3. Order Window
To bring
up the Order window, go to menu bar Trade -> Order or left click on the
toolbar icon. This is the window where
you can manage your open orders, view trade blotter, messages, execution and
cancel history, etc. The Order window
has four tabs to lead you to four different panels – Order, Message, Execution
and Cancel. In each panel, there is an
optional Filter bar on top of it. You can
use the Filter bar to search for orders, messages, and executions and canceled
tickets by Account, Order ID and Symbol.
Choosing the options from User Preferences can hide the Filter bar. At the bottom of the windows, the status bar
shows the current ticket counts and volume.
Order
The first
tap is the Order Panel. There is a split
bar in the middle. The upper portion of
the window shows all the Open Orders under the control of the current logon
user. The lower portion shows the last three messages occurring on the system
(See Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1
By
default, a Buy order will appear in green while a Sell order or Short order will appear in red. Each order has a unique order ID. When you need to investigate your order status with your service
provider, you must use the username and order ID as references.
An order
entered into the system will have an initial status as Pending. Once the exchange acknowledges the receiving
of this order, the order status becomes Open. When an order has a partial fill, your outstanding quantity (Qty)
will be adjusted; and the order status will be Partial Fill. When an order is fully executed, that entry
will disappear from the Order Window.
You can
cancel an open order by double-clicking on it or by highlighting it and then
right clicking on it to choose from the drop-down menu. You may also replace an order from here.
Message
The
second tab is the Message Panel (See Figure 3.2). A message of order entry or cancel instruction sent to the server
will appear by default in white. A
Bought execution message will be green. A Sold or Sold Short execution message
will be red. A Cancel
confirmation message will be in yellow.
Figure 3.2
Execution
and Cancel
The third
tab is the Execution Panel (Figure 3.3), where all the execution tickets are
shown. The fourth tab is the Cancel
Panel (Figure 3.4), where all the cancel tickets are shown.
Figure 3.3
Figure 3.4
User Preferences
Right click on the Order window and then left click to choose “User Preferences” from the drop-down menu. You will see the User Preference window for the Order window (Figure 3.5). In the General Preference section, you can hide/show the Filter Bar, bypass the Cancel Confirmation routine. To its left, there are two iconic action buttons. Use the upper one to restore to default setting. Use the lower one to delete today’s trading message log archived locally on your hard drive if you want to download a fresh copy from the server again. You can also customize the display preferences such as background color, font color, grid line color, grid line style, font, etc. Use the four tabs to navigate the display preferences section of each Order window Tab.
When you finish setting your preferences, click Apply for your change to take effect, then click OK. Click Cancel to disregard the change.
Figure 3.5