While the model isn't truly an object like a stock or a graph, model properties are set using the properties panel, so we can approach them in a similar way. Many of the other objects derive their properties from the model. For example, you can set the variable font in the panel for the model and all variables will have that font, unless you specifically change one. So even though the object being acted on is really the collection of all objects, they way it's acted on is the same as the way any individual object is acted on.
You can also set a number of attributes of graphs and tables for the model. These can all be overridden on specific graphs and tables (except for color sequence for comparative graphs which are only defined for the model).