NeoTicker Blog

Many users find that the NeoTicker formula is a very mysterious thing. On one hand they have seen very short and sweet formula examples printed in magazines, in our user group, and from our support staff answering their questions. On the other hand they are very frustrated when it comes to the point that they wanted to write up something that do what they wanted to do.

The reference is just too technical and not really written for someone whose very first programming environment is NeoTicker. I will try to bridge this gap here with a series of articles so that more users can benefit from using the formula language.

What is NeoTicker Formula?

NeoTicker is a very powerful program. Many users only use a portion of its power and can stay that way without even touching the other parts of the program. On the other hand, there are users who with use every part of NeoTicker to enhance their trading edge. For both situations, you cannot expect that NeoTicker will do exactly what the users wanted to with the default settings. Thats where various options and user changable settings come into play.

Now, what if the various options and settings are just not flexible enough? To allow for better utilization of the program, the users need the ability to adapt NeoTicker in a way that fits their need. Thats how the NeoTicker formula language comes into play. With the formula language, the users can customize NeoTicker in a way much further and broader than just adjusting options and settings within NeoTicker.

Formulas enable the users the ability to utilize NeoTicker more fully. It also allows the user to adapt NeoTicker towards their own personal styles, in terms of both general usage and trading methodologies.

How does formula look like in real-life?

Let’s take a look at a very simple example.

Almost all the trading software in the market today have quote windows. You can put in whatever symbols you want, and choose to display whatever predefined fields that is available. It is also likely you can modify the quote windows’ appearances – color, font, position, etc., etc.

NeoTicker’s quote windows are very flexible and have all these basic features, but it does not stop there. You can enter formulas directly into a quote window as another column to be displayed.

For example, your trading style include watching a special average price based on the concept of taking the average of the current day open, high, low, and last prices.

In other trading platforms, your wish to display this calculated results just cannot be realized.

In NeoTicker, all you have to do is to add a formula column, then enter the following formula,

(Open + High + Low + Last) / 4

Then what you wished for comes true.

Here is how it looks like when you enter the formula,

You can even name your formula column for easier recognition. In our case, I put in the name MyAvg.

And it is the result,

It all sounds pretty easy, right?

NeoTicker’s formula is a formal language

Here comes the less sexy part of a programming language.

NeoTicker’s formula language is a programming language. What it means is that the language is used for the purpose of instructing your computer, in this case in particular, NeoTicker, to carry out your specific instructions, precisely described by the formula you have written. In other words, your formulas are instructions to NeoTicker describing precising what you want NeoTicker to do for you.

Due to the fact that we need precision and exactness in the description, NeoTicker’s formula language has to be written in a specific way so that there is no mistake in the description.

I have some good news for you – NeoTicker’s formula is very relax on the overall positioning of words. That is, you can freely position your words the way you like them to be without worrying about NeoTicker not being able to recognize your intention.

For example the previous formula that we’ve entered into a quote window column can be rewritten the following way,

( Open + High + Low + Last ) / 4

or you can do it in multiple lines,

( Open +
High +
Low + Last
) / 4

in both cases you will get exactly the same results.

So the important things that NeoTicker cares about in your formula is the content, not the blank spaces in between.

This concludes our first tutorial

I think I have already presented a lot of new concepts and materials in an introductory presentation to a programming environment, so I will stop at this point.

One thing I have to repeat again and again is that writing formula is not hard at all. The reason is that it is a very high level language that can describe very complex concepts in only a few short lines. The most important thing is to think in a way that NeoTicker can handle your requests. Then you will be able to express yourself easily in the formula language making NeoTicker to do whatever you wanted it to.

In the follow up articles, I will further explore what can be done and introduce the various things that make up the formula language. That way you can progress at a more leisure pace and take time to digest the material presented.

We’ll meet again next time.

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