A Tickblaze “Desktop” is an instance of the Tickblaze platform which is the Control Center for all platform functions. Multiple instances of the Tickblaze Desktop can be created, loaded and used in the same computer at the same time. There are two types of Tickblaze desktops, Standard and Strategy. The Standard desktop is used for manual, discretionary and semi-automated trading. The Strategy Desktop is used for strategy backtesting, optimization, simulation and automated trading.