ChoiceTrade - "The Wheel"

It has been highly valued by the 2012 Barron’s review for online brokerage firms:

“The Web-based service was overhauled; one interesting feature is the ability to stage orders and set up very complex contingencies in The Wheel. The Wheel lets you define a series of conditions that can turn it into either a short-term scalping engine, or a long-term profit managing engine. It's a great step forward for the order-entry process. The options chain displays the intrinsic value of a contract on the screen, which is a unique feature. Frequent traders can use ChoiceTrader Select, a very powerful execution platform powered by eSignal.”

So, what is “The Wheel?” To put it simply, it allows traders to place conditional orders using an intuitive, user-friendly interface. In contrast to other online brokerage systems, (where traders can place conditional orders in the trade blotter only), ChoiceTrade’s “The Wheel” provides a graphical tool which is suitable even for less sophisticated investors. “The Wheel” can be used to place conditional orders such as OCO, OTO, OTOCO, and many others. Such orders could be saved in the system for further processing or sent for immediate execution. Of course, these orders are not sent to the execution venue, but, instead, saved in ChoiceTrade’s Order Management System to await appropriate conditions for sending to the marketplace.

Traders can use graphical controls to adjust “The Wheel.” As many as 6 different pre-conditions and post-conditions (from “A” to “F”) are supported. For example, if a trader wants to use “The Wheel,” he needs to create an order first.

Next, the trader adds it into “The Wheel” for further processing. As soon as the trader has added an order, he can switch to another interface to view all orders or start using “The Wheel” immediately.

The newly added order appears in another window just below the “The Wheel.”

In the above example, only one action is available for users since only one order has been added for processing.

We can add 5 more orders to utilize the entire functionality of “The Wheel.” In the example below, we added 6 orders into the “WatchPlus.”

Now “The Wheel” contains 6 available positions to place conditions and orders.

What we can say about order conditions is that they can vary from simple “if-then” to complicated patterns. Let’s set up an example condition to be used in the “The Wheel.” If price GOOG’s last price moves for 1 point – place the “GOOG buy 100 @market”:

Relative pricing can be used to set future prices based on future events. Since you do not know today the future value of a quote, you need to express your price relative to a variable called "LIVE." The LIVE variable will eventually be pegged to a specific quote once this price condition becomes the active part of the order sequence, and a quote snapshot is taken. You can further qualify your relative price as an amount added to, or subtracted from, the variable LIVE. For example LIVE-$0.25, reads: "The future quoted amount, minus $0.25". Once the relative-price condition is satisfied, the Wheel Order sequence will proceed clockwise. A relative price condition will be rejected when the net price is less than $2. In that event, the order will be canceled and the order sequence will no longer be active. Therefore, please restrict the use of relative pricing to stocks with prices well over $2 a share.

It’s possible to use the “Drag & Drop” feature at “The Wheel” table to simplify setting the order position at “The Wheel.”