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StockReflex Manual

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Picking a stock to trade
   1. Source of Data
   2. Random or Specific?
   3. Trading Window
   4. Supported Markets
   5. Supported Timeframes
3. Trading the stock
   1. Hint Bubbles
   2. The Stock Chart
   3. Day By Day
   4. Buying and Selling
   5. Current Score
   6. Alerts
   7. Moving Averages
   8. Trendlines
   9. Other indicators
   10. CandleSticks
   11. Shorting
   12. Margin
   13. Commission
   14. Trade on the open
4. Final Score Page
5. Importing data
1. Intraday Data
2. Futures Data
6. Purchasing StockReflex

Introduction

The purpose of StockReflex is to test and improve your ability to buy and sell stocks based on trading patterns. You pick a random or specific stock and are given a chart of that stock's actual activity from several years in the past. Using an initial purse of $100,000 virtual dollars, you advance the chart one day at a time until you decide to "buy" the stock. As you continue advancing the chart forward in time, you will be able to determine in seconds whether you made a good buying decision or not. You quickly proceed in this manner through several years worth of data, buying and selling the stock multiple times over this period, trying to make the highest profit you can and hoping to beat the most simple stock purchasing strategy of all - buy and hold.

Picking a stock to trade

Source of Data

StockReflex trades with daily stock data (Open, Low, High, Close) up to the previous business day from over 20 different stock exchanges worldwide. It seemlessly downloads its data on an as-needed basis from the internet so you do not need to have your own stock data source and there a NO monthly charge for our product. If however you do have your own data source, you can import files from that source into StockReflex.

Random or Specific?

As a registered StockReflex user you can virtually trade thousands of different stocks. You are given the choice between typing in a ticker symbol directly or having the program pick a random stock for you to trade. When you choose a random stock you can also specify a particular market sector you want to draw from.

Trading Window

If you pick a specific stock, you are required to choose a start date and a trading duration (how many years' worth of data you wish to trade). If you choose a random stock to trade, then you can still specifiy a duration but the system will randomly pick a start date for you as well.

Supported Markets

When selecting a specific stock, you can choose any stock on the American, New York or Nasdaq stock exchange by entering in its ticker symbol. In addition, many other US and international stock exchanges are also available by adding the following suffixes to the ticker symbol:

Supported Timeframes

You can choose to trade each stock over any timeframe from 1996 until the previous business day.

Trading the Stock

Most of your time in StockReflex will be spent trading in a stock chart window like the one below:

Hint Bubbles

The first time you come to the stock chart window, a series of helpful hint bubbles will point out what all the controls on the page do. It is highly recommended that you look at all of these hints before continuing forward. If at any point in time you want to view the hints again, you can bring them up using the Help->View Hints menu item.

The Stock Chart

The stock chart shows the daily trading levels (open, close, high, low) for your particular stock. The rightmost side of the chart shows your selected or randomly chosen start date. The blue box on the right side of the chart shows the price values for the current day and all the virtual stock buying and selling that you do will occur on that date (usually on the closing price). The stock chart automatically scales to display the stock data in an optimum way and will resize if you change the window size (this can allow you to see further back in time if you use a larger window). You can also use the scroll bar at the bottom of the chart to view earlier stock history.

Day By Day

You can move forward one day at a time by pressing the Play button (denoted with a conventional arrow) at the top of the screen. You can alternatively use the space key on your keyboard. If you hold down the Play button or the space key you can advance forward very quickly. This can really speed up gameplay but you have to be careful not to accidentally go past critical potential buy/sell points. To aid you in this, StockReflex has a series of alerts that will pause you on a particular day even if you are holding down the Play button, thereby giving you a chance to think and trade.

Buying and Selling

You are given an initial $100,000 of virtual money with which to buy and sell the stock. Every time you buy, you purchase as much as you can with the money you have available. Every time you sell, you sell all your shares. There is no charge for commissions.

Current Score

The score box shows your aggregate capital gains/losses for your trading session. It also shows the gain/loss associated with buying at the time of your first purchase and then holding the stock. Your first goal as a trader is to beat the "buy and hold" score.

Alerts

StockReflex has several different pop-up alert bubbles that can help you with your trading decisions. Pointing to the current stock price level, these alerts will cause StockReflex to pause for a moment even if you are currently holding down the Play button or pressing the space bar.

You can modify your alerts by clicking on the "Alert settings" hyperlink at the top of the chart window. The following screen shot shows the types of alerts available (by default only some of these are activated):

Normally when you buy or sell a stock the transaction will be done at the closing price of the day, but alerts allow you to place trades at other price points. There are two kinds of price points available:

• Opening bell alerts - These occur if the stock opens at a level which goes above or below a certain price point. If you buy or sell during an opening bell alert you will get the opening price for the day.
• Mid-day alerts - These occur when the stock trades above or below a certain price point during the day. If you buy or sell during a mid-day alert you will get the exact price that triggered the alert.

Moving Averages

When a stock crosses under a moving average it is commonly viewed as a signal to sell the stock. When it moves over a moving average, it is commonly considered a good time to buy the stock. In StockReflex you can select up to two moving averages to be shown. There are also alerts available that occur when the moving average is crossed.

Trendlines

Stock Chartists commonly draw trendlines on stock charts and watch for the stock to go above the trendline before they buy or below the trendline before they sell. Simply click on the stock chart with the left mouse button, hold it down and drag to make a trend line. You can make as many trendlines as you want. If you want to remove a trendline, simply hover over it with the mouse and press the "Delete" key.

Other Indicators

StockReflex also supports several other important indicators that are regularily used by technical analysis experts:

• EMA - Exponential Moving averages
• RSI - Relative Strength index
• Stochastics - Fast and Slow Stochastics
• Bollinger bands
• MACD
• DMI Directional Movement Indicator

CandleSticks

You can display your chart using candlesticks and zoom in to get a close look at what they tell you.

Shorting

From the Trade Settings dialog (reached from the menu by Edit->Settings) you can turn on and off the ability to go short the stock.

Margin

From the Trade Settings dialog you can specify up to 50:1 margin. Be careful not to get a margin call though!

Commission

The Trade Settings dialog allows you to set a per transaction commission (the default is $0).

Trade on the open

By default you are offered an opportunity to trade on the close of the day and when an alert occurs. From the Trade Settings dialog you can set the option to always have the opportunity to trade on the open price as well.

The Final Score Page

In the bottom right of your stock trading window is a counter that shows the number of trading days left your session. When you are done trading, your stock is sold (if you are not already in cash) and your score (gains/losses) is uploaded to our central server. The name of the stock that you just traded is given to you (of particular interest if if you were trading a mystery stock) and a high score list shows how you did compared to other users who also traded that stock during the same timeframe:

Note there is a different high score list if you randomly choose a mystery stock vrs. if you specify a stock yourself. This is to prevent people from dominating the high score board by choosing a specific stock, looking up its history on another stock charting program and then trading it perfectly.

Importing Data

You can now import data from text based files that have been exported from applications such as TradeStation and e-signal.

Intraday data

StockReflex supports intraday trading on imported data files that contain intraday data.

Futures data

StockReflex supports futures (e-mini, commodities, forex) trading on imported data files. It allows you to set the MinTickValue and MinTickSize to match the market of the imported data.

Purchasing StockReflex

StockReflex is available for only $150! To purchase StockReflex follow one of the "Buy it" buttons on our website or click here to go directly there.

After purchasing StockReflex you will be emailed a link that you can use to download the program and a license code that must be entered into the program before you can begin to trade stocks.

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