Originally posted by CarlErikson
Maybe make Transmit and Cancel separate hot keys and make them really far apart on the keyboard? Like F1 = Transmit, F10 = Cancel. Of course, what if you forget the correct mapping and you press F1 to Cancel? However, the likelihood of an error happening is probably smaller using the keyboard as compared to the mouse-menu system on the TWS.
Carl
I have set up hot-keys for the order types I use. To avoid confusion, I have color-coded the keys, that is I glued some color-sticks on each hot-key. The idea is not to have a color for each key (that is like remembering the letters) but to have some basic meaning for each color and mix the colors and order the keys in a hopefully logical way.
Basic logic is: green is buy, blue is sell.
The keys are ordered in a that scheme:
BUY (with default settings) = G (colored green)
when I have bought, I want to place a stop loss, so
SELL STP = J (colored blue/green)
SELL LMT = L (colored blue).
Next row on the keyboard is used for sell orders.
A buy-order is then placed the following way: Press "G" (Buy) + transmit, when order is filled, place stop-loss by pressing "J" (+ transmit) and if I like it, I'll press "L" (+ transmit) (sell Limit, profit target). Prepare "Exit at Market" that is press "Close Position".
In fact, there are some more keystrokes involved, b/c after generating one order line and transmitting it, you have to highlight the market data line again by using the up arrow key.
transmit, Cancel and Close Position each have their own color.
If you do not like colors, try buying a sheet with small sticky letters that you place on your keyboard.
An idea I did not try, is buying a programmable special purpose keyboard and configure it according to your wishes. I think this has been discussed on ET in another thread.
Regards
Bernd Kuerbs