JAM GVStratControl was the original form-based manual control system for interacting with indicators and strategies. It was originally released in April 2008, long before the functionality became available in TradeStation. Whilst the functionality is mostly superseded by the latest forms and controls in TradeStation 9.5 and 10, it is still used by many traders and demonstrates how to access TradeStation from external programs.

GVStratControl allows button-click control of your indicators and strategies while they are running live, without having to change inputs.  This makes real-time control of your indicators and strategies faster and simpler, and helps to avoid ‘Position Match’ problems with strategies.

Any button in GVStratControl can control single or multiple actions across single or multiple strategies/indicators.  For example, you can have a button that tells a particular strategy to turn its trailing stop off, or you can have an ‘ALL FLAT’ button that tells all currently running strategies to make themselves flat.

Any action you can take in EasyLanguage can be controlled by GVStratControl . 

GVStratControl can be used as a simple trading front-end.  Clicking on a button will tell TradeStation to Buy or Sell, enter or exit.  One button can signal two (or more) charts so that one chart will buy and the other sell, enabling easy pairs trading.  Or you can combine discretionary and strategy trading.  At the click of button you can enter the market and then leave your strategy to automatically exit.  Or you can allow automated strategy entries and then have manual control over the exits.

Indicators can be turned on or off, or their length changed.

GVStratControl can manage a single strategy or indicator on a single chart or multiple strategies and indicators across multiple charts. 

You can even turn individual charts on and off by clicking on the chart itself.  In this example we are simultaneously trading on three charts with one set of controls.  But see how the middle chart has been set to ‘OFF’ so that it will now ignore trading instructions from GVStratControl .  This is achieved by simply clicking on the chart which switched it off.  Clicking on this chart again will switch it back on.

Buttons can be renamed and resized.  The program can be moved to any position on the screen and its location fixed so that it always starts at that point, ready for your days trading.

GVStratControl ‘signals’ your strategy or indicator so that it can take a particular action.  A click on a button updates a Global Variable, which is then read by your strategy or indicator with a single line of EasyLanguage code.  Global Variables are written by TradeStation staff so are widely used and widely supported.  The program is extremely flexible and all actions to be taken by the strategy/indicator are defined by the user.

Note, that in order to take full advantage of GVStratControl it is necessary to program in EasyLanguage.  Some example EasyLanguage code is provided in the documentation, but programming support is NOT included with this product.  If you’re not a programmer, or Global Variables are too difficult for you, then please contact me and I can do the strategy/indicator programming for you on a consulting basis.