The following are some of the most Frequently Asked Questions from our members.
If you could not find the answer to your question, please
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Typography: throughout this document, we will use bold
print to represent buttons or other user controls, and italics to represent
content pages. Underlined terms are used to denote links that can be clicked on to get more information. Occasionally,
we will use bold print for special terms as well.
We've organized this FAQ into several sections to make it easier for you to find the information you need. Click on the links below to jump
directly to that section:
To get Stock Quotes (same for options, mutual funds, ETFs and member Virtual Hedge
Funds), just go to the "Get Quotes" box on the
top left corner of any page, and type in the symbol of the stock you wish to look up (e.g. AAPL for Apple
Corporation). If you don't know the symbol of the company, click on the
"Symbol Lookup" link (next to the
"Get Quotes" box). A new window will pop up and you can search for the company you wish.
In most cases, several results will appear for the same company, usually the one you want is the simplest
symbol that is 1 to 4 alphabets long, and do not contain numbers or a colon (":").
Plays are unique to Tipping Monkey that allow members to group a number of trades associated with a
specific stock into a single unit. Think of them as mini-portfolios that are associated with a single
stock. Every trade must "belong to" a Play, and that's why you are asked to create a Play before
you can place a trade.
For stock traders, Plays may not be too useful, and can cause confusion initially. However,
Plays are designed to help people compare different trading techniques and learn. For example, if you
compare shorting 100 shares of AAPL, and buying 100 shares of AAPL over a period of time, there is no
easy way to do it except to create a portfolio, short 100 shares of AAPL in that portfolio, and then create
a second portfolio, and buy 100 shares of AAPL. This will work, but will be quite a headache if you want to
compare many positions on several stocks at the same time. You'll end up with too many portfolios.
But in Tipping Monkey, you can create two separate AAPL Plays in the same portfolio, short 100 shares
of AAPL in one Play, and buy 100 shares in the other Play. In other sites (including real brokerages),
you will end up with 0 shares of AAPL in the portfolio (-100 + 100 = 0), but in Tipping Monkey, you have
two mini-portfolios of AAPL stock, one having an open position of -100 shares, and the other with
+100 shares. And as time goes by, you can watch the performance of these Plays as one makes money and
the other one loses money.
While the AAPL long-short example might seem laughable and impractical, the concept of "Plays" becomes
more interesting when you start mixing in options. For example, a textbook may tell you a "Covered Call"
is synthetically the same as a "Naked Put", but in reality there are subtle differences. So in order to
investigate this, you can create two plays simultaneously on the same underlying stock.
You can create a "Covered Call" position in one Play, and a "Naked Put" position in the other, and follow
the payoff of each Play as the market moves. This kind of side-by-side comparison will give you one of
the best lessons that no textbook can match!
In Tipping Monkey, there are 4 ways to place a trade, depending on what you want to do and where you are:
-
Opening a brand new position: If you want to trade a stock that you have not traded before,
the easiest way is to start with the stock quote screen. Once you loaded the stock quote page for
the stock you want to trade, you will see a button that says: "Click button to trade". Click on that
button to trade that stock (or its options) right away. The system will take you through the steps to
select a portfolio, create a play, and entering the trade. This is the easiest way to place a new trade.
Note: Remember the name of the Play you created, because you will need to specify the Play when
you close (e.g. sell) this position.
-
Trade on an existing position: If you want to change an existing position (e.g. sell your existing
holdings), you can also start at the stock quote page, similar to "A" above. Click the "trade" button
to begin. When you arrive at the "Play selection" page, select the portfolio from the list that you
wanted to trade on.
Then choose the Play from the "Play Selection" list box that contains the position
you wanted to change. Unless you created many plays on the same stock, usually the Play selected by
default is the play you want to select. After selecting the Portoflio and Play, the system will take
you to the trading screen. You should check the "Inventory" above the charts to make sure you selected
the correct Play.
-
Trading directly form the Balance Sheet: If you click "Trade / details"
from the home page, you will be taken to the "Balance Sheet" of the portfolio, which lists all your current holdings, and a list of
all your Plays. You can click on any symbol in the Balance Sheet to trade that stock. If you have
multiple Plays created for that stock, you will be asked to select a specific Play to trade on, otherwise,
the system will take you directly to the trading screen.
-
Trading a Play directly: In the "Balance Sheet" view, You can also scroll to the bottom and find the
specific Play you wanted to trade on. On the right hand side of each trade, you will find a "trade" and "details"
button. Click the "details" button to review the details of the Play (such as the individual
trades, the current positions and ACB), or click "trade" to make a trade in that Play.
Plays allow you to create isolated positions in the same portfolio for the same stock so you can
compare these Plays side-by-side without creating a separate portfolio. If you bought and sold a
stock, it will not show up in the Balance Sheet view, because
the position had been closed. You will most likely see the 0 shares / contract
positions when you have 2 or more separate Plays that offset each other.
For example, if you have a Play on GOOG with where you bought 100 shares, and another Play in the same
portfolio where you sold short 100 shares, then GOOG will be displayed
on the Balance Sheet as having a "net" position of 0 shares, where in fact, you have 2 separate open positions: one long
and one short. Similarly, this will apply for any number of Plays that add up to 0 "net" shares (e.g. 200, 300, -500).
One way to check this is to click on the stock symbol on the Balance Sheet, you
should see a list of all the Plays and outstanding quantities. They should all add
up to 0. To get rid of these positions with 0 shares, you must close all these open
Plays by placing offsetting trades.
Tipping Monkey groups option trades under the underlying stock. For example, trades of AAPL options
must be organized under an AAPL Play. So in order to trade options of a stock, you will have to first
create a Play for the underlying stock symbol, and then place the option trade under this Play.
Trading options are almost just like trading stocks. In the trading screen, click the "Options" radio
button under "Type of Trade". You will notice the stock quote will become an option chain, which shows you
the list of options offered for the current month.
Pick the option you wish to trade and enter its symbol into the "Symbol"
box. To get more details on the option,
you can click the "update"
button above the "Price" box. This will give you a recent quote of the option
to give you more information such as a price history chart for the selected option. Click the "reset" button
to go back to the option chain.
If you wish to trade options that are "farther out" (i.e. expires in a later month) or "leaps" (i.e. options
that expire in the following year or later), then you will find a list of other expiration months on the top-left
of the option chain listing. Click those links to browse offerings for other expiration months.
You can trade ETFs and Mutual Funds just like a stock. Just create a play with the ETF symbol and
start trading away. If you need help finding the ETF symbols, just click "Symbol Lookup" on the top
left of any page to open a lookup window. For example, if you want to lookup all iShares ETFs, just
type in ishares. Note that this will return many pages of results. To narrow it down, for example,
if you want to trade their new Municipal Bond Fund (MUB), you can do a symbol search on "ishares
municipal" to narrow it down.
Yes and no. We did not originally have Forex trading planned for the Beta release. However, some members
have discovered a way to get Foreign Exchange quotes from our system, and as a result, they figured out
a way to speculate on the change in exchange rate between any 2 currencies. For example, you can get a
quote on
$CADUSD, which will give you the exchange rate between the Canadian Dollar (CAD) and the US Dollar
(USD). You can then buy and sell "shares" of these exchange units and profit from changes in the exchange rates.
Another example would be the $CNYUSD, which is the exchange rate between the Chinese Yuan (Renmenbi) and the US
Dollar.
Note that, these quotes are only updated once a day (EOD) so this is more suitable for longer term holding than
people interested in FOREX daytrading.
We've been asked about Futures and Futures Options and we are currently looking into adding this to our
paper trading system in the next release.
Fear not! Tipping Monkey allows members to create as many portfolios as they wish. All you have to do
is to click on the "PORTFOLIOS" tab on top, and click "Create New Portfolio". You can create a new
portfolio and start afresh. Maybe with the lessons you learned last time you will do better.
Tipping Monkey gives our members a lot of options depending on what they wish to do. The following
explains what each of these options mean:
- Private / Public - A Public portfolio is visible to anyone, whereas a Private portoflio will only
be visible to you. If you wish to trade in your own privacy, create a private portfolio. To maintain
confidentiality, only trades made in public portfolios will be displayed in the "Recent Member Trades"
list.
-
Tracking vs. Paper-trading Portfolios - Tracking accounts are designed for people who wish to track
or simulate a real portfolio with a brokerage. When you create a tracking account, you are free to
choose any opening balance up to $1 billion. Tracking accounts allow you to enter commissions for
trades, and execute Cash Transacitons (e.g. cash deposits, withdrawals, interests, etc.). The
idea is that
you can do everything with a Tracking account as if it were a real brokerage account. Tracking portfolios are NOT ranked by Tipping
Monkey.
On the other
hand, paper-trading accounts start with a standard $1 million initial balance and cannot be altered.
Paper-trading accounts do not support Cash Transactions, so you cannot keep depositing new capital into
the portfolio. Paper-trading portfolios
cannot be Private.
All Public
Paper-trading accounts with at least one trade will automatically be Ranked in the Tipping Monkey
portfolio ranking system. By default, all new portfolios are Public Paper-trading accounts unless
selected otherwise by the member.
- Primary Portfolio - if you check this box, this new portfolio
will become your "Primary Portfolio", which is the one displayed
by default when you load member your Home page.
- Virtual Hedge Fund - if you check this box, this portfolio
will become a Virtual Hedge Fund.
You will be taken through extra steps to set up your Virtual Hedge Fund.
Click here
to read more about Hedge Funds, and
Click here
to learn more about creating and managing a Virtual Hedge Fund on Tipping Monkey.
To change your Primary Portfolio, click on the "PORTFOLIOS" tab on top to see your list of portoflios.
Locate the portoflio that you wish to make your default, and click [edit] link on the portfolio banner. Check the box that
says "Make this
my primary portfolio" and click "Update Settings".
In that case, your primary portfolio will be displayed in your Home page when you are viewing it.
When other members view your home page, your newest public portfolio will be displayed by default.
Simple, just click the [edit] link on the portfolio banner, or alternatively, click the "settings"
button under the portoflio details.
Yes, click on the [del] link on the portfolio banner. You will be asked to confirm the delete since a deleted
portfolio cannot be restored.
In general, you can change the Public / Private setting of a Portfolio by clicking on the [edit]
link or the "settings" button. However, Paper-trading
portoflios cannot be made Private, and Virtual Hedge Fund portfolios cannot be changed
at all.
NO. Once a portfolio is created, you may not change the portfolio type.
Just click on the [edit] link next to it to change it to something nice.
Posts refer to the number of posts you made in Tipping Monkey, either through comments you post
throughout the site, or by posting in the forum. Trades refer to the number of trades you made in
your portfolios. Referrals are the number of people you have invited to join through the "Invite a friend to join" link on the
top of any page. You can also get referral points if other members add stocks to
their watch list by clicking the "watch" button of an item from
your watch list.
Every Public Paper-trading Portfolio gets ranked by its portfolio value once the first trade is made.
If you have multiple portfolios, the ranking reflects the portoflio with the highest portfolio value.
The Stock Watch List allows you to keep track of some of your favorite stocks that you don't want to
trade yet. Often times, it is a good practice to follow an unfamiliar stock for some time before you
actually trade it, so you can understand how it reacts to news, and to get an idea of the key supports,
resistances, and trading ranges.
You can simply add symbols (stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs, or even other members' Virtual Hedge
Funds) to your watch list by clicking the "Add stock(s) to list"
button found in your Home page. You
have the choice to add one stock at a time, or just enter a list of stocks in a batch.
Additionally, you can set your personal rating for each stock to indicate your sentiment about the
stock, and you can modify the rating as your sentiment about that stock changes. Tipping Monkey
tracks all the member ratings for every stock, and will calculate the "Average Rating" for every stock,
which is displayed in that stock's quote page. You can rate pretty much any symbol that you get
quotes on (stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs, and virtual hedge funds).
Last but not least, you can also set Price Targets for stocks to see how good you are at predicting
price movements. Price targets consists of a target price and a timeframe. The target price is what
you expect the stock to reach on or before the end of the timeframe. A number of specific values have
been defined for the timeframe, ranging from one week for short-term traders, to 10 years
for those with a markedly long time horizon. Price targets are non-binding, so you can change them as
often as you wish.
Note: In the near future, Tipping Monkey will track your accuracy in your price targets, and you
will have the option of being notified when any of your unexpired price targets are crossed.
You can click on the "Symbol Lookup" link on the top left of any page to look up the stock symbol for
any company. A new window will pop up and you can search for the company you wish. In most cases,
several results will appear for the same company, usually the one you want is the simplest symbol that
is 1 to 4 alphabets long, and do not contain numbers or a colon (":").
Once you found the symbol, you can click on it, and you will be taken to the quote page for this
company's stock. To quickly add this symbol to your watch list, just click the "watch" button on the
top right of the screen. This is probably the easiest way to add a stock to your watch list.
There are several reasons why you might not be able to login to the Tipping Monkey website. Here are the most
popular reasons:
- Cookies are not enabled on your browser - some people have their browser security set to High. In this case,
your browser will reject our cookies and you will keep seeing the login page. You can go to your browser's
Options menu (usually under "Security" or "Advanced" depending on your browser type) to enable cookies
on your browser.
- Cookies are not enabled on the computer - if you are using a public computer, sometimes the policy on the
computers do not allow cookies. In this case, you might want to try it on your own computer, or a friend's
personal computer. In some cases, cookies might still be disabled even though you went to the browser's Options
menu to enable them. If in doubt, check with the technical staff to see if cookies are allowed on public computers.
- HTTPS is blocked by your network - if you are accessing from a corporate or public network (e.g. a computer in
a public library), sometimes their policy will limit HTTPS (secure) access to a small list of authorized hosts.
If this is indeed the case, you can check the "Login insecurely without HTTPS" box above the Login button
to log in without using HTTPS. Note that we will send your username and password insecurely and without encryption.
- If you are seeing other issues that are preventing you from logging on, you can
Click here
to send us feedback. Please try to be as specific as possible so we can diagnose the issue as quickly as possible.
We are not currently aware of any issues associated with accessing Tipping Monkey from Facebook. However, we are aware of a
few scenarios related to improper installation or configuration that would cause a blank screen to appear when you try to
run our Facebook Application.
- Improper Application Installation - we are not sure how this happened, but sometimes a Facebook Application fails to install properly.
In this case, the application will not load properly when you run it (usually the App never works form the beginning if thiou migs is the case).
To remedy this, go to our Facebook App Page.
In the top-right corner, if you still see a blue "Install App" button, them most likely the App was somehow not installed properly. If this is the
case, just click the "Install App" button and follow the instructions. Make sure you leave the checkboxes checked in the next page when you
confirm installation.
If you don't see the blue "Install App" button, you will have to click "Remove Application" in the top-right to remove the Application. Once the App
is removed, you can go back to our Facebook App Page
to re-install the App using the blue "Install App" button. Once again, make sure you leave the checkboxes checked for proper operation.
- Improper Application Configuration - you might have unchecked some checkboxes when you installed the application, which caused
our Application to be unable to access some of your profile information. In this case, the App might fail to run. You should follow the steps
in "Improper Application Installation" above to re-install the application.
That's about it for now, but we will keep updating this FAQ as we move along. If you can think of
anything else we should add,
Click here
to let us know!
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