Guide 4.3
Beginner, 7 min read. Checked with Scalpel 1.12.8 on .
In short
Scalpel is built to be traded from the keyboard: Shift+1 to Shift+4 buy, Ctrl+Z sells everything at the bid, Ctrl+X sells half, B moves your stop to breakeven, and a voice confirms each one so your eyes never leave the book. Press ? for the cheatsheet, and rebind any trading key in Settings > Hotkeys by clicking it and pressing the new key. Esc is fixed: with nothing open, it flattens every position.
In a fast small-cap move, the second you spend finding a button with the mouse is a second of price you do not get. Every trading action in Scalpel has a key, every key fires on the desk you have focused, and each one answers with a short spoken confirmation ("Filled, level two.", "Out, half.", "Breakeven.") so you can keep watching Level 2 and the tape instead of checking a panel.
Before you start
These are the rebindable trading keys, in the order Settings > Hotkeys lists them. Each acts on the focused desk (the one with the blue outline).
| Action (as Settings names it) | Default key | What it does | You hear |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy preset 1 to 4 | Shift+1 to Shift+4 | Buys with that preset's size, as a marketable limit at the ask plus your buy offset (guide 4.4) | "Filled, level one." to "level four." |
| Sell full (bid) | Ctrl+Z | Sells the whole position at the bid minus your sell offset | "Out, full." |
| Sell half (bid) | Ctrl+X | Sells half, rounded down to whole shares | "Out, half." |
| Sell quarter (bid) | Ctrl+C | Sells a quarter, rounded down | "Out, quarter." |
| Sell half (ask) | Ctrl+A | Offers half at the ask | "Out, half." |
| Sell half (mid) | Ctrl+S | Offers half at the midpoint | "Out, half." |
| Stop to breakeven | B | Moves the working stop up to your entry price; a stop already above it stays put | "Breakeven." |
| Toggle trailing stop | Shift+T | Turns trailing on or off | "Trailing." or "Trail off." |
| Cancel all orders | Ctrl+Q (Shift+Q on a Mac) | Cancels the working orders on the focused desk's symbol | "Cancelled." |
| Toggle cheatsheet | ? (Shift+/) | Shows or hides every key on screen |
More voices follow on their own: "Out, in profit." or "Out, at a loss." when a trade closes, "Stopped out.", "Take profit.", "Rejected." when an order is refused, and "Flattened." after Esc. You can mute the voice or the sounds separately in Settings > Audio (guide 10.1).
The scale-outs, breakeven and trailing are covered in guide 4.5 and guide 5.3.
These are not in the rebind list and always do the same thing.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Esc | Closes whatever is open first: the cheatsheet, Settings, a panel's or a scan's settings, or a symbol suggestion list. With nothing open, it flattens every position on every desk, the same as the header's Flatten All. |
| Enter | Applies Settings when it is open; otherwise loads the highlighted symbol from the suggestion list. |
| Up / Down | Move through the symbol suggestion list. |
| Left, Right, Tab | Move focus to the previous or next desk (when you are not typing in a box). |
| Ctrl+, | Opens or closes Settings. |
| Ctrl+-, Ctrl+=, Ctrl+0 | Zoom the whole cockpit out, in, and back to 100% (70% to 125%). |
The trading keys only fire when no text box has the key. While you type in a desk's symbol box, Shift+1 is just a "!" in the box. As soon as you pick a symbol (Enter or a click on a suggestion), the cursor leaves the box, so the keys trade straight away. If you clicked into a box and changed your mind, click the desk (or its chart) to give the keys back to trading.
Press ? to see every key as it is bound right now. The buy rows show each preset's size ("Buy 250 sh", "Buy Risk $100"), so the cheatsheet is also a quick check of what your four keys will buy. Press ? again, click outside it, or press Esc to close it.
Press Ctrl+, (or click Settings in the header) and choose Hotkeys. Every action is listed with its key.
The key turns blue and reads Press a key. Click it again to back out without changing anything.
Press a letter, number or punctuation key, alone or with Ctrl, Shift or both. If another action already had that chord, it loses it and shows Unbound: there are never two actions on one key.
Changes only take effect when you click Apply. Cancel (or Esc) closes Settings and keeps your old keys.
What you cannot bind: Esc, Enter, the arrow keys, Tab, Space and the function keys, and the fixed Ctrl+, and zoom chords. Alt is not part of a chord.
Wherever this guide says Ctrl, press Cmd: Cmd+Z sells the position, Cmd+, opens Settings. The cheatsheet and the Hotkeys tab still write "Ctrl".
The one exception is Cancel all orders: on a Mac it defaults to Shift+Q, because Cmd+Q quits apps on macOS, and quitting Scalpel switches off its stops (guide 5.1). An older binding on Cmd+Q moves to Shift+Q by itself.
More in guide 14.3 and the full Hotkeys tab reference in guide 11.8.