Ionic Pro ShareScope Plus, ShareScope Pro User Manual

User Guide

© Ionic Information Ltd. 1997-2006 All rights reserved. This guide and the program
are copyright works of Ionic Information Limited, London, England and are licensed
in terms of our standard contract. The data referred to herein is the copyright
of the London Stock Exchange, Hemscott PLC, FTSE, AFX News and others.
Reproduction in whole or in part without the express written permission of Ionic
Information Limited is prohibited. Reverse engineering is also prohibited.

ShareScope is the trademark of Ionic Information Limited.

Ionic Information Ltd
3rd Floor
140 Goswell Road
London
EC1V 7DY
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Disclaimer

Whilst every effort is made to keep this guide up to date, the number and rapidity
of enhancements to ShareScope means that there may sometimes be omissions
and inaccuracies. We apologise for any confusion this may cause, and refer you to
the ‘What’s New?’ section of the on-screen Help within the program itself, which is
updated with every new version.

The calculations and rankings given in this guide, and in ShareScope, should be
used for guidance only. Ionic Information does not make any recommendations
or endorsements on whether an investment is a suitable or wise investment or
investment strategy. Please check all figures independently before taking action.

Support

Every effort has been made to make ShareScope easy and intuitive to use, but
computers and the stock market can be complicated. Use the on screen help for
any technical questions. Our free lifetime support is there to help you:

ShareScope Plus users

Email: [e-mail]
Telephone: [phone]

ShareScope Pro users

Email: [e-mail]
Telephone: [phone]

Contents

1. How to Use This Guide 3

2. Financial Background and Terminology 5

3. Intraday Information 7

4. Windows 11

5. Intraday Graph Window 13

6. List Window 21

7. Ticker 27

8. Intraday Alarms 31

9. Trades and Quotes List 37

10. Messaging 39

11. Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) 43

Index 47

Eighth Edition, April 2006

Page 2

1. How to Use This Guide

This guide explains how to use the extra features available in ShareScope Plus
and Pro. It is intended to be used in addition to the ShareScope User Guide,
which details the features that are common to all ShareScope programs. The
features described in this guide are generally common to both Plus and Pro,
but in some instances, a feature may be exclusive to ShareScope Pro. The text
will always clearly identify any such instances.

Since this guide was published, new features may have been added. Please
refer to the ‘What’s New?’ section of the on-screen Help.

Less experienced computer users should refer to Sections 2 and 3 of the
ShareScope User Guide for step by step tuition before reading the more detailed
information given in this guide.

This ShareScope Plus and Pro User Guide does not cover definitions of technical
analysis indicators, fundamentals and stock market terms. For more detailed
explanations of some of the features available please refer to the on-screen
Help.

If after reading this guide and the on-screen Help you need more
information, you can email us at [e-mail] or contact
our support help desk 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday on 0845 045 0111.
ShareScope Pro users should email [e-mail] or call 0845
456 0545.

User Guide Terminology

In this guide, buttons (on-screen and keys on your keyboard) and menu items
to select are written in bold. If a menu item is followed by a colon, this means
you click on each item in turn. For instance, View : Calendar means you should
click View on the menu bar (at the top of the screen) and then click on Calendar
to bring up the Calendar.

Click always means a single click on the left mouse button.

Right click always means a single click on the right mouse button. This brings

up a context menu relevant to the ShareScope window you are using and to
the position of the mouse pointer.

Double click always means a quick double click with the left mouse button.
If you have problems double clicking you can alter the mouse response speed
through your computer’s Start Menu : Settings : Control Panel : Mouse.

Click and drag always means click and then hold down the left mouse button
while moving the mouse pointer.

Page 3

Page 4

2. Financial Background and Terminology

Intraday Data

London Stock Exchange (LSE) and FTSE supply real time prices for UK listed
shares and FTSE indices in ShareScope Pro. The data is delayed by 15 minutes
in ShareScope Plus.

All of ShareScope’s US data (NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX) and many international
indices (CAC, DAX, S&P 500 and Dow Jones) are supplied by Comstock, a
division of Interactive Data Corporation (NYSE: IDC). Comstock is a leading
provider of market data solutions to the global financial community.

Ionic processes the data and within about a tenth of a second passes the data
on to you. Depending on your internet connection this data will be available on
your computer within another two or three tenths of a second.

The data is input at numerous stockbrokers and market makers around
the country and is not checked, either by the LSE or by Ionic Information,
before it goes out. On rare occasions data is input incorrectly. This may be
corrected with a counter trade but it will always produce either a temporary or
a permanent spike. (See Page 14 for a de-spiking option to detect any one-off
price spikes.)

Terminology

Offer The best (lowest) quoted price available if you want to buy shares.

Bid The best (highest) quoted price available if you want to sell shares.

The Bid is usually higher than the Offer, unless there is an auction

taking place, in which case they are temporarily reversed.

Mid The average of the bid and the offer.

Spread The difference between the bid price and the offer price.

Tick A change in the trade price.

Trade A transaction. The LSE doesn’t indicate if it is a buy or a

sell; this is inferred by how close the price is to the bid or
offer.

Trade price The price of the last trade.

OHLCV Data

There are a variety of different ways of calculating Open, High, Low, Close
and Volume. For the LSE market we use: “London Market Information Link ­Recommended Display and Derived Information Guidelines”. This is currently
available at www.londonstockexchange.com/cmsattach/940.pdf. For all other
markets we use the local rules and guidelines. See the LSE document for full
details.

Page 5

Terminology

SETS Most liquid LSE stocks.

SEAQ Less liquid LSE stocks.

Mid Average of the bid and offer.

Open The first ‘reliable’ price for the day.

LSE SETS: The first uncrossing price or, failing
that, first automatic trade.

LSE SEAQ: Mid price when the market opens.

Other markets: First Trade

FTSE 100, 250, 350 & SmallCap indices: Value three
minutes after the open.

Other Indices: First quote.

High LSE SETS: Highest trade during market hours.

LSE SEAQ: Highest mid price during market
hours.

Other markets: Highest trade during market hours.

S&P Indices: Index calculated on the highest
values of constituents.

Other Indices: Highest Value.

Low The opposite of the High calculations.

Close Last price of the day.

LSE calculate and distribute this value. Their
calculation method is complex.

Other markets: Last trade before the market
closes.

Indices: Last value.

Volume Number of shares traded that day. Because
of delayed trades this figure can change for
several subsequent days.

Delayed Trades are normally reported within 60 seconds but big
trades trades and some other trades can be delayed for hours

or days.

OHLCV Open, high, low, close & volume over a fixed time
period.

Candlesticks A Japanese method of representing OHLC information.

VWAP Volume weighted average price.

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3. Intraday Information

Intraday Data

ShareScope Pro will give you up-to-the-second information on:

Prices and volume for all UK equities and investment trusts listed on the
London Stock Exchange (LSE), the Alternative Investment Market (AIM),
US equities listed on NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the
American Stock Exchange (AMEX), international indices (S&P 500, Dow
Jones, CAC, DAX and most FTSE indices), Foreign Exchange (FOREX) and
AFX News.

ShareScope Plus data is 15-minute delayed and does not show NYSE, AMEX
or FOREX prices at all.

The following items are not updated intraday:

Some overseas indices (e.g. Hang Seng, Nikkei), some other indices, imported
data, Unit Trusts, Directors’ Dealings & Major Holdings, gilts, exchange rates,
commodities, portfolios, transactions and fundamental data.

Data Delivery Levels and Licence Agreements

When installing ShareScope Plus or Pro you will need to select a delivery level
for the data received from each exchange. You will be asked to choose a
delivery level for NASDAQ, NYSE/AMEX, FOREX and Indices. Use the radio
buttons to select your level of delivery (Max, Normal, Minimal or None) for each
option. With ShareScope Plus you can only select Minimal level for NASDAQ
and Indices.

Page 7

Max receives all available data (including prices, trades and volume) for the
selected feed in real time.

Normal will display snapshots of fifteen seconds including mid price movements
and cumulative volume.

Minimal will display snapshots of one minute including mid price movements
and cumulative volume.

None will switch off data supply for the selected feed.

If you wish to receive any level of data from NASDAQ, NYSE/AMEX or Indices,
you will need to fill in a licence agreement (there are two separate agreements,
one for NASDAQ and Indices and one for NYSE/AMEX). The agreements will
appear when you connect to the intraday feed.

The level of delivery selected will affect the amount of bandwidth required.
If using a 56k Modem, we strongly recommend using the normal or minimal
settings.

Please note all LSE and FTSE data is supplied at the full level, regardless of
settings that you make in this screen.

You can change the delivery levels at any time by selecting Update : Select
intraday feed levels… or by double clicking on the small bar graph at the
bottom right of your screen.

Connecting to the Intraday Data Feed

To connect to the Intraday data feed, click on the Connect toolbar button
(lightning symbol) or go to Update : Connect to intraday feed. The following
dialog box will appear on your screen:

Page 8

Once a connection is made, the dialog box will automatically close and you will
be connected. To connect automatically every time the program is opened,
you need to select Tools : Options... : Intraday Feed and then select Auto
connect to the feed. Connection status is shown in the bottom right-hand
corner of the screen.

A standard internet connection is required when connecting to our intraday
feed. You will need to establish your internet connection before connecting to
our intraday servers. You cannot connect to intraday data via direct dial.

N.B. ShareScope Plus and Pro users still need to update the daily data regularly
(by pressing F9 or selecting Update : Update historic prices & fundamental

data) to download fundamental information and historical share prices.

AOL Customers

Users who have AOL as their Internet Service Provider will need to make a
small change to the ShareScope connection settings.

Select Tools : Options : Intraday Feed. Towards the bottom of the dialog box,
make sure that the ‘Use Winsock 2 if available’ tick box is not selected. AOL is
not compatible with Winsock 2 and will prevent connection if this is active.

Intraday News

With ShareScope Pro, the AFX News service can be updated in real time along
with the prices. ShareScope Pro delivers the AFX UK ProFeed, a premium
news service. ShareScope Plus delivers news updates from the AFX UK Focus
service. This is the same news service used in ShareScope Gold but you receive
the stories as soon as they are released by AFX.

If you wish to be alerted to news stories for a specific share, please see Intraday
Alarms on page 31 for further details. Once you have set alerts on news you
can see all news alarms by right clicking over the news window and selecting
News for triggered alarms. To open a news window press Shift and \ (or
select Window : New window : News) .

However, if you do not wish to receive intraday news you can switch this option
off. To do this select Tools : Options… : Intraday Feed. From the dialog box
that appears, select the Disable intraday AFX news feed option. To enable
the news again, deselect the tick box.

All the features and functions that are available in the news window are detailed
in the ShareScope User Guide Section 11.

Page 9

Intraday Price History

Should you wish to recover data from previous days you can backfill the intraday
history, this will enable you to see intraday graphs for previous days. You can
download, or backfill, up to four weeks (20 trading days) of data.

To do this, select Update : Backfill intraday history... When the dialog box
appears, choose the exchanges required from the tick boxes and select the
dates you wish to backfill, then press Request. Backfill progress is shown in
the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Double clicking on this area also
brings up the Backfill intraday history dialog box.

Saving Your Data and Settings

Your settings will be saved automatically provided you exit the program
correctly. The program will open on the last screen layout displayed before
closing.

If you wish to manually save all your data and configuration settings while the
program is in use select File : Save. This will save portfolios, cash accounts,
imported data, configuration settings and intraday data.

Add or Share Intraday Data

Each day’s intraday price history is stored in a unique file. You can archive
these files and retrieve them when required to save on disk space. Files are
stored in ShareScope’s /Data/RT directory and use the naming convention:
histyymmdd.dat (e.g. hist060308.dat will include the intraday history for 8th
March 2006).

Simply drag and drop these files into your archive media. Note that intraday files
will only include data for the periods when you were connected to the intraday
feed. For whole days that you have backfilled, the file will be complete including
the open and close values.

Page 10

4. Windows

ShareScope Plus and Pro allow users to view multiple windows at one time.
With multiple window viewing, there is no limit to how many windows you
can to add to your screen. The diagram below illustrates multiple windows in
ShareScope Pro.

Linking Windows

All graph and list windows can be linked, giving you multiple information displays
for one share. To link a window (provided more than one window is open), right
click on the title bar of the window you want to link, and from the context menu

that appears select Link window....

A dialog box will appear listing all the windows you can link to (windows already
linked to are not shown in this list). Click on the window you want to link to. If
this is the only linked window, the link will take immediate effect. With additional
linked windows, a dialog box will appear offering the choice of maintaining
only one link or creating multiple linked windows. Once windows are linked,
changing a share in a linked window will change the selected share in all linked
windows.

Page 11

To unlink a window, right click on the title bar and from the context menu that
appears select

Unlink window

.

Adding and

To create a new window, select
new window you require from the sub-menu that appears. Alternatively, you
can right click on the screen and select
that appears.

All windows displayed in ShareScope Plus and Pro can be re-sized to your exact
requirements. To do this, simply place your mouse over the window border,
then click and drag. To move a window around the screen, click and drag on
the title bar.

ShareScope can automatically arrange windows for you. Click on the toolbar
button with the picture of a multi-window screen on it, or select

windows

possible. To restore the default layouts, select
Default layouts.

With multiple windows displayed, you can maximise any one of the windows to
fill the whole screen. For example, if the shares list window and intraday graph
window are displayed on screen but you would like a closer look at the intraday
graph, double click on the intraday graph title bar and the window will fill the
entire screen. To return to multiple windows, double click on the window title
bar again.

When adding new windows in a blank area of the screen, they will automatically
be re-sized to fit the space you have right clicked in, taking into account the
arrangement of the other windows.

Re-sizing Windows

Window : New window

New window from the context menu

. The windows will move and re-size to fill as much blank space as

Window : Window layouts :

. Select the type of

Window : Arrange

Windows Layout

As with graphs and tables, you can save up to twelve different windows layouts.
Layouts are automatically saved when you exit ShareScope.

So, for example, if you wanted one layout showing simply the list and intraday
graph of a particular share, you could save this and call it ‘List/graph’. To rename
the current window layout, select

layout...

You can access this layout at any time by selecting
List/Graph. You can then save and use up to eleven other layouts, so you don’t
have to rearrange the windows each time you want to change the layout.
add window layout toolbar buttons to any one of your toolbars for easy access

to any of your saved layouts.

To find out more about customising your toolbars see Section 18 of the
ShareScope User Guide.

and enter the new layout name.

Window : Window layouts : Rename window

Window : Window layouts :

You can

Page 12

5. Intraday Graph Window

To view the intraday graph window if it is not already showing on your screen,
select Window : New Window : Intraday graph.

The intraday graph window will initially display the current day’s trades along
with the bid and offer price. The shaded area of the window below the trades
line represents the bid price. The shaded area of the window above the trades
line represents the offer price. Trades are represented as coloured dots. You
can change their colour and size by right clicking and selecting Graph Design...
then choose the Trades tab.

As with the historical graph window, the share name is displayed at the top of
the graph and the share type at the top right. The top left of the graph shows
the currency in which the share is traded, and just below this is the current date.
The bottom of the graph shows the time scale in a twenty-four hour format. The
share’s EPIC is shown as a watermark. You can add the bid/offer prices as
a watermark or remove the watermarks by right clicking and selecting Graph
Design... then choose the Style tab.

ShareScope Intraday graph window

The left and right arrow keys can be used to scroll horizontally across
the days displayed on your intraday graph. Each key press will move
backwards or forwards one day at a time. Shift and the left or right arrow
key adds or removes a day from your intraday graph. Clearly you will need
to have a number of days’ intraday data stored for this to be effective.

Page 13

Context Menu

Right click over the intraday graph window to reveal the graph window context
menu, which offers you the following options.

Graph Design

By selecting Graph Design… from the context menu, a dialog box will appear,
as shown on the opposite page.

At the top of the graph design dialog box is the De-spike slider. From time to
time rogue trades will appear in the form of an unusually high or low price. This
is often an error from a broker mis-entering a trade on their screen. The de-spike
facility prevents this giving a false impression of the day’s trading. If you set the
slider to “-” (by moving the slider to the far left) then ShareScope will not de­spike the graph at all and all trades will be shown. If you set the slider between
“-” and “+”, ShareScope will remove from some to most of the rogue trades for
you, although you will not get a ‘warts and all’ picture of the day’s trading.

The Dark default and Light default buttons allow you to display your intraday
graph window with a white or black background and associated line colours.

The Preview button will let you view any changes that you have made to the
graph before exiting the graph design dialog box.

Page 14

The Library facility allows you to save and restore individual graph settings
which can be easily exchanged with other ShareScope users. To save a graph
setting, click on the Library button and select Add current settings to library.
You can then name and save this setting in your Library folder or save to another
location. To restore a graph setting at a later date, click on the Library tab and

select from the list or choose Open library folder....

(The Library facility can also be used to save and restore List screen settings.

To access the Library in a List screen, select List design... from the context
menu).

Price Tab

This allows you to choose what data to display. You can add or remove the
Offer and Bid prices by ticking/unticking the relevant boxes. To the right of
these choices you have the option to change the line colour and style. You can
also turn the background shading option on or off and choose the colours.

You have the option to chart the current share by Mid line (the average of the
bid and offer), Close line, or OHLC (open, high, low, close) bar chart, or in
Candlestick format. If you do not wish to see any of the above, select None.
You can choose to use mid prices or trade prices as your data source.

The Mid line and Close line can be displayed in two formats. If the Stepped
line option is ticked, the mid and close price levels remain constant until a new
price is received. Once the new price is received, the graph will step up or
down to reflect this. If this option is not ticked then the line will move directly
between each price.

Show latest will display the latest mid price on the right-hand vertical axis of
the graph.

Page 15