Control Panel

The control panel is on the left side of your screen. It includes five tabs: Charts, Preferences, Key, Data, and Notes.

Charts Tab

This section of the Control Panel gives you the ability to open a chart, add a chart to your Chartbook, and to select between the charts that are open. See the Chartbooks section for more details.

My Account Tab

The My Account window can be used to place orders and make deposits and withdrawals. This window also has overall totals for the trading account and for the current contract that you have open in the Chart Window.

Additional information about the My Account tab is available in the Accounting & Simulator Plug-in section.

Preferences Tab

The Preferences Tab will help you customize how your chart looks and information on your chart. It defaults to chart settings, but will also show the options for customizing Technical Tools and Indicators. This is where you can change colors, fonts, and line type for your chart and indicators.

Key Tab

This section displays the key details and data from the contract displayed in the Chart Window. (Terms are explained in depth in the Introduction to Futures chapter.)

Symbol: Gecko Software's symbol for the commodity.

Name: Name of the commodity.

Group: The group is a category for commodities.

Exchange: The exchange is where the commodity's trades are processed.

Contract Size: Number of units that one contract represents.

Contract Units: The unit of measurement.

Tic Size: The tic size is defined as the smallest increment the quote of a contract will fluctuate.

Minimum Move: Tic size represented as a decimal value.

Tic Units: The unit of measure for quotes. This unit should be the same as the unit that the Exchange uses.

Full Point Value: This value represents what a move in the ones place is worth.

Init. Margin: The initial margin for your account.

Maint. Margin: The maintenance margin for your account.

First Notice Day (FND): Date that the contract will expire.

Last Trading Day (LTD): Last day to trade the open contract.

Market Open: The time that the market opens.

Market Close: The time that the market closes.

Options Expiration: The date that options will expire worthless or be automatically exercised into futures orders.

Options Strike Interval: The value for the minimum spacing between options, as listed by the Exchange.

Options Min. Move: The value of the minimum price fluctuation for the options contract.

No. of strikes above/below: The value used to calculate strikes above the highest high and below the lowest low in generated Black and Scholes data.

Data Tab

The Data tab will give you the historical data for each day a specific symbol had traded. It will give you the open price, close price, highest price, and lowest price on the day. It also shows the volume traded. Values for indicators are added when the indicator is open.

The disk button is used to save any changes you have made to the data, so that they are available the next time you run the software. The disk button with the red arrow on it is for undoing any data changes you have made but have not saved. If you have already saved the incorrect value, this action will not recall the original value.

You can select to see all data in decimal or fractional format. Most commodities are traded as decimal values and will be displayed as a decimal everywhere.

To customize the Data tab, click on the Customize button and the Customize window will open. In this window, you can select which data is displayed in the Data tab. To change the data column display order, use the + or - keys on your keyboard to move the selected item up or down in the list.

Notes Tab

The Notes tab is for your convenience to use as a note pad for your research and trading strategy. A separate note pad is provided for each chart.