ActiveX Interface
This software developer’s kit meets your individual or business needs. It allows users to develop their own mini-applications quickly and easily using any programmed language and the eSignal Desktop Application Programming Interface (API). Using this interface, third party applications can exchange data with the eSignal application and leverage the power of eSignal features, such as real-time data, historical data and trading information.
ActiveX offers:
- Compatibility with most programming languages
- Quick and easy development (requires some programming knowledge)
- A sample program and easy-to-read documentation
- Controlled permissioning for commercial / professional / individual use
Getting Started with ActiveX:
- Sign up for eSignal with Desktop API entitlement, or add the eSignal Desktop API with ActiveX to your subscription. To do so, contact an eSignal API specialist.
- Download eSignal.
- Join the ActiveX File Sharing Group in eSignal Central to access documentation / sample programming.
eSignal charting offers a robust, comprehensive and customizable set of technical indicators:
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Plus, a library of other, free indicators that you can access (and modify) using the eSignal Formula Language
The library includes, at no extra charge, indicators such as Bollinger Bands and Bollinger's Normalized Volume (which compares volume on a relative basis from stock to stock and time to time) and Intraday Intensity (depicts flow of funds for a security based on close within range), the DiNapoli Indicators (a trading methodology that gives you predefined entry levels, reasonably tight stops and precalculated profit objectives as soon as you enter a move), the Kase Pivot (which highlights market turns) and Teresa Lo's Power Swings Indicator (a visual tool for spotting critical decision support information in a chart). Read more about these indicators that come free with your eSignal application.
The most popular chart types:
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Interactive drawing tools:
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Advanced GET Edition, eSignal
The Advanced GET edition of eSignal combines eSignal's award-winning data and technical analysis tools with another award winner -- Advanced GET's proprietary, predictive indicators, used successfully by individual professionals and institutions worldwide.
Read more about eSignal, Advanced GET Edition.
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Alerts
With eSignal alerts you can:
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Area Charts
The popularity of the Area Chart has grown significantly as a way to easily view general market trend (as seen on CNBC, for example). It can also be compressed into a tight space to view long-term trend while its high-contrast color makes the chart easily readable.
Auto-Sort
The sortable columns in a quote, summary or portfolio window auto-sort at a predetermined interval set by the user. When activated, it continues to sort in your chosen column until you choose another. This feature can be turned on and off from the options menu. The arrow next to the field name indicates the column being sorted, as well as the direction of the sort. Saving the window retains the auto-sort preferences. Multiple headings in a quote window can be auto-sorted independently on different fields.
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Back Testing and Strategy Analyzer One of the most professional and user-friendly tools for trading system performance analysis, this feature of eSignal lets you see how your strategies might have performed had you made trades using them. The format makes it easy for you to vet your ideas from a total performance perspective, as well as dissect individual trades, measure them in relation to time and evaluate them for consistency. The eSignal Strategy Analyzer has six tabbed sections and more than 250 values useful for strategy performance analysis. Multiple modes of graph presentation and the ability to create personal settings for displaying the values of the report and analyzing the strategy make it ideal for individualized “tweaking.” Visually enhanced graphs and added functionality make back testing and strategy adjustments easy to accomplish. Extended historical data allows back testers to track the performance of their strategies across all types of market patterns and conditions. New! |
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Bar Replay
With this feature, you can step through your trading day bar by bar to assess your strategies and adjust accordingly. This feature has a fast forward and reverse capability, as well as the ability to step through the data a bar at a time.
Extended historical data allows back testers to track the performance of their strategies across all types of market patterns and conditions, and combined with Bar Replay, permits users to refine their strategies for better performance. New!
Bollinger Group Power
John Bollinger's industry group and sector analysis, available daily on eSignal, allows investors to make better decisions by highlighting where the action is, letting you to focus your energies where the potential payoffs are the greatest.
Chat
eSignal has taken the complexity out of IRC technology by integrating the IRC network connection right into an eSignal window, so all you need to do is pick a channel to chat online with other users and fellow traders.
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Continuous Contracts
This tool can be found under the Tools menu. The symbology is a 1! in place of the month / year code (for example, ES 1! to get the front month of the minis). You can also look at forward months in the same way. 2! will give you the next forward month, 3! the following forward month, and so on. This feature lets you have ES 1!, ES 2! and ES 3! in a quote window to look at the next 3 contracts without requiring you to change the symbol. Each symbol will roll on the default roll schedule or your user-defined roll preference. |
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Customer Support
This site is the place for all things customer support and service related for all of our products. Tap into new user orientations, product training, online manuals, quick start guides, the KnowledgeBase and more. Interact with tech support, network with eSignal users worldwide in the Forums, search a library of technical indicators, post yours, find links to other trading resources, research add-on products and services, educate yourself on a broad array of trading topics and consult a schedule of featured events in your area.
One of the most exciting features on the Support site is File Sharing, which lets users share chart files and images, formula studies, layouts or pages, technical documents and more across the worldwide community of users.
File Sharing is also accessible directly from the eSignal "flavor" software, where its true benefits can be best appreciated. The application contains a number of publishing tools made available as toolbar icons for easy access. Users can upload files, including the advanced charts, or an image, such as an advanced chart with a study showing a buy or sell opportunity, or display a series of windows and upload the file as a page. They can also publish a series of files as a single PDF and annotate pages with relevant comments, creating a useful instructional demo for fellow traders.
The Forums are where users can post questions, share ideas and seek information from other traders. The Forums and File Sharing work together; messages posted on the Forums can contain direct links to File Sharing.
The Forums have a feature that alerts you to announcements at startup or as frequently as once every 5 minutes to keep you better informed about important network issues.
The Support site offers product training of all kinds, including audio / video clips and live new user sessions.
Data Export and Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)
The Data Export function is an advanced charting feature that captures the data points, including those from all studies you have applied to a chart, and displays them in a tabular format to be used in Excel and other applications.
You must first set up an advanced chart with the symbol and interval you want to export. If you want a specific number of data points, such as 2 years of daily data, you might need to scroll the chart to the left, far enough to make sure it has brought in enough data. Then follow these easy steps:
- Right click on the advanced chart and select Data Export. A window will come up with the data from the chart in a tabular format. It will include the studies you have on the chart, as well as the price data.
- In the box at the top of each column, check or uncheck each one to decide if you want that field exported.
- Choose the type of export: Save as Text gives you a tab delimited file that can be opened into any program that reads that form of data, Save as HTML creates a file that can be opened into a web browser to display the data and Copy to Clipboard saves the data to your Windows clipboard, so you can paste it into Excel or other programs. This is best if you don't want to create one text file and then convert it into an Excel file later.
The exported data is a flat file of the data in the chart at the moment you selected the Data Export feature. It won't bring any streaming data into Excel in the manner of a DDE link. The export can be text, separated by commas, or .html.
eSignal data can also be easily imported to an Excel spreadsheet using Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). And, with advanced charting, you can output EFS formulas to DDE. The data within the spreadsheet remains linked to the formula while you analyze the data, using the spreadsheet's capabilities.
eSignal QLink is a Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) add-on service that makes it quick and simple to download real-time, streaming data into your Excel worksheets. You can then perform further analysis suited to your market and your strategies for trading that market.
You get these great benefits of QLink:
- Fast and easy DDE data integration
- Historical and bar data that allows tracking and deep analysis of price action over time, so you can use Excel’s spread sheets and built-in mathematical functions to your best advantage
- Snapshot and Time & Sales functions that supply your Excel-based portfolios with eSignal’s reliable data and let you monitor real-time, streaming trades and quotes
- An easy-to-use toolbar that ties all of QLink’s components together in a clean, intuitive, user-friendly way and with all report request types a single click away
- A built-in DDE API when you need to create direct formula entries for use with Excel’s Visual Basic for Applications programming language
- A unique toolbar that automatically integrated with Excel, making your analysis of the markets specific to your needs
To find out more about QLink, you can:
Review eSignal QLink (DDE) pricing information
Find out how to add it to your eSignal subscription FREE for 30 days
Make it part of your trading arsenal today:
If you are not already an eSignal subscriber, sign up for eSignal.
If you are an eSignal subscriber, add eSignal QLink.
Data from the World's Markets
Data reliability has always been eSignal's strong suit, and the company's offering goes beyond the basic U.S. and European exchanges with 100s of exchanges from around the world on all instruments, including 100+ indices, plus stocks, futures, minis, options, foreign currency options, pink sheets, Forex rates and market depth from the U.S. exchanges, Forex, London Stock Exchange (Domestic) and Euronext (Equities).
All that data can add up to a lot in exchange fees. However, eSignal’s combination of real-time and delayed data actually helps users minimize those costs because they can subscribe to only those exchanges they need in real time and receive for free or at a minimal cost delayed data on all other exchanges.
Find out more about eSignal pricing packages. Plus, a special package of world indices and mutual funds, treasuries and money markets.
Access a complete listing of information sources available with eSignal.
Our intraday data is extensive; anywhere from 60 days to 12+ years of history is available. New!
Active traders need a workstation that performs under the pressures of high volume periods. eSignal is optimized to handle the large influx of trades during a Fed announcement or other similar broad market event that sends your portfolio into a high volatility period. This is often the time traders need eSignal the most, and it is equipped to handle this kind of volatility with partial support of multi-threading technology and a server infrastructure based on multi-core, 64-bit data centers.
For those who use tick data in their analysis, both Time & Sales and tick-based charting intervals (for example, 133T, 5000V) have the speed required. Users also have control over the hours of tick-based charts as well.
Data Hibernation
Data hibernation is the ability for the eSignal application to put symbols to sleep that aren’t being used. For example, if you had a Quote window that had 120 symbols on it, but only 30 lines long, you will only receive data for those 30 symbols. Ninety of those symbols will be hibernating until the point at which they become visible on your screen. This can dramatically lower the amount of data eSignal is processing and that is being downloaded from the eSignal servers, thus increasing the efficiency of your eSignal application's data usage, especially important in peak volume times.
The data hibernation algorithm implements many safeguards to ensure that your use of eSignal is not affected by this change. Any symbols in Advanced Charts are never hibernating because the processing of EFS files may still need this data. Also, any symbols with alerts set on them are never hibernating. Likewise, if global alerts are turned on, the user has the choice of receiving alerts only on visible symbols or on all symbols; the latter choice would disable hibernation.
Data hibernation enhancements include a greyed-out color scheme for symbols that are in hibernation to differentiate them easily from symbols that are not hibernating. The last quote for the hibernating symbol displays (rather than being hidden) and the data for the quote continues to update every 5 minutes in the background. This allows for even greater symbol limit, CPU and memory savings than before because only those symbols that are not hibernating are subscribed to for real-time data.
Delayed and Real-Time Data Mix and Match
eSignal subscribers can mix real-time and delayed services in one product with eSignal's Mix and Match service. eSignal has 4 delayed service bundles that can be added to your real-time subscription for a nominal fee. Choose from among delayed North American (U.S. and Canada) Equities, North American (U.S. and Canada) Futures, European / African Stocks, European / African Futures, Asia / Pacific Stocks, Asia / Pacific Futures and Forex.
The delayed bundles are also ideal if you trade equities or futures and subscribe to only 1 or 2 exchanges. You can monitor all the stock and futures exchanges by adding the delayed bundles. Data is delayed just 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the exchange, and requires no exchange fee, so no added costs.
View eSignal delayed bundles pricing information.
Detail, Summary and Quote Windows
Display as many detail windows as you want, so you can track key information in an easily visible format. Placing a # in front of a symbol in a detail window (for example, #MSFT) will give you the prior day’s data for that symbol. The summary window is compatible with decimal price formats. Quote windows display information about issues in a spreadsheet-like format. The types of issues you can include in a quote window depend on the services you subscribe to.
The Volume Weighted Average Pricing (VWAP) Level I data field for domestic equities can be added to the quote, summary and detail windows, as well as to the Level I areas of other windows that allow this feature.
Other data fields include Short Interest, Float, 12 Month % Total Return, % Insider Owned, 200-Day Moving Average and many more. With 50+ windows recently added, the total number fields available is almost 200. New!
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eSignal Formula Script (EFS)
for Programming Your Own Studies Users may also post (and access) EFS suggestions and comments on the EFS Studies Forum. Our user-friendly Formula Wizard helps you develop your studies and trading systems in eSignal Formula Script (EFS). EFS means ease of development with few lines of code required, ability to use built-in studies and support for building a study of another study, such as a Moving Average of an RSI. EFS also includes:
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For Fixed Income, eSignal offers GovPX US Benchmarks Treasuries, which carries indicative rates for the On-the-Run instruments.
For eSignal Pro, FutureSource Workstation and Market-Q products, in addition to GovPX, BGCantor Treasuries are also available in two real-time packages:
BGCantor Premium US Treasuries -- Provides tradable, real-time prices with the U.S. Treasury yield curve sourced from eSpeed, one of the most active, liquid markets for U.S. Treasury securities
BGCantorEye US Treasuries -- Provides live, continuous, real-time indicative pricing for the full array of U.S. Treasury instruments
The BGCantor services include full access to the U.S. Treasury market, including On-the-Run, 1st - 4th Previous or "back" symbols, as well as the full range of Off-the-Run instruments. In all, this is approximately 250 symbols for each service that makes up the instruments on the U.S. Treasury curve.
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Forex
For Forex traders, eSignal offers:
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Forex Window
This window is designed specifically for currency traders. It features flags to denote each side of the currency pair and emphasizes the significant digits by enlarging them. You can also trade through the Forex window if you so choose, as well as see your gains or losses within the window.
Formula Studies
In addition to add-on services such as news and commentary, Market Depth and scanners, eSignal offers technical indicators and formula studies, both free and add-on. Developed by eSignal and its partners, these indicators and studies strengthen your decision support capabilities and, thus, increase your profits.
In addition to the proprietary indicators in eSignal, Advanced GET Edition, Jan Arps’ Traders’ Toolbox Crown Jewels and John Ehlers’ MESA Indicators, eSignal supports the eMESA trading system, the Bollinger Band Tool Kit and Kase StatWare (including, at no extra charge, the KasePivot). All of these can be added to your eSignal application. Free studies include Bollinger Bands, Bollinger's Normalized Volume and Intraday Intensity, the DiNapoli Indicators, the Kase Pivot and the Power Swings Indicator EOD.
eSignal’s built-in formula script (EFS) capabilities allow you to add popular studies to your charts, download and modify -- or even create your own technical analysis studies within eSignal.
Read more about eSignal's Formula Studies and Formula Studies Partners.
Fundamentals New Fields!
Our Fundamentals window includes much-asked-for-fields, such as Beta, Revenue and Debt / Equity Ratio. Fields also include fundamental data for mutual funds, such as Name, 52-Week High / Low and Dates, Dividend, Dividend Data and Dividend Frequency, as well as 12 Month % Total Return, % Insider Owned and Float.
With 50+ fields of data (mostly fundamentals) recently added, the number of available fields is almost 200.
See a complete listing of the fundamentals.
In addition, eSignal subscribers can access daily updated, institutional quality, fundamental data on Canadian companies sourced from Standard & Poor's Compustat. Subscribers can sort and rank Canadian issues using common metrics such as Market Capitalization, Earnings per Share and Dividend Yield, as well as Cash Flow per Share, ROE, ROA and Revenue.
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Futures Data and Features eSignal has everything futures traders need:
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Global Weather Maps
Popular in the commodity markets, these real-time maps allow commodity traders to choose from multiple weather map packages, covering areas all over the globe, including U.S. Agriculture, U.S. Energy, Europe Energy and World Coffee Crop.
History
Newly Enhanced!
eSignal is constantly adding historical data to the individual exchanges / services it offers through its datafeed; the number of years listed for any exchange grouping is an average of the individual exchanges within that category.
| Category | Tick | Intraday / Interval | Extended Intraday * |
Daily |
| North American Stocks | 10 days | 120 days | 12+ years | 19+ years |
| North American Futures | 10 days | 120 days | 2+ years | Varies by contract, as many as 40 years |
| North American Options | -- | -- | -- | Up to 1 year |
| North American Indices | 10 days | 120 days | 12+ years | 19+ years |
| Mutual Funds / Money Markets | -- | -- | -- | 15+ years |
| European Equities and Indices | 10 days | 60 days | -- | 5 - 10+ years |
| Asia Pacific Equities and Indices | 10 days | 60 days | 2+ years | 2 - 5+ years |
| European / Asia Pacific Futures | 10 days | 120 days | 2+ years | Varies by contract, as many as 9 years |
| Forex (bid / ask data only) | 10 days | 120 days | 2+ years | 25+ years on major issues |
| GovPx Treasuries | 10 days | 120 days | 2+ years | 3+ years |
* $10 fee associated with this level of data
Hot Lists New!
Hot Lists are 100+ powerful pre-built scans that look through the markets to identify the best trading opportunities and update them automatically every 30 seconds. The traditional gainers, losers and volume lists are joined by other, unique scans, such as Unusual Volume, Most Volatile and Trade Rate Hot Lists, the last of which displays the fastest trading stocks in the last minute and allows a momentum trader to see what is moving right now and react accordingly.
Keyboard Customization
This feature (also known as Keyboard Mapping) lets you create your own keyboard templates for many of the commands, menu items and toolbar choices in eSignal. You can predefine your frequently used key strokes for greater efficiency. And, this feature allows key stroke assignment for every advanced chart toolbar function, including the popular increase / decrease spacing.
In addition, Keyboard Shortcuts let you create your own key strokes shortcuts and assign them to one of 10 buttons for each window type in your eSignal application. Click on any button on your customized shortcut toolbar to open a new window of that type or bring the cursor's focus to an already open window of that type. Clicking a second time takes the window to the background and takes the cursor's focus to the last window that had it.
Linking (Symbol and Interval)
You have up to 12 combinations of symbol linking with all window types and multiple combinations of interval linking with the Advanced Chart windows and the marketprofile charts.
In a Quote window, all symbols -- U.S., Canadian, South American, European, Asian and African -- are linked to their respective news sources, so you know, at a glance, which ones have recent news affecting them.
And, when the All Link feature is selected from the linking choices, it allows a window to receive all symbol changes from any other window that's using the linking function regardless of the link color it is using. Any symbol change made in the window with "All Link" as its choice goes to any other window regardless of its link color.
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Market Depth
Market depth refers to a more detailed level of data available from the exchanges and includes such data as:
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Market depth data appears in the main part of the window. Each quote includes the market marker ID (MMID) and time. Bid, bid size, ask and ask size data is displayed depending on the current sort option selected for the window. The color bands or background colors behind the market depth data change to highlight the best bid and ask quotes. Opening and closing crosses are viewable in a Depth window on the TotalView tab. This data displays for the 10-minute period before market open and close. You can insert a scrolling quote ticker into any Market Depth window by clicking on the icon. Trades in the ticker window are color-coded for five levels depending on the prices at which trades occur relative to the bid and ask prices. This helps you gauge buying or selling pressures. The multi-colored horizontal bar is a market indicator used as a visual aid to assess the current bid / ask market for that stock. Market Depth has a right click vertical view, or DOME view, that's a real space saver, displaying asks and bids above and below a line of demarcation and separate scroll bars for the top and bottom sections. Regional equities and options are load-listed stocks in the Market Depth window and get two-dimensional updates from NYSE, CSE, BSE, PSE, MWSE, etc. Isolate market prices from an individual exchange by placing a suffix on the end of a symbol in a Quote window (e.g., IBM=N for IBM on the NYSE). Also get Regional Options from the AMEX, BOX, CBOE, ISE, PCX and PHLX. In eSignal’s Market Depth, regional data for NASDAQ and Level II for listed and NASDAQ Symbols (Single Book) includes regional data for NASDAQ symbols, as well as the listed exchanges. Level II and Regional tabs allow users to pick the type of data they want to see -- “Regional” showing NASDAQ, as well as listed symbols. To complement the NASDAQ Regional Data, eSignal Market Depth offers NASDAQ’s “Single Book” (part of NASDAQ TotalView), which shows NASDAQ book depth on listed symbols, as well as NASDAQ symbols, viewable on the SingleBook tab with a NASDAQ TotalView subscription. |
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Market Maker Activity Ticker
With eSignal's MMAT window, you can view market maker activity within a scrolling ticker. You can color code upticks, downticks and neutral ticks and restrict data to all upticks, high-bid upticks only or low-offer downticks, and so forth. You can be as inclusive as you need to be.
Monitor a certain market maker's activity on a whole list of hot stock candidates, especially useful when tracking one or all of the large institutional market makers.
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marketprofile
marketprofile* was created for futures traders and includes Volume Profiles, Time / Price Opportunity (TPO) counts and splits and features such as chart auto-scale tick increment customization. The graphical representation takes the form of a distribution curve or histogram. Thus, marketprofile organizes market activity as it unfolds. The key to successful use lies in correctly reading this information and interpreting the distribution shifts that are constantly occurring. marketprofile includes these features:
*This service is available as an add-on for a monthly exchange fee of $ 50.
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Mini Futures
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Multiple Symbol Overlay
Add multiple symbols to a DAILY historical chart OR to an INTERVAL chart to compare either historical or real-time trends (for those who subscribe to real-time data). Place a generous sampling of major market and important sector indices in an OVERLAY chart ($INDU, $COMPQ, $SPX, $CWX, $DOT, $SOX, $IXBT, $IXTC, $BUX, $RLS, $IXCO, $MLO...).
Multiple symbols in one chart are easy to view in an Advanced Chart window because of its Double Axis feature for multiple symbol and study overlays.
News, Real-Time, Streaming
eSignal gives you access to a wealth of respected real-time news sources, such as Dow Jones, MarketWatch, COMTEX, Dow Jones Commodities Basic, Hightower, PR Newswire, Business Wire and more. Act today on news others will only read about tomorrow! See a complete list of pricing for all the news and commentary you can add to your eSignal subscription.
Dow Jones NewsPlus is a website designed exclusively for Dow Jones News Services subscribers that eliminates the use of retrieval codes, enabling users to move easily beyond thousands of daily, scrolling headlines to a quick and comprehensive review of market-moving stories, market updates, analysis and commentary. Information on essential topics, such as the war in Iraq, technical analysis, corporate disclosure and personal finance, is also highlighted to make it easy to access and use.
International News from Dow Jones includes Dow Jones Economic Report (for inside and outside North America), as well as Dow Jones Financial Wire, which delivers real-time coverage of global companies, markets and economies in Europe and Asia, and Dow Jones European Equities Spotlight.
Read more descriptions of news services offered by eSignal.
Newsletter with Tips and Hints
Packed with some of the best current trading information available today, our newsletter (the Exchange) is a trader’s must-read. Each month’s issue covers topics such as trading education, money and investing and an international focus column. It has a review on a timely book and / or taped series from Ed Dobson, President, Traders Press, Inc. The StockWatch column is by the editor of Hulbert Financial Digest, a service of MarketWatch.com.
The newsletter also gives subscribers a heads-up on future releases, previewing the new products and / or enhancements to come and offering subscribers the chance to get in on the ground floor by participating in beta review.
If you’d like a taste of what the newsletter is all about, sign up for Trading 101 and receive 6 free issues of trading tips and hints.
News Manager
eSignal’s News Manager is folded seamlessly into the eSignal application, making it simple to search for news headlines based on symbol, service and / or keyword. And, if you do not limit your search to any of these 3, the News Manager displays 24 hours’ worth of all headlines. You can even search on multiple keywords and symbols simultaneously.
Subscribers to Dow Jones also have a pull-down menu specific to that service with popular Dow Jones category codes. In addition, the menu bar features a pull-down for selecting the number of days you want to go back to pull in headlines.
Using the enhanced Pop-Out Window feature, you can save, as your default, the News Manager window in a popped-out position.
Clicking on any symbol in your search results brings up the story. If your News Manager is linked to your favorite Quote window, you can select any symbol in your list in the Quote window and get a list of headlines for that symbol. And, in a Quote window, clicking on the number in the News Headline Count column or clicking on Headlines from the View menu opens the News Manager and gives you the headlines you’re looking for. Finally, you can open this window from the File menu and save it with your favorite filters to open at a later time.
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Options Data and Features
eSignal has the data and tools options traders need to make their best trades:
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OptionsPlus
OptionsPlus is a powerful add-on to eSignal’s market data service and charting software. Designed by traders for traders, it offers a complete options analysis package at an affordable price and gives you the search and performance analysis capabilities critical to making solid trading decisions. OptionsPlus is included in the eSignal Premier Plus, eSignal Pro and eSignal OnDemand – Options packages at no extra cost and combines with eSignal’s market data and other decision support tools to make a formidable trading platform for options traders.
Pages
eSignal gives you the ability to use Pages and / or Layouts from the eSignal Layout menu. Pages are saved as a single file instead of the multiple files of a layout, giving you much more control of file management.
When the Lock Pages function, in the Page menu drop-down, is checked, it will act similarly to a read-only layout. That is, a user will be able to use a locked page as a starting point for the trading day and make any subsequent changes to the layout of the page -- moving windows around, adding new windows and so forth -- without violating the original layout of the page. After closing the page, no layout changes are saved. A user would have to unlock the page to save it or to Save Page As. Changes made to the data, however (the interior of any window, so, for example, adding a symbol), would be saved.
The Page Reload feature allows a user to access a keyboard shortcut to refresh the page, taking it back to its original configuration. This will reload the page without saving or asking the user to save.
Paper Trading
The perfect complement to our back testing and strategy analyzer features, our integrated paper trading allows you to trade any instrument, test out new trading strategies and minimize risk. With paper trading, you can monitor your account’s performance to learn which transactions produced favorable results. The simulated trading is as real as you can get, and you can test it out at your convenience.
And, just as with our integrated direct access trading feature, paper trading is built right into eSignal, so you can use the advanced charting, alerts and scanner tools to help you make informed trading decisions that you can then implement “virtually”, before risking your portfolio.
Once you’re ready for live trading, the transition will be easy because the steps you follow to “practice” the trade are practically the same as those you use to place the actual trade. With paper trading, you can set up market, limit and stop orders and buy, sell or short your orders just as you would with a live account.
With the new Order Ticket Designer, you can make the Paper Trading ticket look just like your direct access broker ticket, so the transition from paper to actual trading is even smoother. You’ll get an accurate and realistic measure of the profit or loss that you would have realized had the trade been for real. If your approach works, it becomes that much easier to commit real funds to your trading.
Point & Figure Charts
With eSignal’s Point & Figure charts, you can graphically see upward and downward movements in the issue's daily closing price. This chart automatically calculates price intervals based on the price of the issue, or you can customize the intervals. You can also choose to graph prices over a fixed interval or over a period of time before today and choose the size of price intervals and the amount of change required for a reversal.
The Point & Figure charts available in Advanced Charting are viewable on all intervals (including on Tick Charts). You can also have Point & Figure based on a High / Low combination or just on 1 field.
Pop-Out Windows and Customizable Toolbars
eSignal helps you maximize your desktop workspace for trading with pop-out windows and customizable title bars.
The Pop-Out window feature lets you pull an eSignal window out of your layout and have it float freely on your monitor, so you can view it while you're editing a document or placing a trade. You can unattach your Chart, Ticker, Quote or any other window from the layout to view alongside another application. This feature is especially useful for those with a multiple-monitor set-up.
You can save, as your default, any window in a popped-out position (especially useful to those who want to keep the new News Manager window in a separate screen by default). The Pop-Out window feature also has a button that lets you toggle between "always-on-top" or “always-underneath”, so you don’t lose track of your eSignal windows on your desktop.
The title bars in your eSignal layout can be removed to save you valuable space without losing their functionality.
The Snap Quote Bar displays the quote for the symbol you type into it. It's treated much like a standard toolbar and can be placed along the top or bottom of eSignal. It can be free floating so that you can put it anywhere on your computer's display. New!
Portfolio Window
Create your own portfolio windows and watch your individual positions and total portfolio value update in real time. The portfolio function includes a log file that will track a user’s portfolio for the year and sub-total lines. The log file is in a .csv format, so it can easily be taken into Excel to help the user prepare for the IRS.
The column headings have the ability to add, delete and sort the fields. The user can make an adjustment for splits, make corrections and organize the log file by listing an account name for each security listed in the portfolio.
The Global Portfolio Window allows users to compare the totals of multiple portfolio windows. New!
Price Filtering
This filter on the advanced charts allows you to set a % range or % average range of a bar compared to the bars before and after it. If a price comes in that is outside the filtered range, it will be displayed in a different color of your choice and won’t be used to calculate any studies or set the scaling of the chart. This feature allows you to screen out volatile price points to give you a smoother indication of the trend.
Quote Window Drag-and-DropThis function allows you to move one column in a Quote window to a new location by clicking and holding down your left mouse button on the column header you wish to move and, then, moving your mouse to a new location and releasing your left mouse button.
Similarly, you can move symbols on a Quote window from one row to another. You can also move a symbol from one Quote window to another by clicking on the outside portion of the cell to move the symbol.
Finally, you can drag a symbol from a Quote window into a chart to view that symbol’s trading history. This allows you to quickly assign a symbol to a chart that is not symbol linked.
QuoTrek
QuoTrek is an add-on service to eSignal and is the most robust mobile service available on the market today. With QuoTrek, you get data from the world's markets and the streaming charts, analytics and news to confirm your market picks, all while you are on the go. It gives you completely portable access to your portfolio on your Microsoft Pocket PC, Palm, RIM BlackBerry or other favorite PDA, plus smart phones.
Research Menu
Access valuable web content / proprietary services and a symbol look-up through the Research Menu. Right click on a specific stock or mutual fund symbol for in-depth research from Dow Jones NewsPlus, FreeEDGAR, MarketGuide, Group Power, Equity Trader, etc.
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Scanners, Market and Advanced GET eSignal offers eSignal Market Scanners and the Advanced GET Scanner (specially suited to find the GET trademark setups, including Type 1 and 2 trades). These scanners give the user the maximum benefit of real-time searches with the following benefits:
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Read more about the eSignal Market Scanner and Advanced GET Scanner.
Sector Lists New!
The ability to list what symbols are in specific sectors is a powerful way to create specialized watch lists with just a few clicks. Much like an Auto-List, the Sector Lists will insert symbols in a Quote Window for additional sorting and analysis.
Spreads in Quote and Chart Windows and Quoteboard
If you enter a spread in an advanced chart (for example, MSFT + DELL or $INDU / $SPX), you can display the data in any of the different chart types available within eSignal's advanced charts capability.
Spreads are available in the Quote window and Quoteboard, in addition to the Chart window, so you can display the difference in value between 2 issues, an issue and its index or different months of a futures contract.
Create your own symbol that combines multiple symbols using the plus, minus, multiply or divide operators in complex forms, such as (A + B) / (C - D). Spread symbols can be entered into the Quote and Chart windows for analysis. Spreads are based on 1-minute data.
Symbol Search
eSignal’s Symbol Search window, accessible from within the eSignal application and very intuitive, allows you to perform a refined search when you have some information about a symbol but not enough to find it in a standard list of symbols. Wildcards and filters help you narrow your search quickly and easily.
You can search by Symbol, Company Name, Exchange, Instrument Type and / or CUSIP number (must have a CUSIP subscription to see this data), as well as Pink Sheet name, index description and Canadian symbology.
The symbol search window is fully integrated with the eSignal application, so clicking on any of the results will instantly send the symbol to a linked window.
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Tick Charts, Tick Bars, Seconds Bars and Tick Volume Bars
Tick charts in the advanced charting present you with the fastest and most precise view of a stock or contract and are one of the most important tools for real-time traders. Tick charts show each tick that occurred during a selected time interval rather than only the open, high, low and close as displayed in bar charts. You can create tick charts, tick bars and seconds bars in the Advanced Chart window. View up to 10 days in a tick chart and show dots for each trade or connect them with a line. The chart only moves as each new update comes in, giving you a fixed amount of space for each tick. You can select a set number of ticks to make up a bar or candle. Simply make the interval 7T, 50T, 123T, whatever number suits your purposes. And, with seconds bars, you're no longer limited to intervals in whole minutes. Set the interval at 13S, 45S, 90S or any number of seconds you like. The seconds chart offers a lot more detail and enables you to get into the market more quickly, outpacing other traders. Tick volume bars allow a user to enter an interval of something like 5000V to create bars that each represent 5k worth of ticks. Our tick charts also have line tools! |
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Tick Replay
This feature lets you download up to 10 days of tick data and play it back at a later time (including while you're offline). It allows you play back your data tick by tick and spot short-term patterns. You can also pause, speed up or slow down the playback or jump forward by the number of minutes you want or go to a specific time and / or date. You can even change time frames while Tick Replay is running, and the chart will synchronize the plot to the new interval. Lastly, you can set up multiple charts all on different intervals and have them run concurrently tick by tick.
Although the maximum number of days you can download is 10, you can still play older files that you will have saved. It is also possible to “stitch” together (using a text editor) previously saved files to create a longer historical file.
Ticker Windows
There are 4 main types of tickers (Quote, News, Limit Alert and Market Maker Activity Ticker) in eSignal. There is a default for each of the 4 types, so you can save different settings for each. There is also a sub-menu when you click on File, then Open, that lists the 4 different ticker types, so you can specifically choose the type you want.
eSignal has customizable news tickers, so you can choose to view news just on a particular set of symbols or on a particular Quote window, or globally on all quote windows. Integrated with other windows, once customized, the eSignal news ticker only takes your attention away when it's really important. Then, if you need to, you can click through to the full story.
Time and Sales and Time and Quote WindowsTime and Sales gives you great flexibility to drag and drop column headings and filter data based on Price, Volume and Exchange(s). You can also choose to view chronology from most recent to least or vice versa. And, our Time and Sales window has filters across the top of the window for Date, Time, Range and Price Range.
You can quickly copy / paste the visible area of a Time and Sales window into other documents, such as an email message. (This is different from the export function that grabs all the data from the window and allows you to choose what fields to export.) Plus, Time and Sales data can be cached on a global basis to allow Time and Sales windows to instantly show previously viewed symbols.
The Time and Quote window is a Time and Sales window with the settings for quotes only (that is, no trades showing). It is particularly useful for when you are searching for specific quotes. Its Dynamic mode is defaulted at the “off” position.
When the dynamic on / off toggle for the Time and Sales and Time and Quote windows is on, the results will come into the window and updates will continue to fill in. When it is off, the results will come into the window in a static mode, and no additional data will fill in. This is helpful if you're doing a search and don't want to deal with the distraction of continual updates filling in the window.
The Best Bid Offer (BBO) view for the Time and Sales and Time and Quote windows allows you to see the current BBO quote for every trade. Rather than having the quotes and trades on separate rows, this view displays the BBO quote directly to the right of the trade on the same line. It’s most useful when you are using the Price / Range filter. Even if you turn off the Quotes, you’ll still see the BBO alongside the trades.
60 days of tick data are available in the Time and Sales window, viewable one day at a time.
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Time Zone Settings Preferences
This set of preferences for date and time gives the user three choices for viewing the time stamps of the real-time data:
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Total Symbol Indicator
This feature helps users better track their usage in terms of the number of symbols they're allowed to view at one time. An indicator on the status bar shows the total number of symbols listed in a ticker, alert or MRU list.
Trade Conditions
Long-time eSignal subscribers are familiar with the Fast Market Indicator trade condition (a red "F" that appears next to a symbol denoting an overly busy market in any eSignal window that receives quote information) and the formT market condition that shows up in a Time and Sales window to indicate after-hours trading.
In addition, the following conditions will appear as text next to a symbol in any eSignal window that receives Quote information whenever these conditions occur:
- A red H means that trading has halted on this issue
- A red R means that there are special restrictions governing trades on this issue
- A red X means that a symbol has gone X-Div (The next day after the one on which firms pay their shareholders their dividends is called the ex-dividend date. People who own no shares until the ex-dividend date do not receive the dividend. The stock's price is often adjusted downward before trading begins on the X-Div date to make up for this.)
This feature allows you to stay better informed about some of the conditions that could affect your trading decision.
Trading Integration for Direct Access to Top Brokers and Trading Service Providers
eSignal (including all of its versions -- Advanced GET Edition, Premier, Premier Plus, OnDemand and OnDemand - Forex) lets you watch the market move -- right on your PC -- then plan your market strategy and make your decisions using eSignal's charting and technical analysis tools. And, finally, when you’re ready, you can make your trade orders directly, with virtually no broker intervention, no trading desks and no middlemen, right from within eSignal with your choice of broker or trading service provider, even more than one simultaneously if you so choose. In other words, no delays! We're broker independent, providing flexibility and choice through our partnerships with respected online brokerages and trading service providers.
We continue to add new broker and trading service provider partners and have integrated eSignal with trading platforms from companies, such as Alaron, Bright Trading, FXCM, GAIN Capital / FOREX.com, Gateway Capital, Infinity Futures, Interactive Brokers, IntesaTrade, JPR Capital, Lind-Waldock, MB Trading, OANDA, optionsXpress, PFGBEST.com, patsystems, REDIPlus, TD AMERITRADE and Trading Technologies.
View a detailed Trading Integration video that shows you how eSignal lets you make trades online with your choice of broker.
eSignal's Trade / Account Manager includes a Price Column "ladder" for visualizing market liquidity at a glance, preset order defaults to easily determine in advance the parameters of an order for entire asset classes, plus an order ticket that handles any changes necessary or can be disabled, so orders send when you hit “send”, and, best of all, the ability to place orders simultaneously with more than one broker or just one as you see fit.
Using the Trade Manager, you can more quickly and accurately gauge liquidity, visualize trade imbalances and judge how your trading may affect the market. Various order types allow you more flexibility than ever before in customizing a toolset to better accomplish your goals and execute your strategies. Once in a position, you are now able to manage it better, with the Trade Manager’s unique Profit and Loss (P&L) gauge and powerful bracket trades.
Bracket trades give you even more control over your position management because they enable you to position closing orders in the market at the same time you open your position, eliminating the need for you to create and enter orders when your targets are met.
Using Preset Order Defaults that can be tied to individual symbols and deciding whether or not to use an order ticket give you unprecedented flexibility, speed and control in trade management.
You can also simultaneously connect to a wide variety of brokers and trading service providers who specialize in the right combination of asset classes and general services that best meet your needs.
The Order Ticket Designer lets you customize your own order entry ticket(s) and attach them to any eSignal window. It works with eSignal Paper Trading, as well as the trading tickets of our Integrated Trading Partners.
Trading from the charts allows the user to click an icon on a toolbar and then on the chart to place a buy or sell order. That order is then visible on the charts and can be adjusted by a simple drag-and-drop selection. Once an order is filled, a position line visible on the chart contains the necessary information about that order. Subsequent stop and limit orders can be set in the same way.