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WinStock Frequently Asked QuestionsGeneral Information
Paging and E-Mail
Server Passwords
WinStock and Quicken
I suddenly can't get quotes anymore. What could be wrong? It may be that the quote server you are using is not responding. You can check this by:
If you do not get a response in a reasonable amount of time, the quote server is probably not responding. Try a different quote server. You can change the default quote server by:
If you want to change the quote server for just some selected stocks, select those stocks and click Stock | Properties | Quote Server. How do I receive notifications of updates to WinStock? Whenever WinStock starts, it automatically asks this server for the current version number of WinStock. If a newer version is available, you will be informed automatically. How do I get technical support? The fastest way to get support is to use the built-in problem reporting feature of WinStock. Select Help | Submit Bug Report... Be as detailed as possible when describing your problem. Include a description of what you were trying to do and what commands and keystrokes, if possible. If you cannot run WinStock, send e-mail to support@winstocksw.com. Please include the version number of WinStock that you are using. Again, try to be as specific as possible in describing your problem. I can't retrieve a quote for XYZ. Why not? WinStock gets its quotes from a number of different quote servers. If the server you choose for a security does not supply quotes for that security, WinStock can't display it. If the server is providing bad data, WinStock will dutifully display the received bad data. Try this:
If you cannot see a quote in the browser window, then the problem is either the server you selected or the security type is misidentified. In most cases WinStock will correctly guess the type of security automatically. However, it is occasionally wrong. You can check the security type and also try other servers by:
WinStock will now attempt to fetch a quote for the selected security from the newly chosen quote server. If it fails, go back to the browser procedure given above to check the new server. Or simply double-click the security and try a different server. The quote for XYZ is wrong. Is WinStock broken? WinStock gets its quotes from a number of different quote servers. If the server is providing bad data, WinStock will display whatever the server sends. Try this:
Look at the data retrurned by the server. If it is wrong, contact the quote vendor. IMPORTANT NOTE: Some quote servers (such as Datek and E*Trade) use an access method that is incompatible with WinStock's built-in browser. In this case, to check the quote you will need to use your own favorite browser to check the quote. How do I get quotes for options? First, make sure that the quote server you are using supports option quotes. As of this writing, the following quote servers had good coverage of the US options market:
Next, make sure you have correctly identified the ticker symbol as an Option symbol. To do this:
What about Market Indicies (e.g. S&P 500, DJIA)? Spelling of ticker symbols for market indices varies from server to server. WinStock has standardized the spelling of ticker symbols for many popular market indices. To use these standard spellings, select Stock | Search and click on the Standard Market Indices tab. Select as many indices as you wish from the list and press OK. Not all server support market indices. Of those that do, the coverage is often spotty. The two best servers for index quotes are Data Broadcasting Corportation and InvestorsEdge. Lombard Brokerage, Inc. and CNNfn are also very good. If none of these servers is your default server, and you are having problems getting index quotes, here's what to do:
What about charts of Market Indices? Available charts are only those provided by the server (Lombard only for WinStock, a choice of several others for WinStock Pro). It appears at present that only intra-day charts are available for market indices and not historical. If Lombard changes this, WinStock will then be able to retrieve market index charts. What do the symbols to the left of the ticker mean? The question mark ( The circle with a slash ( The network plumbing ( Why is the reported volume sometimes too low? There is a known bug in the Security APL quote server that causes the volume to be under-reported once it exceeds some threshhold. This is not a bug in WinStock. How do I display currency quotes The Data Broadcasting Corporation and PC Quote servers both supply currency quotes. Consult their web sites for futher details. The currency conversions used by WinStock Pro are retrieved from a quote server that updates once per day. How can I creat a custom sort order? This trick works only for WinStock Pro: Suppose you want to sort your stocks first by some classification, say Owned vs. Watching and then alphabetically within these groups. Here's how:
Why does WinStock use the Last Trade price instead of the Bid price when calculating portfolio values? Not all quote servers return the Bid price. Furthermore, not all exchanges allow the Bid to be published even when the quote server supports it for other exchanges. Finally, the Bid is not returned for non-detailed quotes by some (but not all) quote servers. For these reasons, using the Bid price is not reliable. Why doesn't the current value and profit/loss show in the portfolio totals? If WinStock does not have a complete set of quotes for all securities in your portfolio, it will not show the total current value and any other totals derived from the total current value. The reason is that the total current value has no meaning if you do not have a complete set of quotes. Each time you try to open your portfolio without a complete set of quotes, WinStock Pro will warn you about the missing totals. It will also give you the option never to see this warning again. If you disable the warning, WinStock Pro will silently suppress the totals. If you would like to re-enable the warning, click View | Properties | General | Warnings. Uncheck the box labelled "Warn about suppressed totals in portfolio due to incomplete quote set." I can send test pages just fine, but I never receive alarm pages. Why not? I never receive my e-mail alarms. Why not? When you are ready to let WinStock Pro send pages or e-mail, you must uncheck Edit | Suspend Paging. WinStock Pro automatically re-checks this item each time you launch it. The reason for this is simple: if it did not, then as soon as you launched WinStock Pro, it might attempt to send you a page or e-mail. Since you are clearly sitting at your computer, this is a wasted page or e-mail. The second thing you may need to do is click Edit | Reset Pager Alarms. Once WinStock Pro detects an alarm condition, it will not send another page or e-mail for that alarm until you clear it. When I try to use the Discover server, I am asked for a password. How do I get one? The Discover server requires that you register for a free account. Click here to register. When I try to use the PC Quote server, I am asked for a password. How do I get one? The PC Quote Market-Smart Delayed server requires that you register form a free account. Click here to register. The PC Quote Market-Smart Real-Time server requires a subscription. Click here to register. When I try to use the Datek server, I am asked for a password. How do I get one? The Datek server requires that you have an account. Click here to register. When I try to use the ThomsonRTQ server, I am asked for a password. How do I get one? The Discover server requires that you register for a free account. Click here to register. When I try to get a graph, I am asked for a password. How do I get one? Some Graphs are provided by the Discover server. The Discover server requires that you register form a free account. Click here to register. WinStock says I am missing QWRUN.EXE or VBRUN300.DLL. Where do I get them? These files are helper programs that WinStock uses to unlock the data files when using Quicken Version 5 or earlier. They are not needed for Quicken Version 6 or later. You can download them from the WinStock web site. Download this setup program and run it to install QWRUN.EXE and VBRUN300.DLL. You must install them to the same directory that you installed WinStock. If you chose the default installation directory when you installed WinStock, you may also chose the default for the two Quicken helper files. Click here to download the Quicken helper setup program. I tried to use the Quicken Export, but nothing happpened! This is usually due to one of five causes:
Note to users of the UK version of Quicken: Click here for special instructions. I tried to use the Quicken export and got an error message! With Quicken 98, it is possible to configure it to play a sound clip of your choice. If this sound clip is too long, WinStock may display the following error:
To fix this you must disable the sound clip in Quicken. I just ran a Quicken operation and now Quicken is locked up! This should happen rarely, but when it does you must exit WinStock. Then you'll be able to exit Quicken. If QWRUN is hanging around when this happens, see the next question. What is QWRUN and how can I get rid of it? QWRUN is a helper application that allows WinStock to modifiy your Quicken data files. If it does not go away by itself after you send some prices to Quicken, simply double click on its icon on the desktop (WinNT 3.51 or earlier) or on the Task Bar (Win95 or WinNT 4.0). QWRUN will pop up and appear as a traffic light. Now just double-click on the traffic light and QWRUN will go away. I imported my portfolio from Quicken, but nothing happened! WinStock only imports symbols from Quicken for securities that Quicken says you own. If you have a zero share balance in any security, WinStock will not import it. I tried to import my portfolio from Quicken and got an error message! With Quicken 98, it is possible to configure it to play a sound clip of your choice. If this sound clip is too long, WinStock may display the following error:
To fix this you must disable the sound clip in Quicken. Quicken does not exit after a portfolio update. This is caused by some dialog box being displayed by Quicken. Most frequently, the dialog being displayed is the reminder window for scheduled transactions. Unfortunately, there is nothing WinStock can do when this happens. If you disable the reminders in Quicken, this won't occur, but you will then lose the reminder feature of Quicken. I use Quicken version 6 or Quicken 98. Is there anything special I should know? If you use Quicken 6 or Quicken 98, you should tell WinStock that you are using Quicken Version 6 (or newer). You do not need to download or install the Quicken Helpers (although it won't hurt if you already have). I use the UK version of Quicken. Is there anything special I should know? If you use the UK version of Quicken you should tell WinStock that you are using Quicken Version 6 (even thought you are using UK Quicken Version 5). In addition, you do not need to download or install the Quicken Helpers (although it won't hurt if you already have). |
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) indicates a "stale" price. This is, WinStock was unable to
retrieve a quote for that ticker on its last attempt. You can tell WinStock to fetch a
single quote by double-clicking the ticker symbol and then pressing the OK button.
) indicates a closing price for the day. WinStock does not get this
information directly, but instead infers it from the time of the last trade. Since many
low-volume stocks do not trade close enough to the close of the trading day, WinStock will
often not know that a price is final.
) indicates that a quote fetch is in program for the
stock.