In this guide
The trader layout
A trader's dashboard has one primary goal: price awareness without context switching. The layout should show prices immediately — no scrolling, no clicking. Everything else (news, tasks, watchlist notes) is secondary.
| Left column — prices | Right column — context |
|---|---|
| Markets widget (full width or large) | Financial RSS feeds |
| Crypto widget (BTC/ETH/SOL) | Uptime Monitor (exchanges) |
| Custom portfolio widget | Todoist (trade journal / alerts) |
For crypto-focused traders, put the Crypto widget at the top and Markets below it. For equity-focused traders, invert this — Markets first, Crypto optional. The portfolio custom widget goes below both; it requires slightly more setup but shows your actual exposure rather than benchmark prices.
Markets widget — stocks and crypto together
The Markets widget is the most configurable price display in Pinodock. Enter any combination of stock tickers and crypto symbols, comma-separated, in the widget settings:
BTC,ETH,AAPL,NVDA,MSFT
Each asset shows:
- Symbol and current price
- 21-day sparkline (green if trending up, red if trending down)
- 24-hour percentage change — colour-coded green/red
Supported asset types:
| Asset class | Supported symbols | Data source |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto — major | BTC, ETH, SOL, ADA, DOGE, DOT, BNB, XRP, AVAX, MATIC | CoinGecko public API |
| US equities | Any NYSE / NASDAQ ticker | Yahoo Finance public API |
| ETFs / indices | SPY, QQQ, VTI, GLD, ARKK | Yahoo Finance public API |
Prices refresh every 5 minutes by default. Click the ↻ button on the widget header to force an immediate refresh.
Dedicated Crypto widget — BTC, ETH, SOL
The Crypto widget is a pre-configured alternative to the Markets widget, purpose-built for the three largest cryptocurrencies. It shows BTC, ETH, and SOL with their CoinGecko prices, 24-hour change, and a 7-day hourly sparkline — no configuration required.
Use the Crypto widget if you only follow the three majors and want a cleaner layout. Use the Markets widget if you want a configurable watchlist that mixes crypto and equities.
Reading the sparklines
Sparklines in Pinodock are trend indicators, not precise charts. Here's how to read them:
| Visual | What it means |
|---|---|
| Green line, sloping up | Price is higher now than at the start of the period |
| Red line, sloping down | Price is lower now than at the start of the period |
| Flat line | Range-bound — price hasn't moved significantly over the period |
| Sharp V or spike | A significant intraday or multi-day move — worth investigating |
| Dot at the right end | Current price position relative to the period range |
Sparklines are most useful for quickly spotting divergence — when one asset in your watchlist moves differently from the others, the shape difference is immediately visible even without reading the numbers.
Threshold colors — visual price alerts
The custom widget builder lets you add color thresholds to any price field. This creates a passive visual alert: the price number changes from the default color to amber (warning) or red (danger) when it crosses a threshold you've set.
To create a threshold widget:
- Open Settings → Widgets → New Widget
- Choose Fetch mode
- Enter a price API endpoint (CoinGecko for crypto, Yahoo Finance for stocks)
- Extract the price field using the field path editor
- Set threshold values:
warnAbove,dangerAbove,warnBelow,dangerBelow - Choose the Metric template to display it as a large number
Example thresholds:
| Asset | Threshold setup | Use case |
|---|---|---|
| BTC | dangerBelow: 60000 / warnAbove: 100000 | Long position with stop-loss visibility |
| ETH | warnBelow: 2500 / dangerBelow: 2000 | Support level monitoring |
| Any stock | dangerAbove: [buy price × 1.2] | Trailing take-profit reminder |
Threshold colors update every time the widget refreshes (every 5 minutes, or manually). They provide ambient awareness — if you open a new tab and a price number is red, you know something has moved significantly without reading the number.
Custom widget — your portfolio API
If your brokerage or portfolio tracker exposes a REST API, you can show your actual portfolio value on your new tab rather than just benchmark prices. Most advanced traders already use a portfolio aggregator — tools like Delta, Snowball Analytics, or self-hosted spreadsheet APIs can expose JSON endpoints.
With the custom widget builder, connect to that endpoint, extract the fields you care about (total value, P&L, best performer), and display them with the Metric or Table template. Add threshold colors so the total value widget turns amber when drawdown exceeds your tolerance.
For crypto users: many wallets and DeFi dashboards have public APIs or read-only data endpoints. A custom widget showing your on-chain balance is a read-only view with no credentials required if the endpoint is public (wallet address-based lookups are public on most chains).
Financial RSS feeds
The RSS widget aggregates financial news without the engagement-optimised surface of financial social media. Configure feeds that match your market focus:
| Focus area | Feeds to add |
|---|---|
| Macro / equities | FT Markets, Bloomberg Markets RSS, Reuters Finance |
| Crypto | CoinDesk RSS, The Block RSS, Decrypt RSS |
| Options / derivatives | Tastytrade blog, Options Clearing Corp news |
| Hacker News finance | https://hnrss.org/newest?q=markets |
| Central bank feeds | Fed RSS, ECB Press Release RSS |
Enter the URLs in the RSS widget settings (one per line). Items are merged by recency across all feeds — a useful cross-source view for finding correlations between macro news and price action as the day opens.
Exchange uptime monitoring
During volatile market periods, exchanges can experience degraded performance or outages. The Uptime Monitor widget lets you check exchange reachability from your browser without switching context:
| Exchange | URL to monitor |
|---|---|
| Coinbase | https://www.coinbase.com |
| Binance | https://www.binance.com |
| Kraken | https://www.kraken.com |
| Interactive Brokers | https://www.interactivebrokers.com |
| Your brokerage | The login page URL |
A red dot on the exchange uptime widget during a high-volatility moment is a fast signal that the issue is on their end, not your connection — useful before you spend time troubleshooting order entry problems.
Useful commands for traders
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/currency 100 USD to EUR | Live exchange rate conversion — useful for cross-listed assets |
/note BTC broke 70k — watching 72k resistance | Append a timestamped trade note to the Scratch Pad |
/ask what moved BTC today | Quick on-device AI question without opening a new search tab |
+7d | Calculate a date (options expiry, earnings date planning) |
/hash <text> | Hash a wallet address or transaction ID for verification |
/save <url> | Save a research article or chart to the Reading List |
/note as a lightweight trade journal entry. The Scratch Pad timestamps each append. At end of week, open the Scratch Pad, copy the entries into your journal tool, and clear it. Fast to write, zero friction, no switching context mid-trade.
The best market dashboard is one you glance at and move on from. When prices are normal, the new tab confirms it in two seconds and you get back to work. When something has moved, the sparkline shape or threshold color catches your eye before you've even read the number. That ambient awareness — without the pull of a social feed or the noise of a financial TV ticker — is what this dashboard is built for.
→ Build a custom portfolio widget