Sterling Trader® Manager Guide

Manager Windows

Windows Menu

The “Windows” menu offers the same direct access real-time trading screens as the windows menu in Sterling Trader® Pro, except that the data applies to all accounts linked to the Manager. So, a position summary window will list all the positions of every account linked to that Manager, a trading monitor will show all trades for all accounts. Please consult the user guide for Sterling Trader® Pro for the basic functionality of these windows. The exception is the Group Risk window, available in Sterling Trader® Manager, and some extra features in Trading Monitor and Position Summary.

Group Risk

This window gives you a snapshot of buying power currently being used on a group level. In the Sterling risk system, accounts are assigned to groups. One firm may have several groups of accounts. In the Main Menu window, you see all the accounts individually. In the Group Risk window, you view whole groups on one line. You can combine more than one group into a group risk entry.

When you first bring up the Group Risk window, it will be blank.

Click on the actions menu and select “Add Group” to start adding groups to the list.

The Master Group Setup window pops up with the groups you can choose from. In this example, there are two test groups.

To set up a new Master Group:

1. Name the Master Group – this one is named New Group, but you can select whatever name you prefer.
2. Enter a buying power figure. This is not binding on the group, but only used for monitoring purposes.
3. Check all the groups you want included in the master group. It can be one group or up to all groups.
4. Click OK
5. The group created now shows up on the Group Risk window.

The columns shown above are the only columns available in the Group Risk window. They are:

• Master Group – The groups you have created.
• $Buying Power – Total buying power for the group as assigned in the Master Group setup window. As a reminder, the buying power here is not enforced on the accounts in the group, it is for monitoring purposes only.
• $BP Used – The total buying power currently being used.
• $Max BP Used – This number reflects the largest amount of BP used on the day. So, if the $BP Used currently is 29K, but earlier in the day the group had 200K in use at one time, than 200K would show in the $Max BP Used column.
• %BP Used – The percent of the total BP that is currently being used.
• $Real – Realized Profit / Loss.
• Total Qty(Total Quantity) – Total shares bought and/or sold short intraday (does not include previous day’s trades).

In the “View” menu you can select Settings to set the criteria for highlighting a Master Group.

Now, any Master Group will highlight if Warning or Critical percentage is met.

Options Risk

Options Risk looks at stocks and the option contracts that have been bought or written against those stocks as a whole position. This information is used to enable an auto-hedge function. Take a look at the below example.

Accounts JETEST1 and JETEST2 hold 300 shares of IBM each. However, the Position Delta is very different for each account. If you right-click on the first IBM position, you can select Details from the pop- up menu. The Position Summary window pops up for this position. As you can see, this account is long 3 IBM calls. So, both IBM and the calls IBMGB are factored in to the one-line quote in Options Risk.

The account JETEST2 has written 3 covered calls against their IBM position, which is why the position delta differs from the IBM position that also carried 3 long call options. The difference in these strategies corresponds to the difference in Pos Delta and the P/L numbers.

These option positions are bundled with the underlying stock in the Options Risk window to give the manager a complete overview of the entire position. The columns shown above in the Options Risk window are the total columns available with the exception of AH (Auto-Hedge, which, by design, does not function on Manager). They can added or removed from the “View – Settings” menu.

Position Summary and Trading Monitor Special Features

This section is a quick look at the special features available in Sterling Trader® Manager Position Summary and Trading Monitor windows. These features allow you to adjust individual positions and trades and are only available in the right-click pop-up menu. These are the functions:

• Position Summary – Opening Position
• Trading Monitor – Maintenance
• Trading Monitor – Maintenance Close Selected

Opening Position – Allows you create a new position or adjust a current one.

To create a new opening position:

1. Right click on any position and select “Opening Position – Create” from the pop-up menu. The Create Opening Position screen pops up.

2. Select the account.
3. Enter the Symbol, Instrument, Opening Position quantity, and Opening Price (Mark to MKT not necessary).
4. Click OK and the new position will show up in the Position Summary for the selected account.

To adjust an opening position:

1. Right click on the position you want to adjust. In this case we’ll select the 500 INTC we just added. Select “Opening Position – Adjust”. The Adjust Opening Position screen pops up. (Only the two lower boxes can be adjusted.)
2. Adjust the Opening Position volume, or the Opening Price, or Mark to MKT. In this example we adjusted the position quantity from 500 to 300.

3. Click OK. The position is now adjusted.

Maintenance – Adjust the details of an intraday trade.

To perform Maintenance on a trade:

1. Right click on the desired trade in the Trading Monitor window and select Maintenance... The “Order Maintenance” window pops up for the selected trade.

2. There are two choices in the “Action” box. Change and Close. After that, you can update any part of the order except for the destination. For example, say the fill price above in AMD came back from the exchange in error without the decimal point (373 instead of 3.73). Using Order Maintenance, you could adjust the price correctly. You could also send the order to another account by changing the account selection box.
3. When completed, click the “Send” button.

Allocating trades in the Trading Monitor

Through the Trading Monitor window you can open the Allocation tool. You can do this by a right click on the account and then go to Allocate…

You can do this by a right click on the account and then go to Allocate...

Once the Allocation window is open you will highlight the trades in question in original allocates window and click edit.

The add allocation window is where you will add the order and its attributes and click add.

From there it will show up under New trades where you will highlight the orders again and click submit allocation.

Once this is submitted you can open the Position Summary and see the adjusted positions.