Traders, use these keyboard shortcuts to save you a ton of time and speed up your computing experience. Everyone will learn one new shortcut! I’m going to show you some of my favorite keyboard shortcuts.
You may already know a few of these hacks, but hopefully, I’ll teach you some new ones that will cut your frustration level and potentially add years to your life. Okay, so let’s get started.
Basic Keyboard Shortcuts
This first group of keyboard shortcuts will help you when you’re working on a document or when you’re writing an email.
One of the biggest things I see people do that drives me nuts is using the menu bar to edit and to do things like cutting and pasting. My suggestion is that you get friendly with the Ctrl (Control) key, which is located on the lowest row of your keyboard.
If you highlight text with the mouse and hold down the control key and press C, that will copy the text you highlighted. And then you can put the cursor wherever you want the text to go and then hit Ctrl-V. That will paste it.
Additionally, if you highlight text and then hit Ctrl-X, that will cut the text. And again, if you hit Ctrl-V, you can paste that text wherever you want.
Now if you hit Ctrl-A, that will highlight everything in a document or a field. And one of my favorites is Ctrl-F which can help you find specific words or text in a document or even on a webpage.
Also really handy to know is Ctrl-Z to undo any action you just did in a document. So for example, did you just delete an entire paragraph by accident? Go ahead and hit Ctrl-Z to undo the deletion.
Then if you hit Ctrl-Y, it will actually redo what you just undid.
Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
Okay, the next few shortcuts are specific to Windows. Use the Alt and the Tab key (Alt+Tab) to bring up a visual list of all the programs you have open at the same time and to quickly switch between programs.
Do you want to get to the desktop fast? Hit the Windows button and D (Win+D) and that will take you back to the desktop instantly. The Windows button is also located on the lowest row of keys on your keyboard.
Firefox and Chrome Keyboard Shortcuts
Now here are some shortcuts to speed up your browsing. These hacks work in Chrome and in Firefox.
F6 highlights the address bar so you don’t have to move your mouse up to it. This is really cool if you want to navigate to another site very quickly.
And one of my favorite shortcuts, Ctrl-Enter completes a web address in the address bar by automatically adding the www in front and the .com at the end. So for example, if you go to the address bar and you type in ezbreakouts and then hit Ctrl-Enter, it’ll add the www and the .com, and take you right to that website.
Another cool browsing hack is to hit Ctrl-T to open a new browser tab.
Mouse Keyboard Shortcut for Browsers
And one very closely related to this… A new trick I recently learned is that if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can actually press down on the scroll wheel like it’s one of the click buttons. And if you click on a link with the scroll wheel, it will open that link in a new tab on your browser.
So again, if you click on a link by pushing down on the scroll wheel, it will open the link in a new tab. This is very handy if you do a Google search or something and you want multiple web pages open at the same time.
And the last browser shortcut for now, go ahead and press F11 to make your browser full-screen mode, which is cool if you’re doing some kind of presentation. And you can press F11 again to make the browser go back.
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Thanks for watching, and if you haven’t already, please feel free to download our EZ Trading Computer’s Complete Guide to Trading Computers by clicking the link. This guide is packed with great tips so you can totally optimize your trading experience.
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My name’s Eddie Z. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.