Home                           

 Try Investor/RT             

 Investor/RT Tour           

 Getting Started              

 What's New                  

 Testimonials                 

  Q&A - Broken down by Topic . . .      Complete List of Questions - All Topics
     Charts and Technical Indicators      TPO Charts
     RTL: Scans, Signals, and Custom Indicators      Importing and Exporting
     Trading Systems and Backtesting      Schedules
     Quotepages, Portfolios and Custom Columns      Alarms / Alerts
     Data: Historical Data, the Database, and Data Services      User Variables (T# and V#)
     Custom Instruments: Spreads and Pairs      General / Miscellaneous
     Controls, Windows, and the Button Indicator      Autotrading
     Slide Shows      Product Line

 
Q&A Home

Investor/RT Answer
Answers to Common Questions

   

Question

The Volume Surge setting in the Alarm Preferences (Special) dialog box allows one to specify “’x’ times average”.  Does this mean the alarm will occur when volume today is “x” times the average daily volume over period “y”?  If so, what is “y”?  If not, what does it mean?

Question

How does the Price Move alarm work?  Does it mean that the price is either up or down “x” points from the prior day’s close, from the prior tick, or for some other price?
   

Video Answer

The Alarm Preferences (Special) dialog box is an archaic feature of Investor/RT that was developed before Investor/RT had the far more general RTL language for specifying trading signals and scans for exceptional conditions.

The quotepage has a column named Avg Volume. This value is calculated automatically each day as the 20 period average daily trading volume. For I/RT Professional users, if 20 days average volume if not what you want you can override this quotepage value by running a scheduled scan each day after the close with the formula:

SET(AVGVOL, VMA)

Where VMA is setup as the N period average of volume that you prefer.

The X times average in the dialog you mention is based on this Avg Volume data value for each instrument.

As for Price Move, the move is calculated as the difference between the previous close and the current price. You can check for moves up by X or moves down by Y or both conditions. These alert conditions, if activated, are tested tick by tick.

There are also “Gap” tests that are done only once when the open is set for an instrument. The gap is defined as the difference between today’s open price and the previous close. You can test for gap up or gap down conditions.

This alert feature is useful for some but has largely been superseded by the RTL language for our Investor/RT Professional customers. The Alarm Preferences (Special) dialog box features are present in all editions of Investor/RT whether RTL is available or not.