The Live Session Dashboard is where you control all aspects of your live trading session. You’ll use it for everything except running reports and entering trades. You can open the Dashboard dialog by clicking the Dashboard button in the panel in the top left-hand corner of the main OHLC price chart in the RuleTrader Live layout (you may need to click the ‘+’ icon in the panel to expand it first)

On the left side of the dialog are a column of buttons, each labelled for a different aspect of Live Session operation. These act like tab selectors; clicking on any one of them changes the contents of the centre section (the tab) of the dashboard, giving you access to the settings and functions relevant to that button’s label.

On the right side are the usual Ok and Cancel buttons. In addition, the Clear Console button clears all text from the Console. Additional buttons are displayed depending on which tab is selected, as described in the Help for each tab.

The Dashboard opens with the Live System tab displayed. This is where you manage your Trading Specification, trading lists and trading signals. Two additional buttons are available to the right of this tab:

• Save Session Data: Pressing this button causes the live session data to be saved to disk immediately. This is not usually required, as it happens automatically whenever data changes in the live session, after a certain period has passed (see System Event Timings).
• Important note: For timed events to occur, ShareScope’s intraday data MUST be enabled.
• Reset system: Pressing this button triggers a ‘hard’ reset, which returns the RuleTrader Live Session to the state it was in when RuleTrader was installed. This will destroy all your trading data, though your Trading Specifications are preserved. You will also have the option of saving or resetting the RuleTrader settings. Don’t worry about accidentally pressing this button, as the system will ask you twice to confirm the reset before it does anything.

This group allows you to select the Trading Specification to use for your live trading system. You can also create, edit, delete, rename, copy, import/export, or show your trading specification in the Console.

However, we do not recommend that you create or edit your trading system in the live session, as doing so causes the system to perform a ‘soft’ reset, each time you complete the edits. This may take a few minutes to perform, depending on the size of your session file. The reset reconfigures the system to suit any changes that have been made to the Trading Specification, while ensuring your trading data is preserved.

To avoid this happening too often, we recommend that Trading Specifications are created and edited in a RuleTrader Test session (you can use the Import/Export button on the RuleTrader Test Dashboard to import your live Spec into the Test Session). This allows you to back-test your Spec and any changes you make, until it is performing in exactly the way you want, without disturbing your live session. Only then should you use the Import/Export button on the Live System tab to re-import your spec back into the live system.  A ‘soft’ reset will then be performed, once only, and your live session will continue.

If all you wish to do is change a parameter in your system, you can avoid re-compiling your Spec and waiting for a soft reset to complete by using System Parameters, which allow you to change the value of numeric or conditional terms in your spec. You can also use these as a switch, by testing the value or state of the term in your spec and e.g. enabling or disabling a Trading Strategy in the spec based on that value.

These buttons allow you to view and manage the constituents of your trading system’s trading lists and to display or suppress trading signals. Some of these functions operate on the share that is currently selected in the main Share List window (i.e. whose prices are displayed in the main Historical Chart window)

• Show Strategy Lists: Displays in the Console the currently selected shares in each trading strategy’s trading list
• Change List Membership: Allows you to manually add (temporarily or permanently), or remove the currently selected share from a strategy’s trading list, or to permanently bar a share from ever being selected for any strategy’s trading list. When you click this button, the following dialog is displayed:

• Check the strategy names that you want the share to be added to or removed from, then select the required operation from the drop-down list and click Ok. The options are:
  • added to these: adds the selected share as a transient member of the selected strategies’ trading lists. The next time any of these strategy’s lists are reselected, the added share may be deselected, unless it has an open position or is selected by the strategy’s list selectors.
  • permanently added to these: adds the selected share as a permanent member of the selected strategies’ trading lists. Future list selections for these strategies will have no affect on the share’s list membership, until its status is changed here.
  • removed from these: removes the selected share from the specified trading lists, provided it does not have an open position associated with the strategy. At the next list selection it may re-enter the trading list, if it is selected.
  • barred from being in any: permanently removes the share from any strategy lists (provided it does not have an open position) and prevents it ever being selected again, unless its status is changed here.

• Show Trading Signals: Displays all current trading signals in the Console.
• Suppress Trading Signals: Allows you to suppress trading signals for the currently selected share until a certain date. Unlike barring a share, this does not remove the share from any trading lists.