Instrument Preferences

The instrument preferences window allows the user to specify default values to be used when adding new instruments to Investor/RT.

Instruments may be added to Investor/RT in four ways:

1. Using the Setup Instruments window
2. Typing ticker symbols directly into a quote page
3. Importing ticker symbols lists using File Import
4. Importing ticker symbols using Setup Quote Sifter

In each of these cases, 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, future, etc.)
2. the default requested exchange code (COMP, NYSE, etc.)
3. the default session to assign to new instruments
4. the default display format (eighths, sixteenths, 99.999, etc.)
5. the default data monitoring options (daily, weekly, monthly, intra-day).

Specifying these defaults in advance streamlines the setup process for new instruments. For example, if you are principally using Investor/RT to trade equities you could set your defaults to: stock, COMP, Session 0 NYSE Session, 99.99, daily and intra-day data collection. Then when you define a new instrument by typing its ticker symbol into a quote page, 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. If you import a list of ticker symbols from an ASCII text file, each ticker will take on the default values specified here (unless you include slash commands in the file to override these settings-see Import help for details).