###  | Menu Items |

##### File Menu

| New - Create a new empty chart window with default chart properties. Open Page Layout - Brings up a dialog to open a saved page layout (see Save Page). You can save several different layouts and reload them. Save Page Layout- Brings up a dialog to save the current program layout (all charts, and SLF maps, etc.) to a named file that can be reloaded later. The default layout file is "pages.ssc". The last layout you save will be loaded by default the next time you start SSChart. Use "Open Page" to load a different layout. Open Chart - Brings up the stardard Windows File Open dialog box. The default directory is the Data directory where all saved stock data resides. File names for stock symbols are composed of the stock symbol and a suffix indicating the time period. The current time periods and suffices are .1min for intraday data, .dyd for daily, .wyd for weekly, and .mym for monthly chart data. Close Chart - Closes the current chart window. Save SLFMAP and Save As SLFMAP - Save all symbols in the current SLFMap window to a file. Delete SLFMap File - Delete the file associated with the SLFMap. Import - Open the standard Windows File Open dialog box and allows the user to select any file for importing. Additional information about the type of data in the file, etc. will be requested from the Import File Settings dialog box. See the Import File Dialog for more information. Export - Export chart data to ascii file in a variety of formats. See the Export Settings Dialog for more information. Preferences - Shows the current user preferences which can be changed, including the starting dates for acquiring price data from the internet, the price display format, etc. See the User Preferences Dialog for more information. The remaining menu items perform the standard Windows functions.

##### Edit Menu

| Favorites - Brings up the Chart Favorite Dialog from which you can edit the list of saved chart templates. Prices - Brings up the Edit Prices Dialog from which you can change the data points of a symbol.
#####

##### View Menu

| Display of Panes - The chart window can display a maximum of 4 panes with different information. The default chart window is set up to show the stock price and studied in the top pane, studies in the second pane, and the volume and studies in the third pane. This layout can be changes from the Chart Properties Dialog. The display of the Top, Middle, Bottom and Equity pane can be toggled from this menu as well as from the context specific popup menu. Candle Size - Changes the size of each candle to be small , medium (default), large or custom depending on how many data points should be visible. The candle size of the custom candle is set in the User Preferences Dialog. Time Span - Selects the time units which a single candle represents. 1 day is the default. Tick charts can be created with a default of 25 ticks per candle. This initial value can be changed to any value appropriate for the data being collected. It can be specified in the Chart Setup Dialog. It should be kept in mind that a tick size of 1 may result in a very large file depending on the symbol being followed. Availabe View Units is a list of multipliers of the base tick unit. This is a temporary view setting for the chart and does not affect the tick unit specified for the data in the file. For example if the tick count for collecting the data is 25 (default) the multipliers are as seen above. So the tick data can be viewed as 50 ticks to the candle, 125 ticks to the candle, etc. You cannot view a tick chart at less than the collected tick count. You can't view a 25 tick chart as 5 ticks. You will need to collect the tick data at 5 ticks or less. It can be specified in the Chart Setup Dialog. Customize Chart Layout - This allows you to customize the chart layout by showing/hiding price, volume, price studies, volume studies, scales, legends, and the title. Show Quick Alerts - Shows the green and red bell symbols on the bottom right hand corner of each chart. These are used for setting high and low audible alerts on the price. Setting/resetting is done graphically. See the section on Quick Alerts. Scale Price Only - Toggles the scaling of the price candles without taking the visible price studies into consideration (moving averages for example). This has the effect of enlarging the candles in cases where a study line is far away from the current price. Scale Most Recent Price - Toggles the scaling of the most recent price data points. In effect it zooms into the number of points specified in the User Preferences Dialog. The Status Messages menu item opens and closes a dialog which records informative as well as error messages. A check will appear beside the menu item if the Status Messages are visible. See the Status Messages Dialog for more information. The Toolbar and the Symbol List File (SLF) Toolbar contain selected items from the SSChart menus. A check will appear beside the menu item if the Toolbar is visible. The state of the Toolbar (visible/invisible) will be saved in the Registry and will be preserved across program invocations. The Status Bar is a standard Windows items and can be toggled on and off. A check will appear beside the menu item if the Status Bar is visible. The state of the Status Bar (visible/invisible) will be saved in the Registry and will be preserved across program invocations. Show Trading Zones toggles on and off a color background for the horizontal scale. The colors green, yellow, and red denote different time periods throughout the US Market session.
#####

##### Chart Menu

| Properties - Enables you to change the stock symbol, time period, chart type, and the window layout. See the Chart Properties Dialog for more information. Color - Allows you to change the color of the background as well as every chart item, i.e. candlestick colors, chart lables. See the Chart Color Dialog for more information. Add to Favorites - Adds the current chart to the list of Chart Favorites. See the Save As Favorites Dialog for more information. Once a chart has been added to the Favorites it also gets added as a menu item. There will be a maximum of 4 chart favorites listed in addition to the Default chart. If there are more than 4 chart favorites an button titled More... will be displayed, which when pressed, displays the Chart Favorites Dialog. One of the listed chart favorites has a check next to it. When the { Chart | New } or { File | New } button is pressed a chart will be created of the same type as the checked chart favorite. If you press any of the chart favorites a chart of that type will be created. Align Data Points - If you are viewing a percent chart with more than one symbol you can decide which points to use to align the symbols. The choices are the first common data points for the symbol, the left most visible data point in the chart window, the previous day's last data point, or today's first candle. Slide Show - Cycle through all the symbols in the current SLF File in the current active chart window. Show Extended Sessions - Show the price data for before and after market hours. If you are using free quote data sources and you want to keep the extended market data in the files you must make sure that the Keep Extended Market Hour Data flag is set in the User Preferences Dialog since the data cannot be reloaded at a later time unlike a paid data source. A partial list of saved favorites is shown at the bottom of this menu. If you have more than 4 favorites a menu item labelled More... brings up the Chart Favorites Dialog with the complete list.
#####

##### Studies Menu

| Selected Studies - Lets you view all studies which are currently attached to a chart. In addition it enables you to change the color of studies as well as delete unwanted studies (currently studies cannot be reassigned from their predefined overlay assignment). See the Select Studies Dialog for more information. For detailed information on the available studies and their parameters see the respective dialogs: Moving Average, Bollinger Band, MACD, Stochastics, RSI, CCI, VHF, Volume, Accumulation Distribution Line, Chaikin Oscillator, External Studies, and Indicators Lines. Indicators are the following: Day's Open - Draws a horizontal line at the day's opening price (intraday charts only). Day's High - Draws a horizontal line at the day's high price (intraday charts only). Day's Low - Draws a horizontal line at the day's low price (intraday charts only). Day's Midpoint - Draws a horizontal line halfway between the day's high and low price (intraday charts only). Previous Day's Close - Draws a horizontal line at the previous day's closing price (intraday charts only). Previous Day's High - Draws a horizontal line at the previous day's high price (intraday charts only). Previous Day's Low - Draws a horizontal line at the previous day's low price (intraday charts only). Floor Trader Lines - See the Indicators Lines dialog for description. Add All Indicators - Draws all above listed indicator lines. Delete All Indicators- Deletes all above listed indicator lines. The line type and line width of these lines can be modified. See the Indicators Lines study types for more information.

##### Data Menu

| Get Single Quote - Contacts the internet data source and requests a one time quote update for all symbols which are currently open, either in a chart or SLFMap window. Get Continuous Quotes - Contacts the internet data source and requests continuous quote updates for all symbols which are currently open, either in a chart or SLFMap window. Slide Show - Cycle through all symbols in the currently selected symbol list file in the current chart window. May be combined with Auto Update On. Auto Update On - Automatically update all stock price data which is out of date. Note that this flag updates all charts which are currently loaded when they become the active chart. Update - Get the current price data for the active chart window. Reload - Get all the data for the stock symbol for the current time period as specified in the Chart Properties Dialog. This function is useful in the event that the data for a stock symbol has been corrupted. Unless you configure SSChart to alway retrieve data from import files, you need an internet connection for any of these items to function. Purge - Deletes either todays intraday data, all but today's intrayday data or all intraday data for the current symbol. This function is useful in the event that the intraday data for a stock symbol has been corrupted or is incomplete. Internet Sources - Select the internet data source that data will be retrieved from. Separate source are specified for daily, weekly, monthly, and quote data. The quote data is used to create intraday charts. Import Settings - Brings up a dialog box which is used to set the list of directories to search for import files, set the import file attributes, and also specify the search order for acquiring data. See the Import Dialog for more information.
##### Trading Menu #####
| Show Graphical Trading - Enables trading from the selected chart. Trade... - Opens the trade window. Paper Trade... - Opens the paper trading (simulated trading) window. Order Definition Setup... - Opens the order setup dialog for the symbol in the selected chart. Manage Accounts... - Opens the account management window. Use this to create, purge, or delete paper trading accounts. Refresh Portfolio - Gets updated portfolio information from IB TWS.
#####

##### Tools Menu

| Select Strategy... - Strategy backtest and automated trading are still under development and are not yet usable.

##### SLFMap Menu

| Sort - sort the SLFMap Show MiniCharts - toggles on/off the display of the mini charts in each cell of the SLFMAP. The minicharts show the latest 30 minutes activity. Set Sort Order - Allows you to set the sort order of the cells to either a percentage change in price or the actual price change relative to the previous close, open, or mark time that was set. Symbol Name - Sorts the symbol cells by the symbol name in ascending order. Last Price - Displays the last price in each cell rather than the percentage or actual change.
| Set Mark Now - Saves the current price now for all symbols so that the changes are shown going forward from the marked price when you set the sort order to sort by change from mark (see above). Candle - Sets the mark time to the close of a selected candle on any intraday chart. Make and SLFMap window active (by clicking on it), and select {Set Mark | Candle}, the cursor changes to a hand pointer, click on the candle of the desired time in any intraday chart, to set the mark time. You can then set the sort order, to sort from the mark.

##### Window Menu

| All menu items perform the standard Windows functions.

##### Help Menu

| Use the Registration dialog to record the permanent key whcih you receiced after purchasing the program. This enables the program for the specified time. View License Text shows you the license statement. About SSChart shows the current version number and license information.
Control Menu
| The control box (the tiny SSChart icon in the extreme upper left corner of the window, at the left end of the title bar) provides access to the control menu, which contains window system commands such as Restore and Move. The control box on each chart window is a small icon located in the upper left corner of the title bar that looks like the icon you click to open that window. The Restore, Minimize, Maximize, and Close commands in the control menu work just like the buttons for those functions. The Move and Size commands require you to use your arrow keys.
Chart Window Popup Menus
| The menu items in the popup menu are the same as found on the menu bar and work they same. The popup menu is active when the mouse cursor is over a chart window. Click the right mouse button and the popup appears under the cursor. Move the cursor down the menu items until you find the one you want to use and click the left mouse button or alternately hold down the right mouse button, drag the cursor to the item you want to use and release the right mouse button. When you <right-click> directly on an order in graphical trading mode, you get a special order pop-up. Remove Order is used to remove an order from the chart that is no longer showing in TWS. (This should be used only for this circumstance with real trading).
SLFMap Window Popup
| The first item in the popup is the symbol name of the cell if the mouse was over an SLFMap cell. Exclude Symbol excludes the symbol from the calculations. This is useful when a symbol whose values are so far out of range that the color assignment is meaningless for the other symbols. Hide symbol temporarily hides the symbol from view. Delete Symbol deletes the symbol from the SLF file. Show Stats and Show Alerts are not implemented. Rearm Alerts |rearms the quick alerts for the selected symbol. Delete Alerts deletes the quick alerts. The above items are symbol specific. The remaining items affect all symbols in the SLFMap. Sort - sorts the items. Unhide All - shows all symbols which were temporarily hidden. Constrain Rows/Columns... brings up the Constrain Rows/Columns Dialog where you can change the cell layout configuration of the SLFMap. Simple Alerts, Complex aAerts, and Show Alerts are not implemented. Delete All Alerts deletes all quick alerts for all symbols in SLFMap. Show Extended Sessions continues updating the symbol information after the market closes. Update Daily updates all daily data files for all symbols in the SLFMap.

##### Standard Toolbar

| This toolbar contains a couple of SSChart specific buttons. These are [ScalePriceOnly] and [ScaleMostRecent]. See the View menu for more information.

SLFMap Toolbar

This toolbar contains a selection box which lists all symbol list files in the SLF subdirectory. If no slf file has been selected it shows "--none--" and the buttons are disabled. If the buttons shown above from left to right are described below: The left-most button is [Data Collection On/Off] which toggles the continuous retrieval of quote data on and off. The [Update] button (with the U) will do a batch update of all daily historical charts listed the currently selected SLF file. The [Chart] button opens a Chart window. The symbol showing in the chart window is the first one listed in the slf file. The [SLFMap] button opens an SLFMap window with the symbols in the currently selected SLF file. The [Quotes] button opens a Quotes window with the symbols in the currently selected SLF file. The [HorseRace] button creates a horserace window with the symbols in the currently selected SLF file. The [Time&Sales] button opens a Time & Sales window. It is initially empty and a symbol must be dropped into it to show the time and sales data (Paid data sources only). The [OrderBook] button opens an OrderBook window. It is initially empty and a symbol must be dropped into it to show the time and sales data (Paid data sources only). The [Level2] button opens a Level2 window. It is initially empty and a symbol must be dropped into it to show the time and sales data (Paid data sources only). The [MarketPulse] button opens a Market Pulse window. It is initially empty and a symbol must be dropped into it to show the time and sales data (Paid data sources only). Make sure you have an internet connection for these items to function.
#####

##### Status Bar

This statusbar shows status messages about files being loaded, symbol data being fetched and any error messages. These same messages are also visible in the Status Messages Dialog.

###

[Back To Contents] SSChart is a trademark of Simian Savants LLC Copyright (c) 1999-2004 Simian Savants LLC. All rights reserved.