Glossary

Scheduled process run from the Command Centre. Some run at recurring intervals of your choosing, such as every minute, every 5 minutes, every 30 seconds, every 24 hours, or whatever. Others are "streaming" in that it's more like flicking a light switch on or off.

These scheduled processes do various things. Some download price bars from a broker, some create price bars, one kicks off automated trading, another alerting, another downloads events from the Forex Factory calendar and converts them to holidays. And so on.
 

Scheduled processes for downloading price bars

There are streaming downloads, recurring downloads, special recurring downloads, backfills, and historical prices.

Streaming downloads lets ATM receive prices from the broker as soon as the broker sends them. The brokers are always broadcasting the new prices, and by turning on the streaming process what you're telling ATM to do is log in to that broker and start saving the prices it receives. Mostly brokers offer tick prices in this way, and then you would need to also run the recurring process for that broker that creates price bars.

Recurring downloads lets you grab a few bars at regular intervals. Special recurring downloads target only those price bars that are needed for trading systems that are auto-trading right then at that time (and active alerts).

Backfill refers to trying to get price bars you might have missed, had your computer been turned off, disconnected from the internet, or crashed.

Historical prices are those going back potentially many years.

Not all brokers offer all options. But yet there are all of these scheduled processes for all the brokers. The ones that don't actually work have an explanatory note, telling you what to use instead. If having those that don't work still appear in the list is a bit strange, you can filter the list to only those that can be run.
 

Wiggle room is the technical term *ahem* for the distance between the current price and the stop loss price.

Even in strong uptrends, the price will often fall a bit before continuing up. That's known as a pullback, and pullbacks are immediately obvious after the price has continued its upward journey. In real-time though, while the price is currently going down, is that a pullback, or reversal? There is no way to know.

This has implications on where we put the stop loss. We need to both:

• Keep the stop loss far enough away so that these little pullbacks have enough room to move before the price resumes its upward journey; and
• Keep the stop loss close enough so that we keep as much as the profit as possible if this is an actual reversal and a downtrend begins.

How much wiggle room you give the price is a balance between these two objectives. And that's how charting the backtest results can improve your results - the amount of wiggle room is clearly visible and you will be able to tell if you are placing the stop loss too close or too far away.
 

*.tsatm - settings file

*.tsphd - price history file

*.tssys - exported trading system

*.tsiba - exported alert

*.tsind - exported custom indicator

*.tscht - exported saved chart
 

"Data Manager entries" and "Price data configuration entries" are used interchangeably.

You create these to tell ATM (a) what prices you want to gather; and (b) how to gather them.

ATM will create one .tsphd file on your computer for every Data Manager entry. And that's where the prices are physically stored on your computer. But that's the end of it as far as Data Manager entries are concerned. They just do the setup - they don't do any gathering.

Gathering is done on the Command Centre window (downloading), File Loader window (loading from text files), or the "Bulk Price Bar Creation" tab on the Data Manager Search window (creating price bars from other prices you have already downloaded or loaded from file).
 

Location of the .tsphd files

Is set by you when you first create the settings file. It can be viewed and changed on the Options window.
 

Deleting Data Manager entries

You are given the choice of whether or not you also want to delete the .tsphd file. So you may have more .tsphd files than you do Data Manager entries. That's fine.
 

Adding a Data Manager entry when there is already a .tsphd file

So you delete a Data Manager entry but choose not to delete the .tsphd file. Then you re-create that same Data Manager entry. The .tsphd file is already there. ATM doesn't overwrite it - it just connects to the existing one.

What this means is, someone can give you their .tsphd file, and you copy it to your price history directory (as set on the Options window). Then you create the matching Data Manager entry, and all that price history will immediately become available for use.
 
See also:

• To transfer data from one ATM file to another
• ATM file extensions

You can specify minimum account balances that, if breached, will stop a trading system from any further trading.

Note that this minimum balance has to be breached before trading will stop, so the final account balance may vary depending on how much money was lost during the last trade.
 

Risk-Return is calculated using the initial pips risk versus how many pips were actually won/lost for completed trades only.

That is, the calculation is not done using the initial stop loss versus the initial take profit.
 

Profit Factor is calculated as:

(Av Win / Av Loss) * (Pct Winners / Pct Losers)

If it equals 1, the system has neither lost nor made money. If it's less than one then the system is losing money, more than one and the system is making money.

The bigger the number, the "better" it is. But to make judgements based off this value, you should also take into consideration the total number of trades and the total amount won/lost.
 

To clarify what the "current", or "most recently completed" bar is:

1. Look at a chart.
2. Make sure the chart is scrolled all the way to the right.
3. Point at the right-most bar. This bar is still being made. It's not complete.
4. Point at the bar just to the left of the right-most bar. That's the most recently completed bar.

ATM uses the most recently completed bar for its calculations.
 

Bar Offset

The "bar offset" is the number of bars before the current bar. So a bar offset of zero refers to the current bar itself (the default). A bar offset of 1 means the bar before the current bar. A bar offset of 2 means the bar before that. And so on.

When you create a rule and use a bar offset greater than zero, ATM steps back that number of bars and does its calculations as of the situation as it was back then.

The bar offset is most often used when looking for when one line crosses another. This event is often used for trading signals. To check for such a cross, 2 rules are needed: (1) check that line 1 was under line 2; and then (2) check that line 1 is now above line 2.

Rule (1) has to use a bar offset of 1 to check what the situation was 1 bar ago. Rule (2) uses the bar offset of zero to check what the current situation is.
 

 
Trading systems

Rules specify when some trading action is to take place; values specify where.

Rules and values - where you have one, you always need both.

For example, it's optional to specify stop loss management rules. But if you do, you also have to specify a stop loss management value (and vice versa). The former tells ATM when it should move the stop loss; the latter at what price to move it to.

Here's the full list:
 

Each of the above can be used for both the Long and Short directions.

You can have multiple rules, of course. But less obvious is that you can also have multiple values.

See also:

• What determines a complete trading system
• Stop Loss Mgmt #1-#9, Take Profit Mgmt #1, #2
• Multiple timeframes
• Trading decision flowchart
   

Alerts

Alerts have only alerting rules - there are no values to worry about. This is because alerts only need to know when to send you a notification.

Normally all alerting rules must be true for alert to fire. However, you can use groups to set up optional alerting rules.
 

Chart objects could refer to red or green arrows, trend lines, text, line studies, etc - basically anything that goes on a chart.