Creating a SmartLink (Custom Research link)

Certain Research links are included with TradeStation, however, you can create a Research link to any web page that includes a symbol as part of its URL address. An example of a URL containing a symbol is: http://www.tradestationfundamental.com/highlights.asp?ticker=msft.

  1. Navigate to a web page you want to use as a Research link. Make sure that the URL address contains a symbol. If the symbol is not part of the URL, you will be unable to create a Research link to that web page.
  2. In the browser window, highlight the URL address in the Address box.
  3. Click Copy on the shortcut menu.
  4. Open a text editor (Notepad, Wordpad).
  5. In your text editor, click Paste on the shortcut menu.
  6. Two special placeholders are available to allow the selected symbol information to be passed to the link. Use [symbolchar] to replace the first letter of the symbol and/or [symbolname] to replace the full symbol name. You must type [symbolchar] and [symbolname] in lowercase. For example, change http://biz.yahoo.com/p/i/ibm.html to http://biz.yahoo.com/p/[symbolchar]/[symbolname].html.
  1. From the Menu bar, click File > Save As to save the file to the C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\TradeStation Technologies\TradeStation\10.0\Internet folder, where <USERNAME> is your Windows user name. You need to save the file with an .irl extension. For example, you can use IBM_Quote.irl as the name for a Research link containing quote information about IBM.
  2. The Research link is now added to your Research link list and will appear using the Go To menu sequence from a Research window.

If your Research link does not appear in the list, locate the file in Windows Explorer and check the file extension. Some operating systems may append a .txt after the .irl extension. If this is the case, select the file and use the File > Rename menu sequence to rename the file with only an .irl extension.