My experiences with tc2000

Discussion in 'Trading Software' started by PABuster, Apr 23, 2015.

  1. PABuster

    PABuster

    Exporting data

    1. They have awesome watchlist features where you can add some nice columns with your own indicators. Unfortunately you cannot export that data. Bummer.

    2. Notes feature.
    They have a good feature to add notes on charts with timestamp. Great feature. Only problem is once you enter the notes, you will never be able to export it. Say you used this feature and added commentary for the last month. You wrote like 500 lines of text. Now you want to export that and download that to your computer or to your daily personal blod. You cannot. You can only view the notes but cannot copy or export. So if you end up leaving tc2000 for a different software, all the invaluable notes you have written on charts are lost. Only way to get it is you scroll and keep taking screenshots of every page of text. So you have 100s of screenshots of text and you cannot search etc. Notes traders write when they look at charts are invaluable to them and want to hold on to that for a long time. I hate to not have the ability to copy my own text when I entered there in the notes. Just because of this severe drawback I have stopped using their notes feature. I do not want my notes lost and struck with them. Great feature but just cannot be used. If you are using this feature, make sure you know of this important limitation.
     
    #11     Apr 24, 2015
  2. PABuster

    PABuster

    Referring to 12.4 and the newly released 12.5 version.
     
    #12     Apr 24, 2015
  3. PABuster

    PABuster

    Inability to plot prev day / week High / Low lines on intraday charts

    One of the standard things most people want is to plot prev day High, Low, mid point on their intraday charts. Some also like to plot prev week or prev month data on the charts. They do not allow you to do this. They do not have any development platform to be able to write such things either. Tc2000 do automatically draw open and close everyday which is awesome, but prev day high / low they do not. So you end up manually drawing all these for every instrument of your choice which is laborious. Imagine if you want to plot 60 mins high / low on a 5 mins chart. Again those things have to be done manually which is a significant drawback.

    On the same token, its not possible to draw any lines using conditions of your choice. Say if you want to draw todays high or low or todays mid point on intraday charts as I have not found any easy way to calculate today's high or todays low in a intraday chart.

    In other words, key lines many traders use cannot be drawn which is another enhancement pending for action for quite sometime.
     
    #13     Apr 24, 2015
  4. PABuster

    PABuster

    Any Indicator updates made do not automatically update all references to that indicator. You have to go to each place, delete the indicator and reapply the same indicator

    Say you have an indicator and are using in say 10 different places. And say you make a change on that indicator by tweaking a parameter in the code. Normally you expect all the charts, scans, watchlists etc that is using this indicator to automatically get updated with this change. Very normal thing to expect. Isn't it? Unfortunately it does not do that. You have to remember to go to every place its used, delete the indicator and re-add the same indicator to get the indicator updated. Say you forgot to make a change in one of the desktops, you are out of luck. You will be using the same incorrect indicator without knowing it has not been updated as there is no version concept. What a yucky bug. I learnt this the wrong way and is quite frustrating. So you have to keep a list of everywhere you are using an indicator so if you end up modifying the indicator, you can go and update it. The better and the obvious fix would be for them to make it automatic or give an option for the user to decide to propagate the changes to all the references to this indicator. That looks like the most simple and logical way to make this work correctly.

    As before, this is a pending enhancement waiting for action by their dev team :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2015
    #14     Apr 24, 2015
  5. Siaberk

    Siaberk

    after all, I prefer thinkorswim scanning system way better than tc2000, vol buzz also could be implemented in TOS, and of course it's free!
     
    #15     Apr 25, 2015
  6. TC2000 is dead, they print advertisement in a printed magazine S&C about new version, and months later it still cannot be downloaded. The software is with the same bugs and there's no interest to fix them. No integration with brokers, no automatic trendlines, no other instruments than equities. It used to be a great tool in 90s, but they gave up. All they do now is post some advertisements and expect customers to stay and new to come. "e-Signal".
     
    #16     May 2, 2015
  7. Siaberk

    Siaberk

    Agreed! never tried eSignal, but will check it!
     
    #17     May 2, 2015
  8. PABuster

    PABuster

    Traderxxx001:

    Thank you for your comments.

    Unfortunately, you are absolutely right. That is the challenge we have.

    I still use them as they do have set of good features I really like inspite of the crippling bugs but been concerned about the progress / lack of innovations.

    After 9 months of development they released list of features that are barely useful (frankly I call those new features a joke). I wont be surprised if their marketing team is like 5 times bigger than their development team and are just relying on maintenance revenue to keep their ship afloat.

    The bugs I mentioned here I sincerely hope they act upon it soon but knowing the pace at which they do anything, I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon.

    You are right about the ads they post in Stocks and Commodity magazine. They post lot of ads there. Guess that is where they get all their new customers from. The funny part is, that is the only magazine they advertize and that is the only magazine that has been selecting Worden as the best software for many years. :)

    I will post an update on any changes to the bugs mentioned on a frequent basis and lets see if by summer they make any improvements.
     
    #18     May 3, 2015
    tom2 and Siaberk like this.
  9. PABuster

    PABuster

    Here is an example of one of many problems tc2000 has with bar closes / open.

    EURUSD gapped down hard close to 160 pips.
    tc2000 does not show any gap in any currency.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/a37clmtlaecyolr/no gap.png?dl=0

    This is how a correct chart should show
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/zafl2pcnrdp3xgt/EUCorrectChart.png?dl=0

    What I believe they do is take the closing price and set that as the opening price for the next day and move on. Sad part is they know this bug and yet they won't fix it for a long time.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2015
    #19     Jun 29, 2015
  10. PABuster

    PABuster

    Another issue you will find in tc2000 forex is fake bars / fake candlestick patterns in 2 hour and 4 hour forex charts.

    Sunday Forex opens @ 5 PM EST. A normal person would expect 1st & 2nd TWO HOUR bar to close @ 7 PM EST and 9 PM EST respectively. Instead what you will see is the 2 hour bar closes at 6 PM (one hour from open instead of 2 hours from open). So the closing times as marked in the charts are 6 PM and 8 PM which obviously is incorrect. So essentially not all bars are 2 hour bars in tc2000 2 hour chart. Some are one hour bars and some are 2 hour bars.

    Similarly, one would expect 1st & 2nd FOUR HOUR bar to close @ 9 PM EST and 1 AM Monday. Instead what you will see is the 4 hour bar closed at 8 PM (three hour from open instead of 4 hour from open) So the closing times as marked in the TC2000 charts are 8 PM and mid nite which obviously is incorrect. So essentially not all bars are 4 hour bars in tc2000 4 hour chart. Some are 3 hour bars and some are 4 hour bars.

    Based on this what will happen is the high / low / close / open values are completely messed up and it also shows fake candlestick patterns. Your trendlines and moving averages also gets messed up.

    The best example of this problem is AUDNZD chart June 22, 2015. Say your strategy (open range BO) is to buy 5 pips above the 1st 4 hour candle. If you were trading by watching tc2000 4 hour chart, you would have taken that trade and would have gotten stopped. In reality, in a real 4 hr chart that closed 4 hours after open, price never went 5 pips above the 1st 4 hour bar so you would have never gotten filled on that trade. Because tc2000 1st bar closed incorrectly using 3 hours, you mistakenly took a trade because of incorrect bar and lost on the trade. That is sad where in reality your strategy should have never triggered if tc2000 bars closed correctly. The sad part with this is, if you rely on candlestick patterns to trade using 2 hour or 4 hr chart, you will be wrong & take trades based on imaginary patterns tc2000 plots. tc2000 may show an hammer (because of incorrect bar closes) but all other 2 hr and 4 hr charts in other platforms (used by traders all over the world) which closes correctly may not show an hammer. So end up taking a trade and loosing out.

    If you are trading forex using tc2000, be warned about these problems. Their 2 hour and 4 hour charts are incorrect and they also ignore gaps in all timeframes. Those messes up the charts OHLC, trendlines, mov avg and plots fake candlestick patterns.

    As an FYI, these issues are also present for stocks in tc2000 for 1 hr and 2 hour charts. So if you are trading stocks using tc2000 be warned about the fake bars issue discussed above.

    These have been reported to them and hope they fix these issues sometime soon. Will try to report back whenever they fix the issue.

    It always messes your confidence to use tc2000 for forex when seeing such blatant bugs.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2015
    #20     Jun 29, 2015