Controls
Time, orders, and the market data panels.
Time controls
The time control panel drives the replay clock.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reset to Start | Back to the beginning of the session |
| Back 1 Minute, Back 5 Minutes | Step backward |
| Forward 1 Minute, Forward 5 Minutes | Step forward |
| Play and Pause | Run or hold the clock |
| Slow down simulation, Speed up simulation | Change the rate, shown as a multiplier |
| Replay mode | Smooth replay or Readable replay |
| Lock start | Fix the start point so a retry begins at the same moment |
| Jump to now | Return to the live edge of the replay |
| Stop session | End the session |
| Save session | Store what you did |
| Select Session | Switch scenarios |
There are also controls to clear the trades and orders you placed, for restarting a scenario cleanly.
One thing worth resisting: playing at high speed. Practising at four times speed teaches you to make decisions in a compressed time frame that will not exist when you trade, and it mostly trains clicking. Slow the replay down until it feels like the real thing, and then do fewer repetitions properly.
When you are scrolled back into history, the order panel is disabled and the panel tells you to jump to now before placing orders. That is deliberate; it prevents placing an order with knowledge of what happens next.
Order panel
The order panel places orders into the simulated book.
| Control | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Quantity | Size |
| Price | Order price for limit orders |
| Limit and Market | Order type. Market orders fill for United States symbols during regular hours |
| Quick Buy Offset (cents) | Offset applied to quick buys, from minus two to plus five cents |
| 10, 100, 200 | Quick size buttons |
| Buy and Sell | Send the order |
| Sell 1/4, Sell 1/2, Sell Full | Scale out of the position by fraction |
| Cancel All Orders | Clear working orders |
The scale-out buttons are the most useful part of the panel for practice. Most exit problems are all-or-nothing exits, and having a one-click quarter and half makes practising partial exits realistic rather than an arithmetic exercise.
Alongside the order panel you have Account, Active Orders (with side, price, size, filled, average, and time), Completed Orders with status, and Position.
Market data panels
The trainer can show the same market microstructure panels used in replay.
- The candle chart, with your orders and fills marked.
- L2, the level 2 book as a table with exchange, bid price, bid size, ask price, and ask size.
- L2 Ladder, the same book as a price ladder.
- TNS, time and sales, showing price and size as prints arrive.
- Signals, the same Level 2 Signals widgets described in the Review chapter, toggled with the Signals switch.
Appearance for all of these is configurable in Settings, under Appearance, in the component settings tabs for candles, indicators, the L2 canvas, the L2 ladder, and time and sales. Colours for bullish and bearish candles, volume opacity, wick width, candle spacing, price level colours, and buy and sell intensity are all adjustable, with Reset to Defaults if you go too far.
A practical note on the signals panel: use it in the trainer to test whether you can read the book, by forming a view before you look at the widgets. Reading the widgets first and then agreeing with them teaches you nothing.