Guide 10.1
Beginner, 7 min read. Checked with Scalpel 1.12.8 on .
In short
Scalpel talks you through every trade so your eyes can stay on the book. A voice confirms entries ("Filled, level two"), exits ("Out, half"), stops ("Stopped out"), take-profits, breakeven, trailing, rejections, the risk lock, mode switches, connection changes, the session times and the exit warnings, and calls out new scanner names and setups. Switch the voice, the sound effects or everything in Settings > Audio; the tape's own sound is in the Level 2 panel's cog.
Scalping is a game of seconds. Looking away from Level 2 to check whether an order filled, or whether your stop is now at breakeven, costs you the next print. So audio in Scalpel is not decoration: every action you take with a key gets a spoken confirmation, and every event you need to react to has a sound. With the voice on, the orders panel becomes something you glance at to double-check, not something you watch.
There are two separate audio channels:
Before you start
Press Ctrl+, (Cmd+, on a Mac) and click Audio.
Click Apply. A soft click confirms the save.
How voice and sound share an event. Many events have both a spoken form and a tone. Scalpel plays one, never both: the voice if Voice callouts is on, otherwise the sound effect. So turning the voice off does not leave you deaf; you hear the tone instead.
Voices never talk over each other. If a callout arrives while another is still speaking, the new one is dropped, so you never hear two sentences at once. Sound effects mix freely. That is also why a burst of events (a fill and its stop a second later) may give you only the first callout: glance at the screen when it matters.
| When | You hear |
|---|---|
| You press a buy key | A short rising blip |
| The buy fills (fully or partly) | "Filled, level one" to "Filled, level four": the preset that fired, Shift+1 to Shift+4 |
| You press Sell full, Sell half or Sell quarter (any of the bid, ask or mid keys) | "Out, full", "Out, half" or "Out, quarter", at once, on the keypress |
| You press Flatten All or Esc | "Flattened" |
| A position closes without a key (auto-flatten, a manual close in TWS) | "Out, in profit", "Out, at a loss", or "Out" if it closed at exactly $0 |
| Ctrl+Q (Shift+Q on a Mac) cancels working orders | "Cancelled" |
| An order is refused (a cap, buying power, no liquidity, a buy on a halted stock, a broker rejection) | "Rejected", with a red toast giving the reason |
| When | You hear |
|---|---|
| The working stop fires | "Stopped out" |
| The catastrophe net fires | "Catastrophe stop" |
| The take-profit fills | "Take profit" |
| B moves the stop to breakeven | "Breakeven" |
| Shift+T turns trailing on or off | "Trailing" or "Trail off" |
A stop-out or take-profit plays its own callout instead of "Out, at a loss" or "Out, in profit", so you always know which level closed you out. Stops are covered in guide 5.1.
| When | You hear |
|---|---|
| The daily loss limit trips the RISK LOCK | "Risk limit hit. Entries blocked." |
| You lift the lock with Resume trading, or it clears | "Risk cleared." |
| You switch MODE to SIM or LIVE (in the header or in Settings > Trading) | "Sim mode activated." or "Live mode activated." |
| Scalpel connects to TWS or IB Gateway | "Connected." |
| The connection drops | "Connection lost." and an amber toast |
As the New York clock crosses each boundary while Scalpel is running:
| Time (ET) | You hear |
|---|---|
| 04:00, the pre-market opens | "Pre-market is open. Good luck!" |
| 07:00 | "Mid-morning open." |
| 09:30, the regular session opens | "The market is open. Good luck out there!" |
| 16:00, the regular session closes (13:00 on a half day) | "The market is closed. Nice work today!" |
Starting Scalpel in the middle of a session does not announce it; only crossing the boundary does. The 07:00 call is skipped on weekends and market holidays.
| When | You hear |
|---|---|
| The 1-minute chart shows a bull trap: a poke above the recent high that closed back under it | "Long, weakening." and an amber toast |
| Selling your whole position into the bids on screen would slip 0.6% or more | "Thin bids. Exit carefully." and a red toast |
| A financing filing or an offering headline lands on a symbol you hold | "Long, weakening." and a red toast |
The first two can be switched off in the Level 2 panel's cog: Exit alert (long weakening) and Thin bid exit warning. Each fires once when the condition starts, and again only after it has cleared and at least 12 seconds have passed.
These are warnings, not predictions. The bull trap read was the one chart pattern that held up when replayed over recorded sessions, and even then only for the next minute or so (guide 3.6).
| When | You hear |
|---|---|
| A new name joins the IBKR scanner list | "New gainer" |
| A name makes a new high of day on the momentum scan | "New mo-mo" |
| A new name on Running up | "New runner" |
| A setup on the Setups scan | "Gap and go", "Micro pullback", "Breaking highs" (a high-of-day break), "Bull flag", "Flat top" or "On a run" (a long green run) |
Scanner callouts only come from scan panels that are open on a desk, with the scan's bell on (Alert on new entry in the panel's cog). The scan bell sounds at most once every 1.5 seconds, however many names arrive at once, and each alert also shows a toast you can click to load the symbol. See guide 8.2.
Loading a symbol, a halt (a warning tone) and its resumption, a market-data error, the other intel alerts, a held-back buy from the dilution entry guard, saving Settings, resetting SIM, and opening or closing a window each have a short tone and no voice.
Nothing plays while the launch splash is up, and fills and closes restored just after a mode switch are not announced, so a restart or a switch never replays old trades.