Sectional QuotePages
A Sectional Quotepage is a quotepage that is divided into two or more sections such that the instrument rows within a section remain sectionalized whenever the quotepage is sorted on some criteria. Consider a simple example of a quotepage containing three index ticker symbols at the top, followed by 20 stocks. Sorting the quotepage by % Change will sort all 23 tickers so the index tickers will be ranked and inter-mixed with the 20 stocks according to % change. Version 7.4.3 allows you instead to create a section at the top containing the indexes and a section below for the stocks, sorting by % change or any other criteria will sort each section separately, the indexes section will remain at the top followed by the stocks section below, both sections listed in order by % change.
The sectional quotepage facility makes use of special ticker symbols (instruments) that begin with ##. These ticker symbols occupy rows in a quotepage to mark the beginning of a new quotepage section. The ## tickers are "placeholders". These special ## tickers will not be listed in the ".All Symbols" quotepage. Instead a new system-defined quotepage named ".Cash" has been added to Investor/RT so you can see ## tickers and other tickers of security type "Cash", if needed.
Investor/RT uses special ticker symbol rows as "Section Headers". Ticker symbols that begin with ## and have security type "Cash" are inserted into quotepages to mark the beginning of a new section (and the end of the previous section if there are rows above). For example, open any quotepage and insert a blank row somewhere in the middle, enter "##DIVIDER" into the ticker symbol cell and press the enter key. This will break the quotepage into two sections, the top section comprises all instrument rows above the ##DIVIDER and the bottom section all those below it. Note that the top section need not have a header row but it can if you wish to add one. Now sort the quotepage on various columns by clicking on the column headers to see the sectionalize sorting of the quotepage.
For convenience, you can right-click on any ticker symbol cell and choose "Insert-->Section Header" to have Investor/RT create a unique ## ticker for you and insert it beneath the clicked row. The ## ticker will have the form ##n where n is a number that makes the ticker unique. If you wish the section header row to have a more descriptive ticker symbol you can replace the ## ticker with another. For example you can create a ##INDEXES ticker Symbol with a more descriptive name such as "Major Market Indices" as the "name" of ##INDEXES. Here are the general rules for creating sectional quotepages:
- 1. You may have as many ## sectional headers as you want in a quotepage. Each ##ticker can be followed by zero or more instrument tickers. The same section header ## ticker may be used in any number of sectional quotepages.
- Each ##ticker row is color-coded using the instrument highlight color of the ##ticker instrument. To adjust the highlight color, right-click on the ##ticker and choose Setup. 447 In the "Advanced" section of the Setup: Instruments window that appears, adjust the highlight color. This gives you complete control over color coding each row separator, regardless of the quotepage's color settings.
- Sectional header rows will be blank except for the ticker symbol, name, and volume columns. The volume column, if present in the quotepage column format will contain the count of the number of instruments in the section.
- Sorting works on any quotepage column just as it does with non-sectional quotepages. The only difference is that the sorting applies to each section as a group and all instruments stay within their section after sorting. This applies of course to manual sorts initiated by clicking on a column heading, or to periodic automatic sorts as specified in the quotepage sorting setup.
- You can easily move instruments up and down to move them from one section to another using the up and down buttons on the quotepage toolbar. After moving one or more tickers from one group to another, a sort will rank them within their new section. Similar, you can easily move any section header up or down to revise the content of that section (and the section above it).
- There are no practical limits on the number of sections or the number of instruments in each section. All the scrolling features of Investor/RT quotepages apply in the expected way, scrolling sections into view as you would expect.
- The name cell of any ##ticker has a special meaning in Investor/RT. It can provide the name of a linked quotepage. Double-clicking on a ## row will open that linked quotepage, if in fact, the security name of the ## ticker is a valid quotepage name. For now, the feature of ## tickers will continue to operate as it has before. So, for example you could have a ##ticker with the symbol ##INDEXES used as a section header inside some quotepage. Perhaps there are just a few indexes in the section. The security name of ##INDEX could be setup ".Indexes", the name of the built-in system defined quotepage listing ALL index ticker symbols. Thus ##INDEXES serves a dual purpose, it is a section header used to keep some index ticker symbols together in a quotepage, and it serves as a shortcut for opening the quotepage of all indexes by double-clicking on the ## row.
- You can insert ## rows anywhere you wish inside an existing quotepage. When you do this, all the instruments below the new ## row down to the next ## row (if any) will essentially become a section and will sort as a section thereafter. Similarly, when you remove a section header from a quotepage, all of the tickers below it down to the next ## row will then become part of the section above the deleted section header. Thus, removing all ##tickers from a quotepage essentially results in a non-sectional quotepage where the entire list of tickers symbols in the page are sorted as a group. To remove a section header simply right-click and choose Delete, or select a row and 448 press the Delete key on the keyboard. Deleting ## tickers that are used in several quotepages will have the effect of removing the section header from every quotepage where that ##ticker is used. This is why Investor/RT creates a unique ##n ticker when you use the menu commend Insert-->Section Header to add a section header. If you have a ##ticker and wish to know how many quotepages contain that ##ticker, you can lookup the ##ticker in a quickquote window and click the QP button
Group Tickers and Sectional Quotepages
Investor/RT has a feature for creating a "group ticker" that refers to a quote page, e.g. an industry group quote page. To setup a group ticker, create a "Cash" type ticker symbol using Setup: Instruments. The ticker symbol must begin with ## followed by any letters you like. Tickers in I/RT can be up to 23 characters long. The NAME associated with the ## ticker should be the name of the quote page you wish the ## ticker to refer to. For example, create ##FOCUS with a name of "Focus Stocks", where "Focus Stocks" is the name of a quote page. If you then insert the instrument ##FOCUS as a row in some other quote page, the ##FOCUS ticker becomes a "link" to the "Focus Stocks" quote page. Double-clicking on a ## ticker in any quote page causes Investor/RT to open the associated quote page for that ## ticker. Again, the association is made using the "Name" of the ## ticker, the "Name" of the ## ticker must exactly match the name of some quote page. You can use this feature to construct ## tickers for both user quote pages and/or built-in System quote page.
The ## ticker feature was enhanced to facilitate setting up of custom instruments representing a "sum" of all the tickers in a quote page. In Setup: Custom Instruments, when defining a "Sum", if you include a ##ticker as a component of the sum, ALL of the tickers in the quote page associated with that ## ticker will be added to the sum automatically. You can use a constant number as the "multiplier" for each ticker or you can enter V#n (where n is the user variable number) as the multiplier. If you name a V# variable as the source of the "multiplier", Investor/RT will use the V#n value of each instrument at that time to "weight" each of the tickers added to the "sum". This means that you must pre-specify the V#n values, either by calculating them using a scan, or perhaps by entering the weighting factors manually using a quote page for data entry.
Investor/RT supports easy "merging" of quote pages using ## tickers. Suppose you have two ## tickers, ##LISTA and ##LISTB that refer to two quote pages, "Quote Page A" and "Quote Page B". If you wish to create a new quote page that contains all of the tickers from either list, you can do the following:
- File: New: Quote Page to make an empty quote page.
- Click the "Add Instruments to QP" button to open the "Add to Quote Page" window listing all available tickers.
- Add ##LISTA and ##LISTB to the new quote page by double-clicking on ##LISTA and ##LISTB in the "Add to Quote Page" list.
Notice that the "Add to Quote Page" window has been enhanced so that adding a ##ticker causes ALL of the tickers in the associated quote page to be added to the destination quote page. Thus by creating ## cash ticker for each of your quote pages you can: Link from one quote page to another by double-clicking on a ## ticker. Easily setup custom instruments to create indexes for your quote pages. Easily add the ticker list from any quote page to another using the "Add to Quote Page" window.