Interactive Guides
An interactive guide is a short, step-by-step tour that runs inside the live tradeSteward application. It highlights one real control at a time, explains what that control does, and waits for you while you look, so you learn a workflow in the exact place you will use it. Guides are built for traders who are new to a part of tradeSteward, and for anyone who would rather be shown a screen than read about it.
How interactive guides work
When a guide starts, it opens the page where the workflow begins and places a tooltip card next to the first control it wants you to see. The card names the control, explains what it is for, and tells you what to do next. As you move through the steps, the highlight moves with you from one field, button, or menu to the next, in the same order you would use them on your own.
Guides pair with this knowledge base rather than replace it. Every step carries a Learn More link to the section of the matching article that covers that control in depth, so you can read the full reference for any setting the moment you want it and then pick the guide back up where you left off.
Because the guide only ever points, you can stop partway through with no side effects. If you leave before you reach the end of a form, nothing you typed is saved, exactly as if you had closed the form yourself.
The guides
tradeSteward currently offers ten interactive guides: three that walk a workflow from start to finish, six page tours that explain a screen you will use every day, and a tracking tour across every report under the Tracking menu. Each one is described below so you know what it covers and when it is worth your time. When you are logged in, a Start button appears beside each guide you are able to run; if you are reading this while logged out, sign in and return to this page to launch one.
Set up a bot
The longest and most complete guide, at 27 steps. It opens the Bots menu and the bot editor, then walks the entire new-bot form in page order: the bot name, the trading account, the strategy assignment, the underlying symbol, the trade template, the number of legs, and the global per-leg settings. It then steps through leg 1 in detail, covering put or call, long or short, resolve conflicts, and the strike target type and value. From there it moves through scheduled versus triggered entry, position sizing, entry speed, days of the week, no-position versus staggered days, the entry window, the timed exit, the profit target, the stop loss, the trade conditions guardrails, the enabled or disabled status, and finally the Create button. It ends by showing you where the saved bot appears on the dashboard.
Take this guide before you build your first bot, or any time a section of the bot editor is unfamiliar. It is the interactive companion to Set Up Your First Bot and Create a Bot.
Monitor a bot
A 29-step guide to reading what your bots are doing once they are live. It starts at the Enabled Autotrader Bots card and walks every action on a bot row: launching a one-off trade, pausing it, reading its status and countdown, editing it, viewing its performance, and running a Backtick on it. It then covers Current Bot Positions column by column, including the trigger icon and the actions for viewing, analyzing, resizing, and closing a trade, before opening the activity log, walking each of its columns, and showing you how to filter it by bot and by date range.
Take this guide once you have at least one bot enabled and want to know where to look each morning. It pairs with Tour the Trading Dashboard and Monitor Bot Activity.
Run your first Backtick
An 11-step guide that runs Backtick on one of your existing bots. It covers naming the run, choosing the date range, setting the starting balance, picking a commission profile, and reviewing the simulation fidelity switches. It then queues the run, shows you how to watch the queue while it works, and finishes by reading the results with you: the equity curve, the headline statistics, and the per-trade table.
Take this guide when you have a bot you are curious about and a Backtick subscription to test it with. This guide is only offered to accounts with an active Backtick subscription. To learn what Backtick is and what it can tell you, read What Is Backtick? and Create Your First Backtick.
Read a Backtick result
A 28-step guide to a finished Backtick's results page, section by section. It starts with the header card and walks every action button in it individually: Save, Rename, Tags, Positions, Compare, Export, Share, Group, Sync Bot, Copy, Rerun, Edit & Rerun, and Trash. It then covers Daily Statistics, Performance Metrics, the Monthly Matrix, the equity curve, entry day and time analysis, drawdowns, statistical diagnostics, volatility and underlying analysis, results on event days, per-position statistics, daily performance, notes, and the trade log.
Take this guide the first time a results page feels like more numbers than you know what to do with. This guide is only offered to accounts with an active Backtick subscription, and it opens on whichever result you were already viewing. It pairs with Read Your Backtick Results and Backtick Results: Deep-Dive Analytics.
Tour the trading dashboard
A 20-step tour of the page you land on after signing in. It covers the account value card and the switch between account and bot profits, choosing which accounts the dashboard shows, buying power, the bot trade profit cards, the trades card, and the intraday chart. It then explains Current Bot Positions and the per-trade actions, the Position Analyzer link, Recent Bot Activity, and the enabled bots card, including every action icon on a bot row: launch, disable, activity, edit, performance, and Backtick, before showing where to pause all autotrading at once.
Take this tour in your first week, or whenever a number on the dashboard is unclear. It pairs with Tour the Trading Dashboard.
Manage linked brokers
A 12-step tour of Manage Linked Brokers. It reads the brokers table and its link status icons, explains Update, Unlink, and Import Trades, and shows where to link a new broker and refresh your accounts. It then walks the accounts table: enabling an account, naming it, the buying power ceiling and leverage percentage, the account status icons, and unlinking.
Take this tour right after you link your first broker, or when a connection needs attention. It pairs with Link a Brokerage Account, Fix a Disconnected Broker, and Account Protection: Buying Power and Leverage Settings.
View and manage your bots
A 10-step tour of the View Bots page. It covers the filters and name search, what counts in the stats columns, reading the bot list, enabling and disabling a bot, the status icon, changing size in place, the actions for a single bot, working on many bots at once, and archiving.
Take this tour once you have a few bots and want to keep them organized. It pairs with Manage Your Bots from the View Bots Page.
Tour the Backtick dashboard
A 10-step tour of the Backtick dashboard. It covers the summary row, starting a new Backtick, the queue, drafts and failed runs, recent runs and their actions, marking runs Saved, the full library, your Backtick defaults, and commission profiles.
Take this tour when you start using Backtick. This guide is only offered to accounts with an active Backtick subscription. It pairs with The Backtick Library, Position Library, and SweepTick.
Create and review a SweepTick
A 12-step guide to SweepTick, Backtick's parameter sweep. It walks setting up the core position, choosing the setting to sweep and its range, adding a second setting for a SweepGrid, and queueing the run. It then covers reading the results: SweepTick Best by Metric, the metric sensitivity view, the SweepGrid heatmap on two-setting sweeps, performance by iteration, risk versus return, win rate versus payoff, returns by year, and exit reason mix.
Take this guide before your first sweep, or whenever a sweep's results page shows more views than a single Backtick's does. This guide is only offered to accounts with an active Backtick subscription. It pairs with SweepTick Parameter Sweeps.
Tracking tour
The longest guide, at 65 steps across the 18 pages under the Tracking menu. It starts with the Account Trade Log and covers every part of it: each filter, Get Trades, Export Trades, searching the results, Bulk Strategy Assignment, reading the columns, assigning a strategy to a trade, journaling a trade with notes, and paging. It then visits Open Account Positions, the Order Count Calendar and the 390 rule, Equity Assignments, and the Live Account Monitor, followed by the account reports: Balance and Profits Over Time, the Commissions & Fees Report, the Balance History Table, the Calendar Performance Report, Account vs Market Performance, Performance Volatility, and Historical Dashboards. It finishes with Bot Performance, Bidless Long Credit Recovery, Strategy Performance, View Strategies, Manage Tags, and Trade Recap.
Each page is its own stretch of the tour. When a step lives on the next report, the card offers to take you there, and you can start the tour from any of these pages, or from the matching article, to begin at that page's first step. Several steps explain results that only appear after you run a report, so run one when the card says so. It pairs with Your Account Trade Log and the other articles under Performance & Reporting.
Where to start a guide
There are two ways to launch a guide. The first is this page: when you are logged in, each guide above shows a Start button. The second is the knowledge base article that covers the same workflow. Articles such as Set Up Your First Bot show a Start Interactive Guide button near the top for logged-in readers, so you can read the overview and then step into the live application from the same page.
Either way, the guide opens the live application on the page where the workflow begins. You do not need to navigate there first.
Controlling a guide while it runs
Advancing through steps
Steps that ask you to use a control advance on their own when you do so: pick a value in a dropdown, click the menu item, or open the panel the card points at, and the guide moves to the next step. Steps that are purely informational, where there is nothing to change yet, show a Next button on the card instead. In both cases you set the pace; the guide never moves ahead of you.
Moving between pages
A guide survives page navigation. When a step sends you from one page to another, for example from the dashboard into the bot editor, the guide resumes on the new page at the step you were on. You do not have to restart it or find your place again.
Ending a guide
Press Escape at any time to end the guide. The highlight and the card disappear and you are left on the page you were viewing, free to keep working or to close it. Leaving a guide does not save anything you typed while it was running, and it does not undo anything you completed on purpose; it simply stops pointing.
Reading more as you go
Each step's Learn More link opens the knowledge base section for that control. Use it whenever a setting deserves more than the sentence or two the card can hold, then return to the application to continue.
Other ways to learn
If you would rather watch than click, the Video Vault (Support menu, then tradeSteward Video Vault) collects short video guides organized by topic, from configuring bot settings and reading the trading dashboard to linking brokers and using Backtick. If you prefer reference reading, the knowledge base you are in right now covers every setting and screen in depth, and the Set Up Your First Bot article is the natural next stop for anyone still getting oriented. For anything a guide, video, or article does not answer, see Get Help for how to reach the support team.