your workspace titles too long. Currently there is no feature to rename these tabs in the Workspace Bar. The tab names can be changed by first saving the workspace using the Save As command, then click the plus button on the Workspace Toolbar. When there are more names than can be viewed in the bar click on the small scroll bars.

Figure 17 Workspace Toolbar

The Famous Sym-Inv Color Group Dropdown Menu

ErlangerQuote's easy to use interface allows you to fill your workspace with dozens of charts, quote sheets, time & sales windows, plug-ins and more. For example, if you shrink a chart to 200 x 200 pixels, a 19 to 21 inch monitor with 1600 x 1200 resolution can display as many as 48 charts on one screen. Many programs do not have a dynamic way to update windows or selected groups of windows. ErlangerQuote is equipped to not only make this easy to setup, but easy to change on the fly. Without having to input the Symbol or the interval more than once, ErlangerQuote allows you to change the time interval on just a few charts and leave all the others unaltered. In the same way, it is possible to change Symbols and update multiple windows all at once, so you can spend more time analyzing stocks and less time managing your software.

Using the Sym and Inv Color Group Buttons

ErlangerQuote implements these features and opens up other more subtle control possibilities by using an idea called the Sym and Inv Color Group Buttons. Sym stands for Symbol and Inv for Interval.

The ErlangerQuote Expression Toolbar is used for entering a stock Symbol or time interval, which can then cause charts to update with the information entered. The Expression bar can serve as a sort of stock and time control input device, and this allows you to change the stock for all charts, or the time interval for all charts, from one location. Stock Symbols are entered in the field on the left and time intervals are entered into the field on the right. Below we have typed MSFT into the Symbol area and selected "5" for 5 minutes in the Interval area.

Note on the left there is a dropdown menu called Sym. It is currently showing the color yellow but the dropdown menu allows selecting one of 8 colors to display. On the right there is a similar color dropdown menu for the Interval and it is set to magenta.

Figure 18 The Expression Bar

Now look at the chart below. There is a similar set of Sym and Inv dropdown menus on the right side of the title bar. The Sym dropdown is set to yellow and the Inv to magenta just like in the Expression bar. Right clicking the button will toggle the dropdown menu for all colors including white and black. Left clicking will toggle the color between just black and white (black for off, and white for on).

Figure 19 Chart showing Sym and Inv buttons yellow and magenta

The colors on these menus represent a sort of "channel" of communication between the Expression bar and other windows, such as charts. Think of the Expression bar as the "transmitter" and the chart as the "receiver".

The rules are as follows:

Expression Bar = Transmit Chart = Receive

White Transmits to all charts set to white Receives any Symbol or interval

Black Doesn’t transmit to any charts Locks current Symbol or interval

A Color Transmits only to charts of that color Only receives from transmitter of same color

Shortcut ways to remember the meanings of colors:

White means allow everything

Black means lock, freeze or off

Colors are channels

Expression Bars and QuoteSheets are transmitters

Charts are receivers

In the above figure the Sym dropdown on the Expression bar and the Sym dropdown on the chart are both yellow. Thus any changes made in the Expression bar will be transmitted to and received by the chart and the chart will change. The same goes for the Interval, since the Expression bar and chart both have magenta for the Sym color. The bar thus can control this chart fully.

Now suppose the chart Sym button was set to black instead of yellow. Black freezes the chart Symbol "receiver", and so continues to show what was displayed when the button was clicked to black. Thus black is like a lock on the chart's Symbol.

If the Inv dropdown displays black instead of magenta like in Figure 2 then changing the Interval in the Expression bar would not change the Interval of the chart. The chart would be locked on the last interval. Thus black on either a chart Sym or Inv dropdown is a lock.

What if the Sym and Inv dropdowns on all charts were set to white? White means receive "everything", and in this case any change in the Symbol or Interval Expression bar will cause the charts to update both the symbol and the time interval. When a Symbol dropdown and a chart dropdown have the same color, they are on the same "channel" (or frequency), and both will change based on the action in that channel. The Sym channel transfers Symbols. The Inv channel transfers intervals.

Any window with the Sym and Inv buttons can transmit back to the Expression Toolbar. However there may be times when you wish to turn this off. To do this, go to Tools->App Preferences-> check box “Don’t Update ExpBar Sym/Inv Colors”.

Examples

Lets look at some typical ways that these Sym & Inv dropdown menus can help you organize and control your work.

Same Stock, Different Time Frames

The two charts below have their Sym buttons set to the same color—yellow. This means if we change the Expression toolbar's Sym dropdown menu to yellow, both these charts will reflect any new Symbol we may type in the Expression Symbol field. If the Expression bar Sym dropdown is not yellow, it will not change the charts. However the Inv buttons in these charts are different colors. The upper daily chart is magenta and the lower 5-minute chart is green.

In this case, because the colors are different for the Inv buttons, their time intervals may be set independently of one another. For example, the Interval settings for the Daily chart can be changed by first setting the Inv dropdown (in the Expression toolbar) to magenta so that this interval change will not affect the 5-minute chart because its Inv dropdown is green. If the Expression bar Inv dropdown is changed to green and we adjust the interval only the 5-minute chart will be affected. In this set up you can arrange several charts each locked on certain time frames, give each its own Inv color and the same Sym color. Now every time you change the stock ALL the charts will update and show that stock in different time frames.

Figure 20-A Microsoft, Daily Interval

Figure 20-BB Microsoft, 5-Minute Interval

Same Time Frame, Different Stocks

In the following two charts the Sym dropdowns are set to different colors, yellow and cyan, while the two Inv dropdowns are set to the same colors, magenta. This is how you setup the same time frame to compare two different stocks over the same period

It is possible to have multiple stocks in different charts and all following the same time interval. If we change the Interval on the Expression toolbar to magenta, and then enter an interval of 240 minutes, both these charts will reflect 240 minutes. If we set the Sym dropdown in the Expression toolbar to yellow and enter the Symbol for Microsoft, only the top chart will reflect the daily price of Microsoft. If we set the Sym dropdown (in the Expression toolbar) to cyan and enter the Symbol IBM, only the bottom chart will change to reflect the daily chart of IBM. The Microsoft chart will be unchanged since the Sym button on that chart is set to a different color channel (yellow). As you create more charts and other types of windows in your workspace these color grouping buttons give you the ability to establish parallel sets of charts. You can control which windows will change, what they will change to, and when they will change.

Figure 21-A Microsoft, Daily Interval

Figure 21-B IBM, Daily Interval

Application Preferences

Selecting Tools->App Preference from the Toolbar toolbar will display the preferences dialog box shown below. The check box "Don't update ExprBar Sym/Inv Colors" will toggle on/off the ability of windows to transmit back to the Expression toolbar. If you click on a chart, for example, with both the Sym button and the Inv button set to red with this box checked, the Expression toolbar buttons (Sym and Inv) will change to red. This reverse transmit can be useful at times and other times it can be a hindrance. If you regularly use the Expression toolbar to change active charts, plug-ins, time & sales, and level II windows, you’ll want the Expression toolbar to be the same color as those windows. If you have several windows set to magenta and you want to change them all at the same time then clicking on one of the windows set to magenta (Sym or Inv) will transmit magenta to the Expression toolbar. Then click on the Expression toolbar field for Symbol input, type in the desired Symbol, press enter key and all the other magenta-coded (Sym) windows will change automatically.

Figure 22 Preferences for the Sym and Inv dropdown color menus.

The check box “Hide ISLD (Island) Lock” toggles on/off the button in charts and other windows that will activate that window to display the Island Book. We will talk more about these Preferences as you use them with the program.

Help Lessons, FAQ, and Other Friends

Charting/Analytical/Scanning programs like ErlangerQuote offer extensive power and unlimited flexibility and unfortunately, a steep learning curve, too. We’ve jam-packed the program with hundreds, if not thousands, of reconfigurable options that allows users to do just about anything. On top of this, users can create just about anything imaginable to help them with tracking, analyzing, and using securities data. Because we wanted this program to be the best in the industry we have developed comprehensive help lessons to make it possible for users to get the most out of ErlangerQuotes. This area will continue to evolve and your suggestions can help. As you read through our help lessons, if you think we could present something better or in more depth, or for whatever reason, please feel free to send us an email at support@Erlangerquote.com, with your comments. We take our customers seriously and listen carefully to their suggestions. Do take the time to read through the Help lessons, FAQ and other aids—it will help you master the learning curve so that you will conclude ErlangerQuote is the best charting program on the market

Help Lessons

There are more than 100 lessons under the ErlangerQuote Help menu, which are real time workspaces, set up in a slide show like sequence. Because they are real-time you will see current data displayed when you view the lessons, not the data that was present when we created the lessons. The lessons on the menu are listed below. One very nice thing about this approach is that you can be assured that lessons are the most recent available, since we can update them on our server.

Figure 23 ErlangerQuote Help menu

The menu above shows that each lesson has a submenu available with the names of the individual lessons. For example we see the Status bar lessons are divided into Status Overview, The Status Bar, and an Opinion Poll. The lessons have been arranged to help you master ErlangerQuote quickly.

1. The Status Bar

2. Using Quote Sheets

3. Setting Alerts

4. Charting

5. Making Chart Formula Studies

6. Making Chart Color Studies

7. Using Line Tools

8. Using Color

9. Creating Quote Sheet Formulas

10. Learning TheGate

11. Import Export Techniques

12. Welcome to Plugins

13. The HotList

14. Screening with the Scanner

15. Setting Up a Portfolio

16. Authoring Workspaces

The lessons are presented in a graduated fashion with easy things first, and harder things later. The lessons repeat certain topics in more detail later; a technique called the "spiral approach".

When selected, the help lessons load on your desktop like a ErlangerQuote workspace. Using the Previous and Next buttons found in the workspace, you could navigate throughout the lesson one workspace at a time. Loading a new lesson will make your existing workspace disappear. (Only one workspace at a time can be open on the ErlangerQuote desktop). You can move windows around in the help lesson workspaces, but no changes will be saved. This is because the help lesson workspaces reside on our server called theGate (which we will discuss later). When you open a workspace that is on our server (theGate) the word SUB becomes visible on the titlebars of quote sheets and charts. This means the workspace is SUBscribed. In the future, there will be many more uses for SUBscribe workspaces, but for now, when you save the workspace to your hard disk the word, ‘SUB’ will disappear. You can do this by selecting File->Save Workspace As . . .if you’d like you can create a folder within the ErlangerQuote directory to store help files. Doing this takes time and if we update our help lessons you may not be aware of added information or new help lessons as we create them. So it may just be easier to use the SUBscribed help lessons, but if you want to make changes and develop something useful for yourself and others the capabilities are already built into ErlangerQuote.

FAQ

Also known as Frequently Asked Questions. This is a list of the most commonly asked questions about ErlangerQuote and the answers. You can select the FAQ from the Help->FAQ menu.

Visit theGate: Pubscribe and Subscribe

ErlangerQuote maximizes the power of modern communications through a feature known as theGate, which is window that can be displayed by clicking on the Tenlights "sunflower" icon in the upper left corner of the ErlangerQuote workspace. TheGate is Tenlights’ server with an interface identical to Windows Explorer. We maintain a collection of ErlangerQuote services within theGate. Folders are on the left and the contents of the folders are on the right.

As shown in the figure, five areas are included in theGate: Lessons, Local Workspaces, My Pubscribe, Pubscribe, Support, and Web Links. These areas are actually folders so clicking on the folder will display its contents on the right pane of the screen that makes up theGate.

Figure 24 TheGate Explorer Interface

Lessons

These are the same lessons that are stored under the Help menu.

Local Workspaces

All of the workspaces that are stored inside your default User folder (which is inside of the ErlangerQuote folder) will show up in the Local Workspaces folder in theGate display. This does not mean these are on theGate, its just way to see all your workspaces without having to leave the program. These workspaces stay on your computer and are accessible only from your computer.

MyPubscribe: Every User Needs to Know This:

To access your workspaces from other locations copy them to our server using MyPubscribe. They will be stored into this folder. Each ErlangerQuote user is given about 1MB of space on the Tenlights server for their private use as part of the ErlangerQuote service. By loading your workspaces to the MyPubscribe area it is possible to access them from anywhere. For example, if you are going on vacation you can publish your workspaces to MyPubscribe and then access them with your laptop. To publish, first open the desired workspace on the ErlangerQuote desktop. Then open theGate and left click the MyPubscribe folder. Next right click in the right pane of theGate. The menu that appears will open a dropdown menu with eight options. Select Publish Current Workspace and your opened workspace will be uploaded to our server.

Pubscribe

Pubscribe is where workspaces can be shared with friends or clients, organized, and made available to you from others. The folder is divided into a Gurus folder, where you must have the proper password to enter, Commercial folders containing workspaces that promote a particular trading strategy or technique, and a Public folder that contains a library of workspaces. You can click on any of these folders and its contents will appear in the right pane of the Explorer window. To download any workspace to your desktop–double click it. If you want to save it on your hard disk, select File->Save Workspace As . . ..

Support

Sometimes error can creep into workspaces. Publishing your workspace to the Support area makes it possible for our technical staff to examine it and help correct problems. To publish your workspace to support go to File->Publish Workspace to Support.

Web Links

This is another powerful feature of ErlangerQuote. Open any web link, like the one shown in the figure, by clicking on Web Links to reveal the subfolders. Clicking on any web link folder will display the name of the web link and the URL for it in the right pane of theGate. In this example we have selected the Smart Money web site.

Next, return to your ErlangerQuote workspace and create a quote sheet with two Symbols: AOL and IBM.

Click on AOL and make sure it appears in the Expression toolbar at the top of your workspace. The Sym and Inv buttons should be set to white. Double-click on the web link in theGate to open it inside ErlangerQuote. A new Browser window will open within your ErlangerQuote workspace with the Smart Money Insider Trading page displaying information on AOL. Clicking on IBM will change the active Symbol in the SmartMoney web page. This feature gives you the ability to setup a specialized web page that is channeled to your QuoteSheets. For further information take a look at the Learning the Gate lesson in the Help menu.

Figure 25 Accessing Web Links through theGate Explorer Pane

Workspaces

Workspaces are the collection of quote sheets, charts, time and sales windows, option sheets, plugins, and any other chart or sheet, which you save using the File->Save command in ErlangerQuote. Workspaces are customizable to any size you want from small to large. Workspaces are saved with an extension of wkf and are actually a command instruction list for ErlangerQuote, telling it exactly what to do.

Workspaces are easy to debug and can be exchanged with other users with ease. If someone else creates a formula or scanning function that you would like to use it is possible to copy and paste it from his or her workspace to your workspace. If a Plugin is specified in a workspace that you do not have, ErlangerQuote will let you know.

AutoSave

Workspaces can be saved by clicking on the tiny floppy disk icon in the toolbar (who uses Floppies anymore?) or you can set ErlangerQuote to Autosave your workspace every X minutes under Tools->App Preferences->Save/Load.

Make a Quote Sheet

Its time to take the big step of mastering Quote Sheets.

Select File->New->Quote Sheet or click on the small icon in the toolbar with the Q in it. This will create a new Quote sheet. The first time the program is run all new windows will open to the program Default Style set by Tenlights. The initial Quote sheet will have a minimum of information on it and should look like the one in the Figure 9A below with Symbol, Ask, Bid, Last, Net, and Net% displayed. Quote sheets can be resized using standard Windows commands. To start, grab the lower right corner and resize it to the dimensions you prefer. Then click quote sheet titlebar to move it around inside the workspace to anywhere you want it positioned.

There are no Symbols in the quote sheet so the cells under the columns are empty right now. The actual colors used for the quote sheet--background, foreground, grid color, text size and much more can be customized by right-clicking on the quote sheet background and selecting Quote Sheet Preferences… from the menu. We'll stick with the defaults for now and begin by putting in some stocks to get the columns working.

Figure 26-A Your First Quote Sheet

Assuming you are connected to the Internet through ErlangerQuote and have this quote sheet on your screen, click on the intersection of column A and row 1. Type the Symbol for AOL. Pressing return will move your cursor to the next row down. Type IBM. Press Enter, type CSCO and then press Enter again and, finally, AAPL. As you type these Symbols you should see the values filling in like the Quote sheet below.

Figure 26-B Filling in your Quote Sheet

Ask is the lowest price sellers are willing to accept. The Bid is the highest price buyers are willing to pay. Both indicate the latest information available. Last is the price of the last trade. Net is the difference between yesterday's closing price and the last trade. Net% is the percent difference between yesterday’s closing price and the last trade. The background will be highlighted green if the Net or Net% is greater than 0. If the Net or Net% is less than zero, the background will be red. Next, let’s take a look at how to create a chart to display the quote sheet information graphically. Then we’ll return to the quote sheet to explore other features like how to add formulas and other great stuff.

Make a Chart

Click on the Symbol AOL in the Quote sheet, then select File->New->Chart or click on the Chart icon on the Toolbar toolbar located to the right of the “L2” icon.

The Default chart will appear the first time you execute this command. Resize & relocate the chart so you can see both the chart and the quote sheet. The figure below shows the default chart. It will be a bar chart displaying Open, High, Low, Close (OHLC) and a study of the Volume on the bottom. The time interval, also known as, Periodicity, and Inv are set to Daily. Notice the color of both the Sym button and the Inv button is set to white. Later we will learn more about the power of charts and give some basic instructions on how to read charts.

Figure 27 Your First Chart

Figure 11 is one example of how the workspace could look at this point. The quote sheet is on top and the chart is on the bottom. Before moving too far along in the creation of your workspace consider what settings you have on your monitor (or monitors for users with more than one monitor). A good setting is 1024 x 768, but play with your settings to see if you want to make them bigger or smaller. Later on if you change settings some items may be too small to see easily or they may spill over the screen and not be visible without scrolling left-right or up-down. Your monitor settings can be adjusted by right clicking on your Windows desktop->Select Properties->select the Settings Tab->Adjusting Screen Area or check your Windows Help files.

Figure 28 Your First Workspace

Add Fields to Quote Sheets

Now that we have our workspace with the two most popular objects you will use over and over again, lets start playing with them. The first thing we want to do is learn how to add what are called "Fields" to the quote sheet. We also want to learn to add things called Position, Marketing Guide, and Plugin cells, which are like special fields. For now, we will focus on adding just a few things.

Its All on the Right Menu Baby

Before ErlangerQuote was designed we decided early to use the most current DNA for the code, which means Microsoft Windows. That also means that ErlangerQuote was designed to take the MOST advantage possible of the standard Microsoft Office 2000 Interface for Windows 98, Widows 2000, Millennium, and so on.

To that end, the most basic ideology of the Office standard is to employ the right click menu OFTEN. So we say here in the clearest of terms: To get the most out of ErlangerQuote become familiar with right clicking on every object whenever you have a question about whether or not it will do something.

Want to remove all the names from the Expression bar's Symbol dropdown? Right click somewhere close to it and you will see a menu with Clear All Symbols. What to insert a row in a quote sheet; right click and select Row and look for an Insert Row sub menu. And so on.

We will start by right clicking on the Ask column; specifically on the letter B. The menu will pop up as shown in the Figure below. Now select the item Fields->Info->Title. When you release the mouse button you will have inserted a Title column in your quote sheet making the name of the company behind the Symbol l show up. Because the names are long you should stretch the column wider by moving your cursor onto the small vertical line next to the word Ask. The cursor will change to a horizontal arrow for grabbing the edge if the column and enlarge it to the right or shrinking it to the left. Once you have made it wide enough to see the title, you can widen the quote sheet so the other columns come back into view.

Figure 29 Adding a Field to the Quote Sheet, in this case "Title"

The figure below shows what the new quote sheet should look like. Its that simple! You can insert more fields by repeating this process, right click where you want the insertion to occur then select Fields, examine the great number of items that can be inserted, and pick what you want. We have not scratched the surface of these possibilities, but we want this manual to be short, so we will save the rest for later topics. You know enough now to insert columns where you want them. To delete a column, right click on the column heading and select Column->Delete Column.

Figure 30 The Quote sheet with the new Title field inserted as a column

Need Column Control or Row Control?

The most efficient way to use ErlangerQuote is to understand that using the right-click menu on a Quote sheet is divided into columns and rows. On this menu is a menu item for Columns and another for Rows and each have lots of submenus. When you are about to do something in ErlangerQuote first ask yourself: Am I doing this in a column or a row? For example, to add a formula column go to Column->Insert Formula Column. To add a Subtotal select Row-Insert Subtotal.

Add Indicators to Charts

The Chart features in ErlangerQuote are the most powerful in the industry. Charts provide an enormous array of possibilities. For starters, we’ll take a look at how to add chart indicators. These are mathematical equations designed to help you analyze the price charts by creating visual indicators. One example of a widely used indicator is the moving average. The moving average (MA) helps you visualize the current price trend by smoothing the fluctuations in the price chart, and the MA assists in making basic assumptions about the stock's future momentum. This can help you in your decisions about whether to buy, sell, or do nothing at all. In Figure 13, the moving average is the blue line and you can see that it follows the average movement of the prices and smoothes them out to help us see the trend. Let’s insert a moving average study in our AOL chart.

Figure 31 Adding a Moving Average Study

RIGHT CLICK on the chart, (remember, always right click on objects to see what features are available.) Up pops a menu loaded with items as shown in Figure 15 below. We won't explain all of these right now, but take a look at the options and keep in mind that this menu holds about everything you will ever need to do to a chart, like with the Quote sheet right click menu.

Figure 32 Chart right click menu

Note the menu item called Studies. The submenu of Studies contains a list of indicators, which we will cover in more detail later. Right now select the second one from the top—Moving Average. A dialog box will appear asking you to enter the interval for your moving average, and other things, as shown in the figure.

Figure 33 Adding a Moving Average Study

Lets just change the width of the line so its one size thicker, and then accept the 10 day default by clicking on OK. While you are at this box look at all the things that you can change about the moving average. You can make it exponential, which means that the values in the average are not weighted the same and ones closer to the current date have more affect on the average than ones at the beginning of the time interval. You can also adjust the color of the line, its source (close, open, high, low), and the offset (move the start of the moving average in the positive or negative direction).

When you click OK you should see the blue moving average line plotted on top of the AOL price chart as shown in the figure. In this case we can see that AOL moved through this 10 day moving average in early July, and headed up until mid-July, when it fell back down below it. We can also see the trading volume for AOL has dropped a lot from its averages back in March and April. But the good news is the trend is up (at the time of this writing).

Summary

We have covered a great deal of information and yet there is so much more that ErlangerQuote can do. In the following chapters we will be examining some of those features.