HI Gang, I just went back to full-time trading after being out for nearly 10 years. Had been using a retail broker to clear my (speculative) trades in futures and equity options... Decided to get on with a platform with serious charting and other capabilities. For me what matters most is the ability to display custom data series eg symbol1+symbol2/...*... etc, and have highly customizable charts, what matters most to me is the visual layout and efficiency in entering a fast paced spec. trade. Admittedly I opened a futures acct with TS, with not a great comm rate, but not that bad either. However, due to my style (I sit back a lot, I only pounce on what I perceive as outstanding opportunity), I don't have big commission volumes... So their proposed equity option rates are not acceptable to me. Soooo, if I want to trade exclusively from one platform, futures & equity options (oh how nice would that be), so need to very seriously consider a low cost broker (eg IB), and 3rd party platform (eg esignal or multicharts???). Any recommendations / experience appreciated I digress... Back in the day my main issue with TS was that during high volume events, their data could not keep up, so basically whenever it was worthwhile to enter a trade it was useless Now this seems to be solved (so far), but I am having quite a few bug-type issues, such as charts crashing and the platform shutting down, in the process deleting some components of my workspaces, several extremely weird things that I can't even describe, and data loading problems such as "data not enabled" when it is in fact subscribed to, or "symbol limit reached" (argh TS that's a joke right?). Is it just me, or is this platform effectively unreliable???? Please post your opinion based on experience. Thx Patrick
Iâm using 9.0..., the only issue experienced is where I've had to re-sync the charts a couple of times Other than that no issues Also read where 9.1 is buggy but canât confirm that firsthand Call TS tech support and ask them RN
If I try to use tws on my multimonitor setup, the bugs are everywhere. I can't change timeframes, insruments ect from the chart .. It works ok on my laptop but the multimonitor doesn't work well at all for me. I've had probs with high volume events in the past with IB. Others swear by it but I've had a bad experience. I use ninja with a couple different brokers for my multimonitor desktop, has never given me problems. CQG and zenfire data has never given me issues. This is just my experience so take it or leave it.
Is it possible that some of you are running it on XP? With Windows7 TS runs smoothly. One can encounter issues when the symbol count reaches or is near the 1000 limit but otherwise it has been working well since I switched to W7. I still have complains about their brokerage on every level so I do most of that elsewhere. Regards, GC
@Redneck: Thx for the reply. Very good point, I am using 9.1, will have to look into downgrading to 9.0... But my center monitor is a 17in laptop touchscreen... And one of my goals was to trade off DOM using touch during fast markets.... And if I recall correctly for whatever reason 9.1 was touch friendly or maybe it was trade from charts that was the new feature with the .1 release. BTW touch trading is great @Zr1Trader: Thx for comments. I am using 3 monitors and that does not seem to pose a problem. Interesting comment about IB in high volume event. @gurucandidate: Thx. I can confirm latest version of TS will not run on Vista. Currently using Win8.
Bump this because as an update in the same vein TS users should know 9.5 is not truly usable, there are m any functionalities that they had in 9.1 that are no longer in 9.5, dumb little things like the crosshairs are black only and on a black background they just are not visible, easy one to fix right? Not at TS v8 might finally get this right. Seriously? TS are you insane? Who runs the show there? All the little user items that do not work should be the first thing to fix. It's elementary. But not at TS, I am soooo frustrated as a 20+ user of TS at the ridiculous way they implement their updates. Then there is the website they did a few years ago, utterly illogical to navigate, dang who designs this stuff? I wish I had 600 million I'd buy them and whip them into shape. The platform has so much potential to be the absolute best and they are blowing it at every turn. It's still good in 9.1 and in 9.5 it is barely ok. Actually, a TS engineer confided not to upgrade to 9.5 until v 12. I cannot believe they are not able to get it right quicker. They have plenty of cash flow and they can afford to hire a few good designers and programmers. What gives TS?
I know a lot of people have upgraded from TS 9.1 to 9.5. I think the reason so many people have upgraded to 9.5 is because they want to get Portfolio Maestro for free. As someone who has used computers since the Honeywell Level 66 days, I would not upgrade yet. TS 9.5 is still in BETA. I would be patient and wait until 9.5 is out of BETA. Even then, bugs are going to crop up. They always do. I still find a few bugs in 9.1. TS forum tech support showed me how to work around one. I figured out the rest. Regarding TS 9.1 crashes, I did have a number of crashes. After I removed the "free" TL_Trader strategy, the crashes went away. TS can crash from IMHO poor third party programming. If TS crashes on you, start removing the third party programming first and then test TS. I never have liked the black TS background. I used to use MetaStock EOD. The background was white or blue. I haven't gotten around to changing TS's background. What I don't like about TS is it is very difficult to use multiple tickers or time frames in RadarScreen. This involves advanced programming which I don't know about. I must either use Price Series Provider (PSP) or Global Variables and don't know either. I know it's going to be a PITA to learn either and I'm not sure which one I should learn and implement. TradeStation should have already added the ability to use multiple symbols and time frames in RadarScreen. It should be already built into EasyLanguage and they should have done it in v9.5. Finally, TradeStation does not have an API. Interactive Brokers has several API's in several different programming languages, such as Python and Visual Basic, but TS has none. Why doesn't TS have an API? It is frustrating for me that it is so hard to use multiple symbols and time frames in RadarScreen. Documentation is difficult gather. If you visit my above link, you will see there is NO link in the table for Price Series Provider (PSP).
I hope they've gotten better with their Easy Language. I coded in Tradestation 2000i until I discovered that they didn't follow the normal math rules with regard to what order to calculate things LOL I also found that if you wrote an expression like A & B & C that only the first two were used! C++ is the only way to go, these "toy" languages are a horrid mess.
TradeStation has gotten better, much better. TradeStation did fix the order of precedence for mathematical operators, probably long before I became a client. TradeStation has greatly improved their EasyLanguage since 2000i. However, EasyLanguage still has some problems such as not being able to place variables in "series" functions such as RSI, XAverage, etc... If you place variable "RSI_length" in RSI(Close, RSI_length) and then try to use that in RadarScreen, you will get the same result beginning from the first RSI_length assignment no matter what you change RSI_length to. TradeStation should have fixed this long ago but I guess they never did. I'm not sure why. However, this has not impeded my ability to use EasyLanguage. It's more of an annoyance than anything else. Using an Input instead of a Variable is a workaround. This variable problem does not affect standard EasyLanguage functions such as RateOfChange, only series functions. My TradeStation 9.1u29 install is 4 years old and another small bug has cropped up which I must work around. Speaking of, TS 9.5 u14 is still in BETA. Another problem I have with TradeStation is you must build everything from the ground up. You must write everything with EasyLanguage from scratch. Otherwise, you must pay for indicators which can get expensive. Unless you are an expert EasyLanguage coder, this can become very time consuming and difficult. Even the simplest tasks can take forever. So instead of making money, TradeStation users must tinker with EasyLanguage. I am not an expert EasyLanguage coder. A positive update from my previous post: I did learn how to use the basics of TradeStation Objects. I now know what the different TradeStation Objects are and what they do. Eventually, I will learn how to code fluently in EasyLanguage, even in Objects. However, this will probably take far longer than I want. In the meantime, I will be forced to use online charting tools such as Stockcharts.com in addition to TradeStation.