I had responded to few posts on tc2000 and mentioned I will share my experiences with tc2000 as I have been using them for many yrs (along with few other platforms) and use tc2000 heavily. Primary use is for quick scans and flipping charts fast for many instruments. I will make few posts on things I liked and things I don't in one centralized place. I welcome other tc2000 users to share their experiences here.
Scanning capabilities using OHLC If you are looking for scanning using basic bar pa (bar OHLC) tc2000 is very good. You can do complex formulas for the same in one timeframe at a time. I have done many of them and still use them in scans, charts as well as in watch lists columns. But if you want to reference data from a different timeframe you are out of luck. Say you are doing a 5 mins scan but want to reference daily OHLC in your formula along with the 5 mins OHLC you are out of luck which is a significant drawback with tc2000. (I use tradestation for such scans). One condition can only reference ohlc from one timeframe which is a big drawback. There is a open enhancement for this pending for quite sometime to be able to reference higher timeframe ohlc values in other timeframe ohlc scan condition you are writing. Many times I do quick scans that are super easy to create in tc2000. If the complexity increases, I tend to move on to other platforms that take little longer to do but is possible to do. I will give an example in my next post.
Scanning for Complex conditions that involve indicators in your formula. There are some basic ones you can create by using indicators direction from charts. But when you venture in to writing complex scans using indicators you will struggle. If you trying to use any functions like CCI etc in the scan formulas you cannot do that. You have to calculate CCI by writing the definition of CCI from scratch and use them. Here is an example of how big the formula is to use CCI. As you can see each of those formulas are like a page or two page long. http://forums.worden.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=62400 The same is the issue with many of the formulas such as WMA, ATR etc. No functions provided. One has to write the formula from scratch. Similarly if you want to do an average of a equation like average range in the last 10 bars, you have to manually calculate by adding 10 bar ranges and diving by 10 as their average function cannot take an equation as an argument. ((H - L) / C1 + (H1 - L1) / C2 + (H2 - L2) / C3 + (H3 - L3) / C4 + (H4 - L4) / C5 + (H5 - L5) / C6 + (H6 - L6) / C7 + (H7 - L7) / C8 + (H8 - L8) / C9 + (H9 - L9) / C10) / 10 I would have expected something like AVG10(h-l) but that since you cannot using functions inside the average function you are out of luck. There is an open enhancement for this pending for quite sometime but so far no action has been taken. I have tried unsuccessfully such scans in tc2000 and gave up and for such scans that involves indicators, I go with tradestation. Its little more complex to write there but I am able to successfully write it. So in summary, for writing quick and dirty scans tc2000 is very good and super fast. Once your complexity increases expect many roadblocks.
Drawing tools If you have used other trading software out there such as tradestation, nt, esignal, multicharts, tradingview etc... you are used to many of the standard things. Some of them missing which makes the chart experience little tricky. Few examples below. 1. Drawing trendlines. You can only change color in tc2000. You cannot change the line width nor can you change the line style. Its a bummer. Lets say you draw a trendline with green color and copy that over and mark that green dotted line to indicate its a copied line, that basic thing which is super important for PA traders is not possible. Only colors can be changed. 2. Arrows. They only allow you to mark up arrow to annotate your charts. If you want a down arrow, you have to add the up arrow and then rotate the arrow 180 degrees to simulate the down arrow. Hilarious isn't it? 3. Text annotation. I like to mark text with different colors and sometimes bold it. Every time I need to change color, it need to first write the text and then go to manage drawings where it lists all the drawing objects and then i pick the text I want to change color and then change color. Laborious process. I have not found a way to do bold or italics chart annotation. 4. Horizontal trendline do not snap. So you have to be very careful to place them correctly. 5. Other timeframes. You can only do standard timeframes like 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15 etc. If you want to do say 4 mins or 7 mins or 9 mins, you are out of luck. They do not allow that. I use other platforms for the same when I need it. 6. Other types of charts. You cannot do tick or volume charts. I use other platforms for the same when I need it. There are open enhancements for this pending for quite sometime but so far no action has been taken. Inspite of all these severe drawbacks I like their fast loading charts. I can flip many charts many timeframes super fast.
Incorrect timeframe close One of the most important feature I like with tc2000 is the ability to flip many timeframes super fast. I love that feature and use it. But there is one major draw back in their timeframes. If you have used other charting platforms, all the hourly bar closes at 10:30 AM EST and a 2 hour bar closes at 11:30 EST. But for tc2000, hourly bar closes at 10:00 EST and a 2 hour bar closes at 10:00 EST. That causes so many problems. So your opening bar high / lows / close etc are all messed up. Any trendlines you draw are incorrect based on those incorrect bar highs / lows and the time. Your scans are incorrect. Your indicators are incorrect. And other than the traders who use tc2000, noone else will be watching those signals. So you end up taking idiotic signals because of incorrect bar closing time. This has been reported more than 10 months ago and no action taken. I found this problem after i took a trade based on the wrong signal and later realized it was not matching with what I got from other platforms and realized its because tc2000 closes the bars incorrectly in a non standard way. So if you are using tc2000 please be very careful using 60 mins and 120 mins timeframes. They are incorrect. I have personally stopped using 60 mins and 120 mins timeframe in tc2000 all together as I do not want to trade on incorrect signals and loose money. There is an open big for this pending for quite sometime but so far no action has been taken.
Technical Support Their tech support is super good. A+. Super fast and super efficient. They not only help with software they even help with the scan code you are working on which is typically unheard of. There is a support person called Bruce. He answers every question with so much details and with lots of example. I am sure any tc2000 user would have gotten atleast one question answered by him . Top of the line customer support.
Responsiveness to customer reported bugs / enhancements There has been many enhancements / bugs posted in their active forum. My experience for the past 3 yrs is they hardly address customer feedback / bugs / enhancements. All we get is a 4 digit code that it has been logged (and probably forgotten). We get no feedback on the status of any of the bugs / enhancements reported. I wish there is some form of feedback / accountability to the bugs / enhancements reported by the development team. All we get is the same standard answer for any questions. " I do not know when or if and particular suggestion might be implemented." Come on. Show some integrity and engage with the paying customers like all the other software platforms do. I used to be very optimistic in what tc2000 used todo, but lately they have not made much improvements to their software. Their last release after 10 months of development had barely any useful features. The frustrating part is many of the long pending bugs and enhancement have not made it through & we have no idea if and when that will happen. In addition, their mobile app in the apple app store was last updated in June 2012 & is full of bugs & impossible to use. Its a joke. I have a vague suspicion that they have cut down their development investment and relying on maintenance from existing customers as I don't see any signs of innovative features coming nor see the long list of bugs and enhancements fixed. Hope I am wrong in this suspicion. Though they have many drawbacks, I am still using tc2000 as their charts load fast but do have other platforms to fill in for the severe drawbacks / gaps tc2000 has. Hoping that they get their act together start investing on their software and get their issues fixed soon. They have lot of room to improve in this area. If others had better luck in this area please share the magic technique you guys used to get tc2000 folks to fix the bugs / enhancement.
Other chart issues 1. Trendlines move. You draw a trendline. You try to scroll the trendlines move and the position changes and it screws up the alignment. I tend to draw mostly horizontal lines with tc200o and typically don't draw trendlines in tc2000 if I can avoid it. So if you are a trader who relies on lines, you may want to be careful. 2. Bars change after close. I have seen tc2000 plot a bar in one way and the bar closes. New bars form. Sometimes old bars do get updated / changed. I have seen that few times in the past and reported it with screenshots. I have not seen those lately but not been actively looking for it. So assuming those are fixed though in the back of my mind it does worry me. That is why I do have charts from other platforms I also have if I get any suspicion. If others have seen such bars appearing or bars changing after close please share your feedback. 3. Ghost bars. This has happened to me in the past but I believe it has been fixed. I no longer see this problem. We used to get two bars at open instead of one bar I believe early last year. This was the one and only bug that they responded super fast and fixed it quickly. I wish they do the same for all the bugs and fix it fast.
No proactive communication of outage information There has been times where the software data has gone down & bars have gone missing. It happens to the best of the software. What is lacking is customers are never get informed. We wonder what is going on and find some mistakes in what we see by trial and error and finally we ask in the forum or by writing to support. That is the only way get get to know something is down. Imagine you took a trade because of incorrect data / bars plotted because of platform outage, especially if you are using their platform as the only chart platform. There is a suggestion given to them to add the ability to provide realtime updates if there is a platform outage. Just like other enhancements, this is waiting in the queue for action.