Want to improve your chat experience? Connecting with a dedicated IRC client allows you much greater control and ease of use in the StockRants stock chat. You will also not need to keep a browser window open to stay chatting.

Please read the following guide before asking for help in the chat room as the moderators there will likely refer to it.

StockRants Stock Market Chat

• About our IRC stock chat
• The web based client
• Setting up a dedicated chat client
• Registering your nickname
• Triggering stock quotes & news
• Other cool stuff
• IRC etiquette

About our stock chat room

In the hectic world of a day trader, seconds count. For a fundamentals investor, it’s often useful to bounce your long-term investment goals off of another person. For these and other reasons, a stock market chat room is a natural fit for anyone looking to get a pulse on the overall markets or equities they’re tracking.

IRC chat (Internet Relay Chat) has been around since the 1980’s. It’s used for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private messages and file sharing. IRC is incredibly robust and its usage is outside of the scope of this guide, but for more information on its inner workings you could check the wiki.

The StockRants IRC server can be accessed via the web client on the main page or via a dedicated IRC client on your Mac, PC, or iPhone. In this guide we’ll cover all you need to know to interact with the chat system and its users.

The web based client

If you’re just sniffing around you can check out the web based client without installing anything on the stock chat room page. The web client uses lightIRC and carries a minimalist set of functions. The web client will work in any browser that supports Adobe Flash.

Setting up a dedicated chat client

IRC is best accessed with a dedicated client. You won’t need to leave a browser window open and their are a plethora of options and features to improve your experience.

StockRants chat has been tested to work in all IRC clients, most of which are free. Below is a list of some of the best ones.

• PC Users: mIRC, X-Chat.
• Mac: Colloquy or X-Chat Aqua.
• iPhone: Colloquay Mobile (also find it in the Apps Store).
• BlackBerry: jmIRC.

Once you download and install a client you will just need to connect to our server. The screenshots below are for mIRC but most clients will be very similar to this.

After it is installed, run mIRC. You will get a popup saying it is an unregistered version. Just click anywhere on the box to remove it.

When you run mIRC you should see the screen below:

Click Add and a box will popup allowing you to add our server details:

Description: StockRants IRC
IRC Server: irc.stockrants.com
Port: 6667
Group: Stocks
Note: their is no need to enter any info in the password box.

After you have done that click on the Add button.

You should now be back at the same screen as image 1 above but now in the IRC servers it will say Stocks, irc.stockrants.com. Click ‘Connect to IRC Server’.

Click connect and you should join the server and automatically join the channel #StockRants.

Registering your nickname

You can register your nickname so nobody can masquerade as you. Registered users may also get other benefits in the chat. To register your nickname type:

/msg nickserv REGISTER password email

Be sure to replace password and email with the appropriate information. Once registered you will just need to identify by doing this:

/msg nickserv IDENTIFY password

Now it might be annoying to have to do this every time you login to the chat. To get around this virtually all clients come with a means to identify on login. Snoop around in your client or try Google for more information on where to find this setting in your particular program.

Triggering stock quotes & news

One of the coolest features (thanks GazD) of the StockRants chatroom is the ability to get real-time stock quotes live in the channels. It’s a great way to alert other traders what stocks you are watching, or display a stock that’s really moving. In the channel type:

@gstock MSFT

You should see a quote pop up like this:

Additonally you can get the latest news on a stock by typing:

@news MSFT

A list of news articles will pop up with links you can click to their respective locations:

Other cool stuff

You can get updates on some of the main indexes in a similar way by typing, for example:

!S&P

Results in:

Here are some others:

!DOW – Dow Jones Industrial Average
!NASDAQ – Nasdaq Comsposite Index
!S&P – S&P 500 Index
!FTSE – FTSE 100 (^FTSE)
!HSI – Hang Seng Index (^HSI)
!NIKKEI – Nikkei 225 (^N225)
!NIKKEI300 – Nikkei 300 (^N300)
!SEOUL – KOSPI Composite Index
!STI – Straits Times Index
!TAIWAN – TSEC weighted index (^TWII)

!OIL – Crude Oil Jan 08 (CLF08.NYM)
!GOLD– Gold Nov 07 (GCX07.CMX)

!VIX – Volatility S&P 500 Index
!10YEARTN – 10-Year Treasury Note (U.S)

IRC etiquette

When you come to our channel it’s advised you listen for a while to get an impression of what’s being discussed. Please feel free to join in, but do not try to force your topic into the discussion if that doesn’t come naturally. Remember that using the chat is a privilege and not a right. Always be sure to listen to the moderators. They are here to ensure the chat room is kept clean of trolls and trouble makers. Troublesome users will be kicked or banned for continued disturbances, spam, or general rudeness. While we do believe in free speech, some things we will definitely NOT tolerate include:

• Racial or ethnically motivated hate speech. Not cool.
• Spam of ANY kind.
• General stupidity disrupting the experience for other users. This includes channel spamming and other childish activity.
• Overuse of colors or TYPING IN ALL CAPS.
• Illegal activity.

Remember: Use your head in the chat room. If you wouldn’t say it in public, then you probably shouldn’t bother to say it here as well.

Have fun, and above all we hope you find the service useful =)