MarketWatch

Where to find it

Open the menu (Trading -> Portfolio) and click the MarketWatch tab.

Watchlists

A watchlist is your own list of symbols to track. Add the stocks and derivatives you care about, and MarketWatch keeps their prices in front of you, so you do not have to search for them each time. While the market is open those prices update live; after it closes they stay on the last values of the day (see After the market closes).

The system uses broker-independent trading symbols, so the same symbol works no matter which broker an account belongs to.

Two views: Classic and MarketWatch 2

AutoTrader Web gives you two MarketWatch views, and both are fully supported:

• MarketWatch Classic — the original, compact watchlist view.
• MarketWatch 2 — a newer watchlist view.

Use whichever suits you. Many users keep one view they are comfortable with; both stay available.

You add symbols with the search box at the top of either view (up to 60 symbols). Classic also has a quick filter box to narrow the symbols already in your watchlist.

MarketWatch Classic columns

Classic is a compact table, one row per symbol.

Column	Meaning
Symbol	The watchlist symbol (broker-independent).
Ltp	Last traded price. Updates live while the market is open.
Buy	Best buy (bid) price.
Sell	Best sell (ask) price.
% Chg	Percentage change versus the previous close.
Time	Time of the last price update.
Volume	Traded volume for the day.
OI	Open interest (for derivatives).
Open	Day’s opening price.
High	Day’s highest price.
Low	Day’s lowest price.
Prev. Cl	Previous day’s closing price.
Avg. Prc	Average traded price.
Ltq.	Last traded quantity.
Tot. B-Qty	Total buy (bid) quantity.
Tot. S-Qty	Total sell (ask) quantity.
Exch	The exchange.
Delete	A Delete button to remove the symbol from your watchlist.
B/S Pressure	A bar showing buy-versus-sell pressure (total bid versus ask quantity).

MarketWatch 2 cards

MarketWatch 2 shows each symbol as a card instead of a table row. A card shows the symbol, exchange, last traded price, percentage change and a small price chart, plus a live bid/ask depth ladder.

• Click Details on a card to expand it and see Open, Prev Close, High, Low, Volume, Avg, OI, LTQ (last traded quantity), LTT (last traded time), LC (lower circuit), UC (upper circuit) and a day-range bar.
• Use Expand all / Collapse all in the toolbar to toggle every card at once.
• Drag a card by its header to reorder your watchlist.
• Click Buy or Sell on a card to jump to the Trade tab for that symbol.

After the market closes

Prices update live only while the market is open. Once it closes, the watchlist does not go blank.

• Every symbol keeps showing the last values of the day — last traded price, the day’s open, high, low, previous close, volume and the rest. They simply stop changing.
• The % Chg column shows the change for the whole of that day, because the day is finished.
• Time in MarketWatch Classic, and LTT on a MarketWatch 2 card, tell you when that price last changed. This is the quickest way to tell a closed market from a symbol that is not trading.

So the usual reason a price is “not updating” is simply that the market is closed.

When the market next opens, prices start moving again on their own and you do not have to rebuild anything. If you have left the page open for a long time — overnight, for example — reload the page before you rely on it, so the watchlist reconnects to the price feed.

Building and editing a watchlist works the same whether the market is open or closed, so after hours is a good time to get the next session’s list ready.

Placing an order

When you want to act on something in your watchlist, use the Trade tab to place the order into one or many accounts.