Hotkeys live under Setup, then Hotkey/Script, then Hotkey, and every key you build there runs a command script that executes left to right the instant you press it. Get the script right and you’re in or out of a trade in one keystroke; get it wrong and that same keystroke fires a live order you didn’t intend, so this guide builds everything from the official command reference and nothing from folklore.
This is for traders who already run DAS Trader Pro through their broker, or who are deciding whether its keyboard-first execution is worth the switch. If that’s still an open question, start with our DAS Trader review and the list of brokers that offer DAS, then come back.
What you need before you start
You need a working DAS Trader Pro login, live or simulator. DAS offers a 14-day trial for first-time users and sells a real-time simulator subscription, and the simulator matters here: the official hotkey documentation itself tells you to test every script before trusting it, and that advice is the single most useful line in the manual.
Two reference documents do the heavy lifting, both published by DAS: the Hotkeys Guide, which defines every command, and the user guide and manuals page, which also carries an Advanced Hotkeys Guide for the scripting layer (variables, conditions, functions) and a separate Hot Buttons Guide for on-screen buttons. Everything below comes from those documents and the official help articles. When a forum script and the manual disagree, the manual wins.
One scope note. Hotkeys solve execution speed. They don’t find you anything to trade; that’s scanner work, and it’s the half of the workflow most DAS setups outsource to a dedicated tool like the one in our Trade Ideas review.
Setting up your first hotkey, step by step
- Open the Hotkey Configuration window: Setup, then Hotkey/Script, then Hotkey. This window lists every mapped key and is also where you load a hotkey file (.htk) saved from a backup or sent by another trader.
- Click Add New Item. That opens the Hotkey Script Builder, with three fields at the top: Name (what you call the script), Hot (the key or key combination that triggers it), and Script (the command string itself).
- Build the script. The builder has three tabs: New Script Building lets you assemble commands from the full library, organized into seven categories (Trade, Basket Trader, Chart Window, Window Configuration, Miscellaneous, ShortLocate, General Script) with a tip window explaining each command. Prebuilt Scripts gives you editable templates. Order Script Wizard builds an order script through a form that looks like a normal order ticket.
- Mind the syntax. Commands are separated by semicolons and execute strictly left to right. Some commands are case sensitive, per the official hotkey help article, so copy command names exactly. A single script can run up to 4,096 characters, which is more than any sane trading hotkey needs.
- Test it in the simulator. Press the key, watch what the montage does, check the order that lands in the Orders window. Then test the edge cases: what happens when you’re flat, when you’re short, when the script expects a position that isn’t there.
- Back everything up. Tools, then Back Up Settings creates a zip on your desktop with all your settings, including your hotkey file and the montage hot-button file. Do this before you experiment, not after.
If you’d rather click than type, the same scripts can be mounted as buttons on the montage: right click the montage window, select Layout Config, add Hotkey to the box on the right side, and click OK. The montage then shows a row reading “Right mouse click here to add a button,” and Add Row does exactly that.
The commands that matter
The full reference runs 28 pages. For day trading equities, a handful of command families do almost all the work.
| Family | Examples | What they set |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Price=Ask, Price=Bid+0.05, Price=AvgCost, Price=Round2 | The limit price, pegged to live level 1 or level 2 quotes, your average cost, or rounded to avoid rejection |
| Share | Share=Pos, Share=Pos0.5, Share=BP0.25, Share=1000/Price | Order size: your full position, half of it, a slice of buying power, or fixed capital divided by price |
| Route and TIF | ROUTE=LIMIT, ROUTE=SMRTL, TIF=DAY+ | Where the order goes and how long it lives |
| Stops | StopType=Market, StopType=Trailing, StopPrice=, TrailPrice= | Stop orders of every flavor, including pre/post-market stop limits (LimitP) |
| Send | BUY=Send, SELL, Send=Reverse, Send=AddShare | Fire the order; Send=Reverse closes in whichever direction you’re positioned |
| Cancel | CXL ALLSYMB, CXL STOP, CXL ALL | Pull working orders for the symbol, only stops, or everything |
Three details from the official guide worth tattooing somewhere. There is no SHORT command; SELL is the command for both selling and shorting. Share=BP calculations count the symbol’s margin rate, so the share count you get on a marginable stock won’t match naive mental math. And Price=Round2 exists because an order price with too many decimals can be rejected; any script that does price arithmetic should end its price math with a rounding command.
The L2Bid and L2Ask price commands peg orders to the level 2 book rather than the inside quote. If reading the book is new to you, level 2 quotes explained covers what those prices actually represent.
A starter set worth copying
Every script below is either taken verbatim from DAS documentation or assembled from documented commands, with the logic stated. Replace ACCTNUMBER with your account where it appears; run each one in the simulator first.
Buy at the ask with a marketable limit. ROUTE=SMRTL;Price=Ask+0.10;Share=100;TIF=DAY+;BUY=Send sends a limit 10 cents through the ask, which gets you filled like a market order without the unlimited slippage of one. This is the entry skeleton in the official sample scripts; change Share=100 to a sizing command once you trust it.
Entry with an automatic stop attached. Straight from the official help article: ROUTE=SMRTL;Price=Ask+0.10;Share=100;TIF=DAY+;BUY=Send;TriggerOrder=RT:STOP STOPTYPE:MARKET STOPPRICE:AvgCost2-.20 ACT:SELL QTY:POS TIF:DAY buys, and the moment the order fills, a stop market order 20 cents below your entry goes live for the whole position. One key, position bracketed.
Sell half into strength. ROUTE=LIMIT;Price=Ask;Share=Pos*0.5;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send offers out half your position at the ask. Pos*0.5 is the documented percentage form of the Share command; this is the take-some-off-the-table key.
Cover half, either direction. The guide answers this one directly: Route=Market;Share=POS/2;SEND=Reverse sends a market order for half the position, selling if you’re long and buying if you’re short. Same key works on both sides.
Flatten the symbol. ROUTE=MARKET;Share=Pos;ACCOUNT=ACCTNUMBER;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send is the official sell-everything-now sample. Market orders on thin names will slip; that’s the price of certainty.
Pull every order on the symbol. CXL ALLSYMB cancels all working orders for the montage symbol. Map it next to your exits; a stale limit order left working after you’ve changed your mind is how accidental positions happen.
The fixed-dollar-risk stop. DAS documents this pattern on its equalized risk help page: ROUTE=STOP;StopType=Market;Share=Pos;StopPrice=500/share;StopPrice=AvgCost-StopPrice;StopPrice=Round2;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send. It places a stop market under your average cost at a distance that risks exactly $500 on whatever you’re holding. Change 500 to your own number. The next section shows the math.
One command deserves its own paragraph: PANIC. The official definition is blunt. It cancels all open orders and sends the market orders needed to clear positions, liquidating the whole account. It’s the right key to have and the wrong key to put next to anything you press all day. If you map it at all, map it somewhere deliberate, a modifier combination you cannot hit by accident.
Sizing risk into the key: a worked example
Say your risk per trade is $75. You’re long 300 shares of a gapper at an average cost of $8.40, and you fire the equalized-risk stop with 75 in place of 500.
The script divides 75 by your 300 shares: 25 cents. It subtracts that from average cost: $8.40 minus $0.25 is $8.15. Round2 cleans the decimals, and a stop market order for all 300 shares goes live at $8.15. If it triggers and fills clean, you lose $75. Same key, next trade, 500 shares at $4.20: distance becomes 15 cents, stop lands at $4.05, risk is still $75. The key adapts; your risk doesn’t.
The honest caveat: a stop market order guarantees the trigger, not the fill. On a low-float name flushing through your level, 300 shares can fill several cents below $8.15, and your $75 becomes $90. That’s not a script defect, it’s what stop markets are. Size so that normal slippage doesn’t matter, and use the position size calculator to sanity-check the share counts your hotkeys produce against the risk you actually intend.
Troubleshooting: when the key does nothing, or too much
The key is dead. First check whether any configuration dialog or popup is open; hotkeys are disabled while a popup dialog is up, a behavior DAS added deliberately. Second, check focus. Hotkeys act on the window in focus, and some commands are strict about it: the chart-order Share= command, for instance, is only processed when the chart window has focus. Click the montage, then press the key. Third, check capitalization against the guide; some commands are case sensitive.
The key fires twice. Holding a key can re-trigger it. There’s a configuration toggle for hotkey auto repeat under Setup, then Other Configuration; turn it off if double orders are showing up.
The bracket didn’t attach. Command order matters. The official guide specifies that an OCO script must sit ahead of the BUY/SELL command it pairs with, and the Script Builder’s order wizard now warns you when a trigger script is placed behind an existing primary order script. If a protective order isn’t appearing, the sequence is the first suspect.
Orders get rejected on price. Any script doing arithmetic on prices can produce sub-penny garbage. End the price math with Price=Round2 or StopPrice=Round2; that’s what the rounding commands exist for.
A prepared order is stuck on the montage. Scripts using the Load form (SELL=Load prepares the order and sends it on Enter) leave a prepared order sitting there. Escape clears it.
Everything vanished after a reinstall. This is why step 6 exists. Restore from the backup zip, or load your saved .htk file from the Hotkey Configuration window.
For short sellers, the ShortLocate command family (Inquire, InquireAll, AutoLocate, AutoLocateMaxPrice) can fold locate requests into the same keyboard flow. The commands are documented in the guide; what locates cost and why is covered in short locates explained.
Next steps
Wire the starter set into the simulator this week, trade it until pressing the keys is boring, and log what each key did to your fills in the trading journal template; fill quality is exactly the kind of thing a journal exposes. Hotkeys handle the execution half of the job. For the half that decides what’s worth executing on, read how stock scanners work next, and if you’re still weighing whether the platform itself earns its keep, our DAS Trader review gives the full verdict.
FAQ
Is there a hotkey command to short a stock?
There is no SHORT command in the script language; per the official guide, SELL is the command to use for both selling and shorting. Whether the order shorts depends on your position and the symbol’s borrow status, not on the script.
Where are my hotkeys saved, and how do I back them up?
Key mappings live in a hotkey file (.htk), and montage hot buttons in a separate .hkb file. Tools, then Back Up Settings creates a zip on your desktop containing your settings, and the hot-button file is included in that backup zip.
Can I import another trader’s hotkey file?
Yes. The Hotkey Configuration window loads .htk files saved from a backup or sent to you by a colleague. Read every script before mapping it to a key, though: a key you don’t fully understand is a live order you don’t fully understand, and the simulator is the place to find that out.
How long can a hotkey script be?
A single script supports up to 4,096 characters. In practice the limit only matters for advanced scripts with conditions and variables; a normal order script uses a tiny fraction of it.
Can hotkeys place orders directly on the chart?
Yes. The NewOrder command supports Market, Limit, StopMarket, StopLimit, and Range orders placed by clicking price levels on the chart, and a right click cancels the placement. For chart orders, only Account, Route, TIF, and Share can be set in the script.