GETTING STARTED WITH GUPPY TRADERS ESSENTIALS

MATCHING THE DATA FILES: SETTING THE CHART DISPLAY: BUILDING A CUSTOM TOOL BOX: USING TRADE TRAINING

The priority with any new charting program is to first make sure the program is reading the data files. Then we want to set up the screen display so that it suits our needs. Once this is achieved we can start work on analyzing potential trading and investment opportunities. Every program goes through these set up processes in a  slightly different manner. The GTE pak is no exception. It takes much longer to describe these operations than it does to do them in reality. Once these set up chart display procedures have been completed they do not need to be done again.

The first set up requirement is to size the chart so it fills the entire screen, and to set the number of days displayed on the chart. Start with a  stock that has at least two years of price history. My preference is to display around 12 months of data. Use the zoom buttons to expand or contact the chart until you have your preferred number of months shown on the screen display.

Use the SET UP file menu, and GENERAL SETTINGS to fine tune some of the display characteristics. My preference is for all trend lines, support and resistance lines and indicator lines to be shown as thin lines.  In the CHART PROPERTIES section there are three settings I like to change. The first is the  Auto Page Cycle. When I am scrolling through charts I want to spend just 3 seconds on each chart. This means I can automatically scroll through a watch list of 100 stocks in just a  few minutes. The second setting I turn off is the Show Tool Tips. This brings up the little yellow explanation boxes when the cursor is held over various tools and indicators. Finally, I prefer to have all my lines on the chart shown as 1 pixel wide. This includes the width of the bars in a  bar chart. By selecting these options they become the default display options for all charts. They can be changed on individual charts at any time by selecting the properties menu.

How much space do you want between the last bar one the chart and the price scale? Some people like to have the last bar very close to the right hand side of the chart. Others like to leave a lot of space so they can add notes, or project price patterns. This first choice in the  DATA FILES menu lets you set the distance you prefer. Other options allow you to see the number of days displayed on a daily chart, and for those who are using GTE with an intra day data feed like MarketCast, you can also specify the number of days loaded onto the chart. My preference for this is to show the last two days. When you are satisfied with these General Settings, click OK.

The final  display option is to make sure that GTE comes up with this preferred default display every time a new chart is opened.

With chart display set exactly as you want it, go to the FILE menu. Select  SAVE PAGE AS A TEMPLATE. Then in the new dialog box type in a name for the template and click OK. We call this one GTE 2.  This saves the template. You can save as many different templates as you wish, but in this case we want to save a chart layout for use as a default template every time we open a new chart using the F3 command.

Open the vertical FILES panel. In the lower half of this display, next to the box for selecting the CODE options is another box. Click on this to reveal the menu options. These includes various chart display options, and towards the bottom,   a PAGE TEMPLATES option. Click this to reveal the page templates that are available. Your newly created template will appear as one of the options. In this example we want to use the GTE2 page template. Select this and the screen menu bars will return to the base FILES display. The name of the page template is now shown next to the CODE box in the lower FILES menu panel.

As noted at the beginning, it takes longer to describe these set up steps than it does to complete them. Once this set up has been established traders will be able to automatically bring up this exact layout and chart display configuration with  any stock.

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