Instrument Preferences

Submitted by linnsoft on Tue, 04/23/2013 - 20:47

There are 4 preference setup windows within the instrument preferences Tab. In this support page, we will discuss the generic “Instrument  Setup” preference window together with the “Instruments defaults”. For the other 2 windows, please review the “Custom Instrument Setup” and “Future Type Setup” support pages

The “Instrument Setup “ Preference window

It has already been discussed in detail on this support page. To summarize :

  1. For a future type already predefined in our database (check our online symbol guide), the easiest way to add a new instrument for the first time is just to type its symbol on a Quotepage.
  2. If a future market is not included in our database, a new future type needs to be added through the corresponding setup window (prior to adding a specific contract month symbol)
  3. For DTN / CQG / IBKR instruments other than futures (typically a stock, an index or a market “statistics”), it is recommended to systematically check that the corresponding security type and main symbol specifications (security type, name, display format & exchange) were correctly recognized by Investor/RT (and correct them if needed).

Indeed, when adding any new instrument (not natively present in our database) :

  • The data retention settings will be aligned with the default value of the corresponding setup window
  • The default security type, exchange and display format (if these 3 items are not automatically recognized by I/RT), full session hours and monitoring status are aligned with the settings as introduced in the “Instrument default" preferences (discussed below)

Some misc. comments (about the bottom section of the instrument setup window)

  • When activated, the Quotepage highlight color is used to paint the background of the corresponding quotepage ticker row.
  • The “No tick data filtering” chekbox is used to exclude a symbol from the bad tick filtering feature that can be possibly activated in some data configuration (very rarely needed for any future stream)
  • User data is an editable text column which each symbol contains. It can be added as a column to a quotepage and edited directly, or modified from the setup instruments window

The “Instrument default“ Preference page

As mentionned above, this page is typically used for setting up the default settings of any instrument added to the database.
It will be, in fact, most useful when importing at once a list of ticker symbols (typically stocks) from an ASCII file through the  “Data > Importing data > Ticker symbols”  feature.

Investor/RT uses the default values specified here when adding the new instrument(s). The instrument preferences window allows you to specify:

  1. the default security type (stock, statistics, etc.)
  2. the default requested exchange code (AUTO is recommended)
  3. the default full session hours (reminder, the day session hours will be derived from the "day session" associated with the full session in the session preference window)
  4. the default display format (99.99, 99.999, etc.)
  5. the default instrument monitoring options (intraday & daily are recommended).

Specifying these defaults in advance streamlines the setup process for new instruments,especially when importing a long list of symbols. For example, if you are principally using Investor/RT to monitor Nasdaq shares (traded on the extended Nasdaq session hours), you could set your defaults as per the above screenshot.

Then, when you add a new stock by typing its ticker symbol into a quote page (or import a list of ticker symbols from an ASCII text file), Investor/RT will automatically define the new instrument for you with these settings. When you bring up the Setup Instruments window, the defaults specified here are the initial settings whenever you are adding a new instrument.