Philly, here we come! Myself and the Education Gal will be there tonight for a show tomorrow. I am currently at Macarran in Las Vegas leaving a trade show that we participated in. I only have a few minutes but I wanted to leave you with what I found out while here.

It was a great show. Actually, it is still going. Met some of my good friends that I have gotten to know through the Scottrade world. I found out that certain songs when played on a continuous loop can infiltrate your mind until you unknowingly go out and buy the CD. You are not sure why you did, but now you own it and have to admit to people that you spent money for the priviledge of ridicule.

More importantly, I heard all types of traders. The underlying theme that I came across is pretty simple. Data is data. No one is looking for something that has not been created. They want it easy and in a format that is easy to understand. What do you want? I am listening to all feedback on this. What do you really want in a trading platform?

Lastly, I realize that the "Affliction" brand is out of control. Everyone has a t-shirt that proclaims "Affliction." Is there really anyone out that is so "afflicted" that they need to advertise this on their clothing? I feel for those if they are. That is some serious internal turmoil.

Anyway, enough rambling and time to board a plane. Take care until a follow up on Monday.

Todd

"Well, I'm on my way! I know where I goin'! And I on my way! Takin' my time and I'm on my way. Goodbye to Rosie! Queen of Corona! Singin' me and Julio down by the schoolyard!"

So maybe I changed some words in there to fit my story but it is still a salute to Paul Simon. And that cannot be mistaken. So I am headed to Vegas. I don't have any educational blogging to do at 6 am in the airport but I thought I would think about a few movies. What are your favorite Vegas movies?

Lately I have been sticking with comedies. Sure I could go for Casino and many other mob or the like movies, but what about light hearted and fun. First off would be Vegas Vacation. The last real national lampoon effort with the original family. Give them credit it was good. Audrey was older than Russ again. Clark screwed something up. And there was a cameo from Wayne Newton hitting on Evelyn. How can you go wrong? Favorite dialog -

Clark: "Russ, where did you get all these cars?

Russ: "I don't know. I put in a coin and won a car, I put in a coin and won a car, I put in a coin and won a car...."

Clark: "I get it, I get it. Audrey, you take the white one. Russ, you drive the red one. Evelyn you take this one. And I will try this thing out."

Second favorite on my mind, would have to be Swingers. It was a low budget great film about actors trying to make it in LA. Sure, the primary story was in LA but it has one of the most memorable drives into Las Vegas. They start out so excited to be headed to Vegas by car from LA. Then get really tired. However, with Vegas on the horizon the excitement takes over. "Vegas baby, Vegas baby, VEGAS!!!!" Best dialog -

Trent: Telling the Wizard of Oz 'Dorothy' - "I'm a producer. Yeah, I do a lot of after school specials." This as he is throwing all the moves out there. Little know fact, Vince Vaughn who plays Trent did start off in Hollywood by acting (not producing) after school specials. First one, 'Just say no' add via the Nancy Reagan era.

Best Vegas movie done....Hangover. Seriously, if you have not seen this one, check it out. Awesome. If you are guy that has ever been on a bachelor party to Vegas, you will get this movie. There are countless shenanigans and unlimited laughs. You need to watch the movie multiple times just to be sure you caught it all. I would love to recount my favorite dialog here, but I am not sure I am allowed. It is reminicent of old Mel Brooks in the sense that they manage to offend nearly everyone.

Anyway, that is what I got this morning. Let me know what you think. Best Vegas movie. I choose comedy this morning. You can tell me about any of them. Drama, action or comedy.

Take care. Talk to you again soon.

Todd
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I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I'd seen lonely times when I could not find a friend....Nevermind. I do love some James Taylor though.

My point is about the Highs & Lows tool inside ScottradeELITE. People are looking for this information but then find themselves lost when they immediately get too many results back from the tool. There is a simple solution. Go to the Settings button and change what it is you are looking for. By default the settings are created so not to block anything. That can be very overwhelming. I am sure you have seen that by now.

So here is what you do. Click on the Settings button. You are given many options here. First you want to select markets you want to search. You can choose multiple by clicking on as many as you would like. Highlight the ones you want to follow and move to the next option. Here you are going to choose what Data Points you are wanting: Stocks, Options, etc. Same process as before. Following that, you will select what type of Highs and Lows you want: daily or 52 week.

Once you have selected this information, you are now ready to filter this down to just the results that you are looking to trade. You start with volume. What is the minimum and maximum volume that you want the information to be trading at? Then, what price ranges do you want to trade within? Again, minimum and maximum. Following this, you can choose certain amount Net Change. And finally, the Percent Change. With all of these filters in place, you will have certainly narrowed the results that you get back in real time.

So hopefully you have now gone from an overwhelming experience to something that is much more useful and actionable based upon your trading style. You may find that you have to occassionally go back and adjust this based on how your style changes. But hey, now you know how easy this tool is to customize.

Happy days to all. Take care and talk to you again soon.

Todd

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Just getting back in and settled from some time in Houston, TX. We had a great time and a great crowd this weekend. I hope that all that attended enjoyed the event because we certainly enjoyed Houston. The weather in St. Louis has been really dour lately and it was nice to see some sunshine. During the break between the morning and afternoon sessions, I just stood outside and soaked up as much sun as I could. It felt great to get 80 degree weather when those of us here in St. Louis are starting to get used to much colder temps.

Did anyone come out to the show? What did you think? Any good stories?

Talk to you all soon,

Todd
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Good Morning Scottrade Community!

I am off and on the road again. On my way to Houston, TX. This will be our third time in the great city. I am looking forward to seeing some people I have gotten to know over my many personal visits there and hoping to meet some new people as well. This is my personal invitation to any here in the community that can make it out to join us on Saturday at the JW Marriott. I can guarentee the speaker will be awesome (self assurance there).

That being said, we only have this summit and two more left this year. It has been a great run this year. We have enjoyed all the cities we have been in and look forward to seeing even more next year. But we are not done here yet. Check out the schedule and see if you can come out to meet us.

Talk to you soon. Have a great weekend.

Todd

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday we talked about saving space on each individual window within ScottradeELITE. Today, I want to save you room from the top menus. I have people tell me all the time that the menus at the top of the screen take up way too much room. Did you know there is a way to change that?

First you will want to click on the windows menu option at the top. Here you you will see an option for main toolbar view. You are given three choices: Standard, icon, hide.

The standard view is what you are used to seeing. There are two lines full of great tools with their name and icon. This is the full view if you will.

The Icon view shows just the icons for each specific tool. This toolbar will only take up one line and saves you screen real-estate.

The Hide view eliminates both lines of  tools. This saves you the most space. If you are worried you will not have access to your tools, fret not. You can find all your tools under System, Market Data and Trading options on top.

Again, this is just another way you can save room on your screen for ScottradeELITE. Continue to check back for more blogs about all kinds of topics. Send me a message if you have a specific topic that you would like to hear about from me.

Thanks for checking in,
Todd

So you want to save space inside your ScottradeELITE frame? Well, guess what. You can and it is simple. For every tool within ScottradeELITE you can minimize the tool bars to save yourself room. This allows you to see a bigger chart or put more tools on the screen.

In each tool window, there is an "arrow" icon located in the top right. You will notice that by default the arrow is pointing down with a red minus sign next to it. This would indicate that you are viewing your menu bar. If you click on the arrow, it will change to an up arrow with a green plus sign. You will no longer see the menu and it will have created some extra space in your window.

If you are still curious about how to use the features from the toolbar, you can either pull the menu back down or use the right-click from your mouse. Most all of the features can be found in the right click menu that match those found on the toolbar.

This is just a little space saver. Hope it helps your layout free up some space to help you have a more clear view of what you are wanting to see.

Talk again soon,
Todd
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Lately I have been getting a number of emails from people asking questions about specific products that we have. Questions on anything from basic "how to's" and very complicated ones as well. In that light, I wanted to take a quick moment to remind everyone of the different areas that we have to help you learn the products and about the markets. We have added quite a bit of information over the last two years and sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. So where can you go for help?

1. First and foremost: your branch. They are hear to help you. Call or stop by and ask them for tutorials or specific questions. They are a very knowledgable group that wants to help you out.

2. www.scottrade.com. Here you will see a link to webcast on the top menu. We have tutorials on all the products we offer. There are quite a few so you may have to scroll through to find the exact one you want to see, but I am willing to bet it is in there. Most of them are no more than 10 minutes long, so it does not take much time to get through them. There are a few that I have filmed for ScottradeELITE that exceed that 10 minute mark. These are in-depth tutorials about specific tools. With all of these, there is a short webcast in addition to the longer more in-depth one.

3. The Knowledge Center. My good friend the Education Gal and her team have done a great job getting a ton of information in one place. Once you have logged into your account you will see the Knowledge Center tab on the top. Here you can find product information but also general market educational materials as well. This is truely a wealth of knowledge that is waiting to be tapped. Check it out, search out an answer and take it all in.

4. This Online Community. This is a big part of why you are here right? Ask questions in the threads. Find people that trade like you do. Here you have access to other traders, investors, Scottrade Product Analyst, and so many more. The amount of market knowledge that exist between all the participants here is non-measureable.

5. Scottrade User Summits. These are in person seminars that provide product tutorials over a day long session. You have the opportunity to ask us questions in person and hear what others have to say as well. You will often see the upcoming shows here in the community or in the knowledge center online.

6. Branch Seminars. These are smaller events that really focus on personal interaction. Check with your branch to see when they have a seminar scheduled and what the topics are.

I hope this helps out. Always let us know what your questions are so we can help out.

Todd
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Good morning everyone,

I hope the day finds you well. Today we will be concluding the series on Trade-Ideas and backtesting. The last piece to cover....backtesting. Hopefully you have ready the 2 previous blogs about understanding  your trading strategy and style, then the creation of your trading strategy within Trade-Ideas. Once you have done these two things, you will now want to test your strategy to see how you would have performed.

To begin the backtester, you can click on either the button at the top of Trade-Ideas or on the bottom left. This will open the configure backtester window. There are five criteria that you have to identify.

First, how do you want to define success. Price moves up or down. Does your strategy look for stocks to buy or short? If you are wanting to go long a position, then you would define success as price moves up. Going short....price moves down. After direction, how much does the price of the stock need to move to validate your action. "By at least" can be defined in exact dollar amounts or percentage. Basically, after recognition of the alert when would you take action on the stock.

Second, you need to identify entry time. This is asking when you will be trading your strategy. Part of your style may be that you only trade during particular market hours. You can identify this here. Simply give the start time and end time of when you want your strategy to look for results.

Third, is profit target or stop loss. Do you want to set limit prices on the positive side of the trade and/or stops on the negative side of a trade. Just check the box and note the dollar amount in either direction that you would normally set your targets.

Fourth, is other exit conditions. Here you can choose trailing stops to protect a trade. You have the option of either % or bars (dollars).

Lastly, you need to tell the backtester when you want to exit the trade that has met all other criteria. Once success has been identified as you have defined, and it is within the trading time window you set, and has not yet met any other exit conditions, when you want to close out of a position. You can choose from very short time range all the way into the next open.

Once you click on "OK", Trade-Ideas will begin calculating your results. It looks through the last 15 days worth of trading to match both your strategy and style to provide results on performance of your strategy. If you are comfortable with the results, then you can have coinfidence the next time you get a real-time alert to take action.

In conclusion, this is your strategy. You have to be comfortable about how and what you want to trade. Trade-Ideas is a great tool to help you identify opportunities in the market place that meet your criteria.

Talk soon,

Todd
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Welcome back for Part 2 of the discussion on Trade-Ideas and Backtesting. Today I want to focus on how to create your trading strategy within Trade-Ideas.

To get started you will want to go to the settings menu once you have Trade-Ideas open. This will take you to the configuration window. You will see two folders immediately on the left side of the window. Open the preconfigured folder and double click on "Start from scratch." You will notice an orange arrow to the left of the text that indicates you are ready to go.

The next steps will walk you through the tabs at the top of the screen. The first one that you will need to visit is the "Alerts" tab. Alerts tell Trade-Ideas two things: 1. What you want to see, and 2 they are "Or" statements. To choose an alert you simply check the box next to the alert you are wanting to use. On the right you will have the option to define the alert a little further. For example, you choose % up for the day. To the right of the alert you define it as 5% up for the day. You also choose 25% pull back from lows. You are telling Trade-Ideas you "want" to see 5% up for the day "or" you "want" to see 25% pullback from lows.

Following Alerts, you will want to select your filters. Once you have clicked on the Filters tab, you will see all of your options the same way in which you saw your alerts. Filters also tell Trade-Ideas two things: 1. What you don't want, and 2. they are "and" statements. Choose them exactly as you did under the alerts tab. For example, you select minimum daily volume with a value of 1,000,000 shares and you select minimum share price with a value of $5. You are telling Trade-Ideas, I "don't want to see any stocks trading less than 1,000,000 shares traded "and" I "don't" want to see and stocks trading less than $5.

After you have told Trade-Ideas what you want and don't want to see, you need to tell Trade-Ideas where to look. For this you have two different tabs that you can choose from. The first is the "Exchanges" tab. Here you can choose all exchanges  or specific ones. All you do is simply check the box for the ones that you want to follow. You also have a tab called "Symbol Lists." Here you can choose to follow a specific list that you have created within ScottradeELITE. Again, you simply choose by clicking a box.

Now you have just about finished your strategy. You have now told Trade-Ideas what you want to see (alerts), what you don't want to see (filters), and where to look (exchanges or symbol lists). The last step is naming your strategy. It is important to name the strategy something obvious. This is so that the next time you use Trade-Ideas you will go to the "Recent" folder on the main window and choose which strategy you are wanting to run. If you are obvious with the naming, you will see each strategy name as a description of what you will get.

Once you named your strategy, you will begin receiving results in real-time assuming the market is open.

Hope this finds you with happy trading. Look for Part 3 early next week.

Todd
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