Manually entering the details for a new order is a bit of a hassle, especially when you just want to get that order placed NOW! NOW! NOW!

At the bare minimum, you have the entry price, the stop loss price, the number of units, and the currency.

Doing it through TS, you also need to enter the trading system and account to use.

It's a bit much. But, there is a way around it. You can use the Copy function provided by TS, which will open up the Orders Update window with all the same settings as the order being copied.

Click the Save And Close, or Send Order To Broker button, and you're done.

You'd probably want to change a couple of the settings before you send this new order off to the broker, but this shortcut gets you out of having to fill absolutely everything in absolutely every time you place an order manually through TS.

A trick with the dates is to be aware of the start time for that company's "Day".

With Gain Capital the start time is 10PM (GMT).

So what you might think of as the Daily bar for November 2nd, actually starts at 10PM on November 1st.

What it means is if anywhere in TS (backtesting, charts, view data, etc) you choose a "From" date of "01-Jan-06 00:00:00", the Daily bar starting at "31-Dec-2005 22:00:00" will not be included.

Similarly, choosing a "To" date of "31-Jan-2006 23:59:59" will include the Daily bar that starts at "31-Jan-2006 22:00:00".

Oanda's start of day is midnight GMT, so there is no such problem with their data.

Even if you have a live Gain Capital account, which you need to have in order to use their API, your demo account will still expire every 2 months.

When this happens, just use the Live Help feature on their Contact Us page to get it re-enabled.

I don't recommend to send them an email.

When you set up your trading accounts in TS, there is an option to mark it as a "Real" or "Paper" account.

This has caused some confusion with "Real" and "Demo" accounts.

Here's the difference: Think of account types of "Real" and "Paper" in TS as "exists with a broker" and "exists in my head for practice purposes".

So if the account exists with a broker, even if it's a Demo account, it is in fact "Real".

"Paper" accounts will not be used for auto-trading, nor for downloading price, transaction, and account information from the broker.