As QuoteTracker support windws down ...

[mmoy]

QuoteTracker (which I've depended on since around 2001) support from Ameritrade is ending in the next couple of days and I've looked at Ameritrade ToS (along with many trading friends) and Fidelity Active Trader Pro. I can not get ToS to do what I want it to do without adding a few monitors (you just cannot get compact charts with them), and ATP has the same problem. The only issues that I have with Medved are:

- QuoteTracker allowed you to disable the horizontal scrollbar but I couldn't figure out how to do this in MT. Is this possible to configure or could it be added? I shrank it down to 3 pixels but getting rid of it would be the best option.

- MT has large buttons for minimize, maximize and close window. Is there a way to change this? I've been around a lot of Windows settings and was able to shrink the Title Bar height but would like to shrink the buttons as well. These are not deal breakers as I don't feel that there are any other options for the trading that I do but would make things a little easier for me.

[Jerry Medved]

Horizontal scroll bar  cannot be disabled. Setting it to 3 pixels is the best you can do on that.

The large buttons are standard Windows (you must be using Win 10. Don't have any way to control that.  There may be something in Windows for that, though they certainly don't make it easy.  I found this:
http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-reduce-title-bar-height-and-size-of-window-buttons-in-windows-10/

though there may be others

[mmoy]

I used that article already to reduce the height of the titlebar but it didn't affect the width of the min/max/close buttons. I'll try to dig around the registry to see if there's something that can be done manually.  QuoteTracker still has the small icons so it's possible that it's a build configuration issue. The reason for wanting the buttons to be smaller is that the window has to be above a certain width to be movable (needs a handle that isn't allocated to grab the window).

[Jerry Medved]

QT is being run in old windows compatibility mode.  If you notice MT buttons are no different than any other Windows 10 window. 

[mmoy]

I think that I can get things to work, similar to QT right now but I'll keep trying to shrink that title bar by playing with the Registry settings. I have three charts running so the payment process is definitely working.

I read that Ameritrade's servers for QT go offline tomorrow so I'd like to get cut-over to MT by the end of the day. It would be nice if Ameritrade offered a deal similar to TradeKing or if they bought you out again. I have the feeling that they don't want to do that given how much investment they are putting into ToS. A trading friend asked me why I'm using a powerful trading tool like MT because I'm an investor more than a trader. I responded saying that I think that ToS is actually a lot more sophisticated than MT. But MT is far simpler to use and I can do what I want it to do fairly easily and in a minimum of clicks. It's kind of like iOS vs Android. One gives you a lot of flexibility and control but there are a lot of inconsistencies in the various tools. The other thing that I like is having multiple quote sources - you always want to have redundancy when trading, whether that's broadband service, hardware or quote services.

[Jerry Medved]

hahahha.  Don't think you would appreciate TDA buying us out again. Not with their track record of buying and killing software. To quote another one of our clients: " Thank you for saving me from the Think or Swim program, a Sherman Tank for cruising the highway. Just not very nimble. "

TDA usually does updates Thursday night, so you should have 2 days. 

[Jerry Medved]

SETTINGS / CHARTS / DISPLAY - in the center in the Dimensions/Sizes section, change the first one "Scrollbar Height" to 3

[Mike Medved]

The answer to your (2) - in QT, Settings/Charts, in the Miscellaneous section, "Allow to scroll charts".

[Jerry Medved]

1) in MT select FILE / Import... in the Open File Dialog box, change the file type to "Old QT Portfolios" on the bottom right, then navigate to directory where the port.xml is and select it

2) You really are not supposed to open the backup files.  Why? Talk about doing things the hard way...  If you need the symbols, just create a WatchList, and copy the symbols to it from the portfolio (COPY, not MOVE), then you have the nice, comma separated list of symbols right there. If you really want to mess with that, do a manual export (not auto backup) but make sure to select the security option "to share with others" so it will not be encrypted. Then open the file with WinZip

[Jerry Medved]

In MT when you right click on the selected symbols, the Clipboard options including COPY are at the end of the menu, after the alert stuff.  You can either COPY, then PASTE, or you can drag / Drop - regular drag drop is MOVE. hold down CTRL while dragging and it becomes COPY.

CSV list of symbols can be pasted into QT.

Why are you bothering moving stuff back to QT?

[Jerry Medved]

1) Yes, it does. When you select PORT.XML to import, MT should show you the portfolios in that file for you to select. If it does not, then that file must be corrupted. If you want, email to us and we can check why it is not working. Do the log export too 

2) no

[JayR]

I'm glad my QT portfolios transferred over to MT without a hitch. That would have been a pain reconstructing them.

[mmoy]

I'm still running QT as Ameritrade hasn't turned off their servers yet and I haven't converted over. I'm going to do that a little at a time.

[Jerry Medved]

You have until September 15th so don't go too slow

[mmoy]

I just got about 12% converted over. Is that matrix chart view live or was that a preview? I couldn't find out how to set it up.

[Jerry Medved]

Matrix chart view - I think you are referring to the Tile View, where you select the tile that has charts on it. On the Portfolio Window, click on the VIEW tab on the ribbon, and change the Display type to be the Tile view that you like. Refer to this post for more:

 

[mmoy]

I have about 25% done now:

 

Dear Valued Client,

We want to remind you that we will be discontinuing our QuoteTracker platform, effective September 15. This means you will no longer be able to place trades or have access to our data feed through the platform.

You will continue to have access to all our other current trading platforms when you log in to your TD Ameritrade account.

Download Our Most Advanced Trading Platform: thinkorswim^®

thinkorswim was built with traders like you in mind. As someone who has enjoyed the tools offered through QuoteTracker, you'll enjoy features including advanced charting with hundreds of studies, innovative backtesting tools, and so much more. Download it now, free, at www.thinkorswim.com/t/trading.html.

We Make Change Easy

Learning a new platform can sometimes be hard. That's why we've created resources to help make the switch as easy as possible.
 

• Visit the thinkorswim Learning Center (tlc.thinkorswim.com) for video demonstrations and more.
   
• Join live sessions of Swim Lessons every market day right on the thinkorswim platform. Our platform experts will walk you through the platform's features and answer your questions.
   
• Get one-on-one platform setup support and a demo from our trading specialists. Just call 866-839-1100.
   

Thank you for being a loyal QuoteTracker user and TD Ameritrade client. As we wrote you, we're committed to making the transition as easy as possible. Please contact us at support@quotetracker.com if you have any questions.

[Jerry Medved]

timely.  

Too bad that they only mention THEIR most Advanced platform, not THE most advanced platform that can be used with the TDA accounts - Medved Trader

[mmoy]

One thing that I noticed is that when you minimize the width of a chart window, you can't move it. I tried grabbing the title bar but there's nothing to grab. I also tried the icon/press Move command and this didn't work either. I have a workaround for this but it's a bit cumbersome to do.

Also, in tile view, what's the sorting order? It would be nice to have alphabetical along with candles.

I'm still working on shrinking the title bar vertically and the buttons horizontally.

[Jerry Medved]

If you resize the window to be so narrow that the only thing on the caption is the system menu, and the minimize, restore, Close buttons, then yes, you can't click/drag.  However, that is a general Windows issue, not MT specific thing

You can use System Menu, Move (or ALT+SPACE, M).  the thing to remember with that is that after you select MOVE, you must use the keyboard arrows first. Once you do, you can use the mouse to move it, but not till then. (again - a windows thing)

Tile View - it shows the tiles in whatever default unsorted order.  You can drag the tiles around to manually change their order. I have it on the todo list to add sorting at some point, but not soon.

NOTE: Next build will have an option in the portfolio editor to sort the symbols).

[mmoy]

The key thing helped quite a bit - thanks.

I didn't know that you could drag the tiles and I'll give that a try if I like it better than having 80 small windows.

I have not been successful at shrinking the title bar or the boxes and I'm giving some consideration to running MT in a Windows 7 VM to see how well that works.

I probably don't want sorting as I'm trying to do six rows and 13 columns, each row holding charts for varying sectors. I guess I'd want all of the charts to always be in the same spot.

[Jerry Medved]

NOTE: you can add separators to portfolios (add symbol starting with 3 dashes where you want the separator to be. 

In regular grid mode, that defines sections and they can be collapsed separately. In TILE mode, it also groups though can't collapse.

[mmoy]

I installed MT on my Windows 7 Virtual Machine and find that Windows 7 gives you more control over the Title Bar. I set the font down to 6 pixels and the Title Bar to 12 (smallest at that font size) and the result is that things are small. Maybe too small. I will probably go to 7 pixels for the font and 15 for the title bar and that should fit on my screen. I'm running this on a monitor with higher resolution (HD) so that helps.

One other pleasant thing I discovered is that MT apparently communicates with Ameritrade's servers using different ports or protocols as the QT stuff was blocked on one the networks that I use (maybe everything is blocked?). MT works fine in this environment. Is it running through http or https now? So I have 25% of my things on MT on the VM and will have to decide where I want the VM, on my desktop or my laptop.

So I have more options now. The advantage of running it on the W7 VM is that I can move the VM from machine to machine. Windows 10 has fewer options for setting things. I think that they went with the bigger title bar for the tablet mode where you need to be able to grab the title bar with your finger to move it around. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel to get my QT equivalent and I think that it will only take an hour of effort from here.

I'm still waiting for the index display from QT but I'll use ToS or ATP for that until it's implemented.

[Jerry Medved]

MT should be communicating over the same ports. We do not have control over that. Don't know why things would be different as far as the firewall

[mmoy]

Maybe a change on our firewall then. I don't plan to use that network regularly but it's useful for setup though it's a lot easier to set things up from home and I'm hoping I can move the configuration files to my desktop from my laptop.

I found a small problem with using small chart windows.

The part that allows you to save the chart as a template for other charts has to be open to do the save. However, it gets saved as the template and then I have to remove it. It would be nice if we had the old QT option where saving or loading a template is done with the right-click menu as opposed to having to find options here and there on the various pieces on the ribbon area.