You can learn a great deal about Investor/RT by simply opening up and inspecting each of the Preferences windows. Click on the Preferences icon 
on the main toolbar to access any of the 31 preference windows, each one giving you ways to customize the behavior of the software to suit your needs. Remember to press F1 if you have a question about any preference window you are viewing.
Specifying preferences for quote pages, charts, and portfolios is a source of many questions from new Investor/RT users. Many questions revolve around the distinction between using the Setup: Preferences windows vs. the use of the Preferences button 
on the toolbars for a quote pages, charts, or portfolios.
To understand the distinction, you must understand the different types of preferences implemented by Investor/RT. Quote pages, portfolios, and charts each use three kinds of preferences: default preferences, saved preferences, and instance preferences.
Default Preferences are the preference settings which are inherited by newly created quote pages, portfolios, and charts. Once a new quote page, portfolio, or chart window is created, the assigned preferences become the "instance preferences" for that window. If you then elect to save the quote page or chart (portfolios are implicitly saved when you close them), then the preferences become "saved preferences" for that particular saved object in the Investor/RT database.
Default Preferences are adjusted using the Setup Prefs button on the main toolbar or the Setup: Preferences Menu on the menu bar itself. Instance preferences for a particular open window (a chart, portfolio, or quote page) are adjusted using the Preferences icon on the toolbar for the window.
A simple example using chart background color will illustrate the relationship among the three kinds of preferences. Suppose the default preference for chart background color is beige. You then use File: New: Chart to create a new untitled chart window. It will appear with the default beige background. At this point, the default preferences and the instance preferences are the same. There are no "saved" preferences for this chart at the moment because the chart has not yet been saved. Using the chart toolbar, you access the instance preferences for the chart and change the background to light gray. You then issue the File: Save command and save the chart, giving it a name of "My Chart". At this point, the default preference for background color is still beige, but the instance and the saved preference for the chart named My Chart is light gray. You then close the chart. Now we have default preferences and saved preferences but no instance preferences. Instance preferences for the chart named My Chart only exist while that particular chart is open in a window.
Later you re-open My Chart using the Open: Chart menu and its background will appear in light gray. That¹s because saved preferences are used to create new instance preferences when opening saved objects like charts, quote pages, and portfolios. You then modify the background color of My Chart to black. Now we still have beige as the default preference for new charts, light gray as the saved preference for My Chart but black is now the instance preference for My Chart¹s background color. You then close the chart. Investor/RT notices that the chart¹s instance preferences are different than they were when the chart was opened so it asks if you would like to save the changes. If you reply Save, the new instance preferences (black background) will then become the saved preferences for My Chart. If you reply Discard, the saved preferences will remain unchanged, still specifying a light gray background.
After using Investor/RT for awhile you may decide on a favorite chart preference, like background color, well after you have created lots of saved charts. If you use the Setup: Preferences menu to adjust the default preferences for chart background color and then press OK, Investor/RT will ask if you wish to apply the change to all saved charts or just the charts that are open at the moment, or none at all. Regardless of which choice you make, the background color you specified becomes the new default. Choosing the ³Open² choice results in the Instance preferences of any charts that are open to be revised to the new background color. These instance preferences will become saved preferences only if you save those charts when closing them. The ³All² choice causes all open charts and all saved charts to be updated. In other words, all charts that are open at the time will change to the new background color, plus all saved charts have their saved preferences updated on the database so that they will appear with the new background color when they are opened later.
When closing a chart or quote page window, Investor/RT, as noted above, will prompt you to save or discard the changes in the event the instance preferences have been modified. Some users may prefer not be be prompted and to always save the changes, others to always discard the changes. There is a preference for what action to take when closing charts and quote pages. The setting is located in Setup: Preferences: General. If you elect to always ³save the changes² then any instance preferences will become saved preferences when you close a chart or quote page. There is also a separate checkbox for discarding untitled charts and quote pages when closing them. If you check this box then you must specifically issue the save command when setting up new charts and quote pages, otherwise, untitled windows are considered ³temporary² and are discarded without saving when Investor/RT quits or when you close the window explicitly.
We have illustrated the three types of preferences for quote pages, portfolios and charts using background color as an example. As described above, when you change default preferences you are given an opportunity to apply the new defaults to any open windows or to update all saved preferences. This works exactly as described for ³visual appearance² type settings such as background color, grid line options, etc., but many of the other preference settings cannot be applied as described.
For example, if you modify the default chart Periodicity preference to say, 1 minute, you are specifying that File: New: Chart will, by default, give you a periodicity of 1 minute. If you elect to apply your changes to all charts or to the open charts, however, Investor/RT does NOT change every one of your charts to 1 minute periodicity. The reason for this should be obvious. Many users have gone to a lot of trouble to setup saved charts with specific periodicities. Periodicity is not just a visual appearance setting, it is a defining characteristic of the saved chart that specifies what kind of data is to be displayed. So to be more precise, here is a list of the chart and quote page settings that can be applied en mass when you revise the default chart settings or the default quote page settings:
Charts Any of the various chart color settings Grid Lines option Hollow Up-Candles option Hollow Histogram option
Quote Pages Any of the various quote page color settings Font and Size Show Grid Lines... option Highlight ticker symbol... option Color based on... option
There are many ways to create a new chart window in Investor/RT. As we have mentioned above, File: New: Chart opens a "Create New Chart" window in which you pick the instrument you wish to chart. The chart type and periodicity and color options, if applicable, are pre-set in this window using the default preferences for charts. By adjusting the default chart preferences you control the default chart type, periodicity, and color settings that appear in the Create New Chart window.
Another way to open a new chart on some instrument is to double-click on a ticker symbol in a quote page, or right-click on a ticker and choose "Chart" from the popup menu. What happens next depends on some father preferences in Setup: Preferences: Charts: General. The Chart General Preferences window allows you to specify what kind of chart you want to see when you double-click. The default chart can be set to be either a particular type of chart (traditional, point & figure, etc.) or you can specify a saved chart that you wish to use as a template to create new charts.
If you choose a particular chart type, say traditional, as the default chart, then double-clicking a ticker will open a new traditional chart of that ticker using all of the default preferences for traditional charts. If you specify Point & Figure as the default type, then double-clicking opens a point and figure chart using the default preferences for Point & Figure charts (see Setup: Preferences: Charts: Point & Figure).
If you choose a specific saved chart as the default chart, then the saved preferences for that chart are used to create the new chart, and the ticker double-clicked on is substituted into the chart, replacing whatever ticker happened to have been saved with that chart.
Going back to our original example of chart background default color, the default background for charts may be specified as beige, but when you double-click on a ticker, you get a light gray background. Why? Because, you have specified a particular saved chart as the default chart and the saved preference for background color for that specific chart is light gray. If you were to revise the Default Chart setting in Setup: Preferences: Charts: General to use chart type "Traditional" rather than a specific chart, then double-clicking on a ticker would open a beige background chart window.
This example illustrates the power of Investor/RT. Any saved chart can be used as a ³template². The saved preferences for any chart can be made the default preferences for double-click charting simply by selecting that chart as the default chart. You could, for example, have an intra-day chart that you use during trading hours for double-click charts but a different daily periodicity chart that you use after market hours.
Sometimes, it is desirable to setup a chart that is very specific to the analysis of a particular instrument. Such charts may contain trendlines, Fibonacci studies and specific price target references lines that pertain only to a specific instrument. Such charts can be saved as an "instrument specific default chart". Any instrument defined to Investor/RT can have an associated default chart. The Save as Default command, accessed via the chart popup menu, enables you to specify the particular chart as the default chart globally or the default chart for a particular instrument. When you save a chart as the default for a specific instrument, the chart is assigned a special name that contains the ticker in question. In the future when you double-click on that ticker, Investor/RT will notice that there is a specific default chart for that instrument and will open up that specific chart, thus overriding any of the other default preferences.
As you can see, there is a great deal of power in Investor/RT preferences. The bottom line benefit is the ability to customize Investor/RT to work the way you want it to work. This power is not intuitively obvious to new users however, so we hope this article gives you a better understanding of how to harness the power of Investor/RT preferences to meet your requirements.