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This article aims to help students using HUBB Financial software products - ProfitSource, OptionGear, ValueGain, our flagship IntegratedInvestor or the free HUBB Investor software available at www.hubbinvestor.com.
Finding the stock, futures contract or currency pair you are looking for can sometimes present a challenge when using a new software program or trading platform. There is a feature that makes this job easy, especially when looking for FX pairs and futures contracts. It’s called the Navigation Bar (or Nav Bar) and it can be added to any chart or quote list.
First you need to ensure the Nav Bar is set up correctly. To do this, close any open chart pages or quote lists. Then go to File > Settings > Nav Bar as shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1
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Now make sure the boxes for the instruments you want are checked, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
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Next, open any price chart – say Apple (AAPL) – via Charts > New Price Chart. The button to add/remove the Nav Bar is highlighted in Figure 3.
Figure 3
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The Nav Bar will bring up Apple’s (AAPL) location in the sector tree. From here you can browse the various sector and sub-sector lists within the stocks section. To open a chart, simply double-click on a stock/instrument.
Figure 4
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The Nav Bar is especially useful for browsing foreign exchange (also known as FX or forex) and futures. FX pairs are grouped by ‘base’ (or first) currency and mostly offer quotes for conversions in both directions. (i.e. AUD/USD and USD/AUD.)
Futures contracts are grouped by category as shown in Figure 5 below.
Figure 5
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If you are unfamiliar with the various types of charts available for futures contracts, you can learn about them in Aaron Lynch’s excellent article ‘Spot 1, Spot V or Just Spot the Dog’.For now, however, the easiest way is to use the charts ending with ‘SPOTV’ that do not have ‘day’ or ‘night’ brackets. Abbreviations for some major futures contracts are as follows:
- Gold = GC-SPOTV
- Silver = SI-SPOTV
- Oil = CL-SPOTV
- S&P 500 = SP-SPOTV
- DOW JONES = DJ-SPOTV
- SPI 200 = AAI-SPOTV
- Coffee = KC-SPOTV
- Corn = NC-SPOTV
- US Dollar = DX-SPOTV
- Aussie Dollar = AD-SPOTV
- Yen = JY-SPOTV
- Euro = EC-SPOTV
There are obviously many more major futures contracts from each category than those listed above. The main thing to note is that most contracts have a two character ‘root symbol’, which is expressed before the ‘-SPOTV’ suffix. This makes them easier to recall than it might seem on your first inspection.
So next time you aren’t sure of the symbol for a stock, future or currency, the Nav Bar is a quick and easy way to track it down.
Happy Trading
Jordan Craw
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