Decks

What a deck is,
and why the ticker runs on one.

A deck is a file that holds what one line of the ticker shows: symbols from one market, news or indicators, the conditions for alerts, and how the line is displayed. It describes what to show and runs no code of its own.

Deciding what goes on a ticker is real work. You go through thousands of symbols in the market and narrow them down. You make strategic choices about what deserves a place. You keep track of what you hold, filter by rules, and pick some names one by one. All of this has to come together before the line is worth watching.

The ticker itself can’t hold that work. It is a thin bar at the edge of your screen, and there is no room in it to search, filter and arrange. Work like this needs a dedicated tool, and that tool is the studio. You build the deck there, and the deck drives the ticker.

What a deck brings together

  1. Set up in advance. Your choices are made before the market opens, not while prices are flashing. You can prepare several decks for different situations and put the one you need into the ticker’s settings.
  2. Built with a dedicated tool. The studio gives the work the space it needs: searching the whole market, building small components and combining them into a deck, and seeing the line before it runs.
  3. Kept. A deck is a file, and the original stays on your machine. If your plan lapses, your decks keep running on the version you have.
  4. Portable. You can export a deck, move it to another device or hand it to someone. Because it is data and not code, opening one can’t run anything on your computer.

This is why the ticker, the deck and the studio are used together. The studio is where you think, the deck is what you decided, and the ticker is where it runs.

What a line set up this way does for you

  1. It helps you avoid impulsive trades. The line carries what you chose when you were thinking clearly, not whatever is loudest at the moment.
  2. It works as a radar for your own symbols. It keeps following the names you chose, whether or not anyone else is talking about them today.
  3. It keeps your attention where it belongs. With nothing else on the line, it is easier to notice when something you care about moves, and harder to miss the moment.

A deck selects what the ticker
shows, and alerts you.

Everything on the ticker gets there through a deck. A deck does two things: it selects the information, and it tells you when a condition you set is met. You make decks in the studio.

Open the studio What a Deck costs

1 — SELECTION

The market publishes more
than one person can follow.

Stock and crypto markets quote thousands of symbols every second, and news and economic figures arrive on top of that. Most of it has nothing to do with you. The price of something you don’t hold, don’t watch and don’t plan to buy is of no use to you, however fast it arrives.

A deck is the tool that takes out the part you need. You choose the symbols, the news and the indicators, and only those go on the ticker. The ticker itself only displays. What it displays, and when it alerts you, is set in the deck. The deck drives the ticker.

A deck has two jobs: selecting information and alerting you when a condition you set is met. You set up both in the studio, and you can change them whenever your holdings or your plans change.

2 — LINES

A ticker holds three lines.
One deck drives each line.

Three lines, one deck each

For example, shipbuilders on the first line, electronics on the second, carmakers on the third.

Two tickers on one monitor

A monitor can show two tickers. If you run symbols only, that makes up to six lines.

A typical ticker

One or two lines of symbols, with news and economic indicators on the rest.

3 — KINDS

There are three kinds of deck.

A symbol deck, an indicator deck and a news deck each fill a line. Alerts live inside symbol and indicator decks, and travel with them.

Symbol deck

The stocks or coins you chose: by name, from what you hold, or by a rule that refills the deck as the day changes. One market per deck. Crypto →  Stocks →

News deck

The news you want to follow, on a line of its own. Headlines come to your computer directly from the publisher.

Indicator deck

Indexes, exchange rates, oil, futures, bond yields. What it can show depends on what your connection opens.

4 — ALERTS

A deck tells you
when a condition is met.

Inside the deck, on its own tab

A symbol or indicator deck has two tabs: what it shows, and its alerts. Put the deck on a line and its alerts come with it.

On the line, or on your phone

A blink and a sound at the screen. A message on Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord or Slack when you’re away.

A symbol with an alert stays

If a rule drops it from the symbol deck, it stays on the line and the alert keeps working until you remove the alert.

The app has to be running

Conditions are checked on your computer, not on our server. Close the app and nothing fires.

5 — THE STUDIO

Decks are made
in the studio.

A deck is built from components

Your holdings, a list you pick by hand, a sector’s top five, a rule — each is a component you build once and tick into any deck. Change a component and every deck that uses it changes too. Conditions in a rule all have to hold; for an either-or, add another component.

In your browser, and in the app

The studio opens on this site and inside the ScoutDex app. It is the same studio in both.

Some steps only work in the app

Your browser can’t reach the key stored on your computer or read most news feeds. Looking up the symbols your key opens, and building stock, indicator and news decks, happen in the app. The browser hands those steps over to it. We recommend building your decks in the app.

The first deck takes some time

There are many symbols to go through and a few choices to make. After a few decks, you have a ticker set up the way you work.

A deck is a file, and it’s yours

The original stays on your machine. You can open it again, edit it, export it or send it to someone.

We keep a copy we can’t read

It is encrypted before it leaves you, so a second device can pick it up. How →

Making your own decks starts at Deck

The free ticker runs a sample crypto deck we made, with real crypto prices. Making and editing your own decks opens with Deck. Pricing →

Open the studio

6 — IN USE

A line set in advance shows
what you planned to watch.

Attention decides most purchases

Six years of records from 78,000 households showed individual investors mostly buying the stocks that caught their attention that day: the ones in the news, or moving sharply. Nobody can search thousands of names.

A deck is decided before the market moves

Your holdings, the names you are waiting on and the indicators that move them are on the line whether or not they are the loudest today. That supports trading to a plan instead of reacting to noise.

It depends on how precisely you set it

We don’t recommend symbols and we don’t promise a result. How useful the ticker is comes down to how carefully you choose what goes into your decks.

Next

Deck · CryptoWhat the studio asks, step by step. No key needed. Deck · StocksThe same steps, through your broker’s key. The tickerThe line a deck ends up on.