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For those who subscribe to the DAS Deluxe package, here's a tip on how to boost your stock market data feed up to Premuim/Elite levels for free! All you need to do is contact DAS and ask them to swap your Options Level 2 data for ARCA book. There is no additional cost. This, of course, assumes you don't plan to trade options. After they confirm the switch has been made, close and re-open DAS. You should see additional ACB limit orders on the L2 Montage tab, as well as the complete ARCA Book. Contact DAS support through the DAS web form or via e-mail at [email protected].

Hi fellow traders. I would like to share with anyone who may find this useful or perhaps provide a helpful ‘head start’ into the world of Hot Keys. When I began to learn day trading and the importance of using hot keys, I created an editable PDF file which I would refine and develop as my trading progressed. To this day I still refer back to this chart as a constant reminder of my complex hot-key layout. One very nice thing about the PDF I am providing here is the fact that all the comment text boxes and red square boxes are ‘live and editable’. You can use this file as a head start to customize your preferred hotkeys vs. creating one from scratch. (Bit of a time saver) You will find that as you evolve your hotkeys, you will revise your PDF on the fly continuously making it more detailed and accurate for your desired use. Just a note; All I did here was take a photo of my actual keyboard and added some black space around it. I then saved a .jpg file and converted it to a PDF file. A few things I would like to point out here in hopes to answer some possible questions. This layout I am providing here is simply how I ‘personally’ have found to work for ‘my’ for my trading style. Yours can of course differ. - The text boxes Highlighted in ‘yellow’ represent the very active hotkeys I use most commonly - The colored stickers on the keyboard (purchased from a dollar store) are something I did to help me learn with clarity/confidence under pressure. Once you have used them for a while you will most likely find that you do not need colored stickers. Your hotkeys become natural to you. That day will come. - The hotkey scripts I am providing are based on using DAS trader version 5.3.0.5 (and in particular IB as my broker). Please note to ensure that you test out all your hotkeys in simulation mode before you go live. Make changes as necessary. - From my understanding and experience using hotkeys in DAS Trader Pro 5.3.0.5. Hotkeys associated with ‘stop order’ like actions DO NOT work in pre-market environments. (I do not know why). So use at your own discretion and ensure to test out all of them in the simulator environment. Perhaps now that I have done this, it might be nice for other fellow traders to share their hotkey layout and what works well for them. Be nice to see other trading styles. Happy trading everyone! And good luck! Uploaded; April 20 2019 Revision: 0 DAS HotKey Layout and Shortcut Scripts REV0.pdf

I was rereading Van Tharp's 40 principles for reinforcement and thought it would be good to post them. These are from a free book on the website: https://www.vantharp.com/home-study Most of these principles you will find in Andrew's book but stated differently. Also, Van Tharp is much heavier into position sizing strategies. I can post more about that topic if there is an interest. Here they are: Tharp Think Principles 1. Successful trading can be modeled and taught to other people. 2. Learning to trade well requires as much work/education as any other profession. 3. You need to find a trading system that fits you. 4. In order to accomplish that, you must know yourself: a. Your values b. Your strengths c. Your weaknesses d. Your parts e. Significant beliefs f. Trading edges g. Trading weaknesses 5. You can only trade your beliefs about the markets, not the markets themselves. Thus, you should know and understand your beliefs and whether or not they are useful. 6. System development is 100 percent (1) beliefs (2) mental states, and (3) mental strategies. Thus, it is 100 percent psychology. 7. You must know your personal criteria for being able to trade a system with confidence. 8. A mistake means not following your rules. If you don’t have rules, everything you do is a mistake. 9. It is much better to trade a lower-scoring SQN system that fits you than a higher-scoring SQN system that doesn’t fit you. 10. You are responsible for everything that happens to you. When you understand this, you can correct your mistakes. We call this respond-ability. 11. Repeating the same mistake over and over is self-sabotage. 12. A trader who makes one mistake in 10 trades is 90 percent efficient; that 10 percent drop in efficiency could be enough to make him/her a losing trader. 13. Fifty percent of system development is thinking through and clearly defining a set of written objectives. Those objectives should address your desired gain, your maximum acceptable draw-down, and the relative importance of each. 14. You need to design core objectives that fit you. 15. There are potentially as many objectives as there are traders. 16. You meet your objectives through position sizing strategies. 17. The overwhelming majority of your performance is due to your position sizing strategy and your efficiency as a trader. 18. You must know your mission/purpose in life and incorporate that into your trading. 19. You need to know your financial freedom number (passive income per month less monthly expenses). When it’s positive, you are financially free. 20. Never open a position without knowing the initial risk. 21. Define your profits and losses as a multiple of your initial risk (R-multiples). 22. Limit your losses to 1R or less. 23. Make sure your profits on the average are bigger than 1R. 24. Never take a trade unless the reward-to-risk ratio of that trade is at least 2:1 and perhaps even 3:1 25. Your trading system is a distribution of R multiples. 26. When you understand #6 you should be able to hear/see a description of a system and know the kind of R-multiple distribution it would generate. 27. The mean of that distribution is the expectancy, and it tells you what you’ll make on the average trade. It should be a positive number. 28. The mean, standard deviation, and the number of trades determine the SQN score for your system. 29. Your SQN score tells you how easy it will be to meet your objectives using position sizing strategies. Other than that, your system has nothing to do with meeting your objectives. 30. Systems are usually named after their setups, which are usually based on some attempt to predict future prices. Prediction has nothing to do with trading well. 31. System performance has to do with controlling risk and managing the position through your exits. 32. There are at least six different market types. You should understand how your system will perform in each of them. a. Bull volatile b. Bull quiet c. Sideways volatile d. Sideways quiet e. Bear quiet (almost doesn’t exist) f. Bear volatile 33. It’s easy to design a Holy Grail system (one with a high System Quality Number score) for any one market type listed above. 34. It’s insane to expect that trading system to work in all market types. 35. The biggest mistake people make is to try to design one system to fit all markets. 36. You should only trade your system in the market type for which it was designed. 37. Good traders understand the big picture, know how to measure it, and become aware when the situation changes. 38. Media and academia know none of this and will not teach it to you. 39. For each market type, you need a large sample size to estimate what the population is for that system. 40. You also need to Monte Carlo simulations with your system’s R-multiples to get a better idea of what to expect in the future. This will work if the sample you draw from is similar to the population.

No, I don't believe there's an ability to interact with alerts via the chart or hotkeys. It's also worth mentioning that the alert system is a tad buggy at the moment, at least in the latest BETA builds. I'd have to dig up my notes, but the math used for the alerts is way off depending what you choose for the equation (< and <= give completely different results). An alert for a price level will work fine (with a slight bug, see below), but anything using Unrealized, P/L, and Total P/L will give you unexpected results. Here's some of my notes to get around the bugs I've found: TTS --> Doesn't read out beyond the account line if present. Workaround: Type a message into the SYMB box, it'll read that first (e.g. "MAX LOSS HIT") PRICE ALERT --> Readout of price is incorrect. It appends the equation number (I assume it's the operators position in an array) to the price. So for example, a price alert for AMD at 19.40 will give you --> If "<" it'll read AMD 119.4. If "<=" it'll read AMD 219.4, if "=" it'll read AMD 319.4 and so fourth (> is 4, >= is 5). Maxloss does a running balance, depending on the operator used. Examples: P/L <= -150 ---> Expected Result: If actual P/L is less than or equal to -150, send alert. Actual result: Does a running balance, so if you're up $300 on the day and then take a $150 loss, it'll trigger at PnL $150. Not a bad idea for another option (a trailing P/L alert), just not the expected result. Workaround: Use "<" instead. e.g. P/L < -100 ---> This seems to work more appropriately, although I've had it sometimes trigger like the <= operator. Unrealized and TotalPL have similar issues, but are more random because of the inclusion of the unrealized variable.

@KyleK29 I am amazed by how much effort you've put into this solution. Thank you on behalf of the entire Bear Bull Traders Team! Would it be possible to automatically send a STOP MARKET order along with the buy/sell execution? The following script only sends a STOP with some arbitrary price relative to Average Cost: Share=Pos;ROUTE=STOP;StopType=Market;StopPrice=AvgCost-0.10;TIF=DAY+;SELL=SEND How cool would it be to double-click your stop level, automatically calculate share size, send the order, and send a stop order with the press of one hotkey. Thanks!

You need to zoom out to see more. Down arrow or minus sign. Or you can change the hotkey command for F1/F2 to default to a certain number of bars. Like this: F1: MinuteChart 1 1d; NumBar 30; F2: MinuteChart 5 1d; NumBar 24