Tradestation lied and they are not free charting like they said. They charge $50.00 a month for CME data feeds. Their demo is has a 15 minute delay and they don't give a emini demo. You have to pay $50.00 a month for the demo too.
You expect Tradestation to pay for your feed . Why would they do that? If they ever do let me know and I will rejoin TS.
You need to buy data with any program. I just got the TradeStation for backtesting, and so far I like it, but the data is second rate. What do you need? live data for trading? or historical data for testing strategies? You can get data from 3rd party sources, but it wont be live, for historical data I would suggest www.tickdata.com. if $50/month is a problem just remmember, spend it to make it
TS is a broker in addition to a software vendor, most broker provide free realtime datafeed to customers. His compaint is well justified.
Then go to a broker that provides just an order entry front end, and/or spartan charting like IB. If you decide that you need decent charting and "true" (if it exists these days) data, then you'll have to pay for it. It might be different charting, but it'll cost you a feed from IQFeed or eSignal, or CQG or whatever. Having said all that, be very careful if you wish to use TS for daytrading. The charting hangs whilst high-volume market moves take place. Usually their T&S is updating (although on occasion that has frozen as well), whilst data from other brokers has been updating during the very same moves. And no, it is not a "computer is too slow" problem. It is TS, not to mention the occasional total-freeze with the newer releases. Then again I don't use TS for high-frequency work (you gota be kidding me right? TS for algo trading? Hee hee hee...), only longer term equity trading (read: months) - and even for this I have moved most of my longer term trading to a different broker these days. Funny enough, this is not the market they are targeting, although IMHO it is the only market they are good enough for. Why don't they fix it up? Probably 'cause the code is a pile of shit, and needs a complete re-write (read: very expensive), but they just used the band-aid approach. Besides, if you have any capital that is not used in trading, the Cruz brothers are enjoying paying you a minimal amount of interest whilst they earn the full amount on your cash. From what I read, this is TS's fastest growing profit centre!!! So, it depends on what you want to do.
Agree, and I just don't understand why IB can't try to provide a minimum viewable set of charts instead of the current shit. Considering the scale of their customer base and revenue they should have both the motivation and resources to do it. I think this shows something about how they value their retail customers.
It all comes down to the basic tenet of corporate finance - maximise the value of the firm. Anyway, all these guys have figured that the real dosh is in brokerage - not being a software or data house. Hence IB's minimal charting. But they provide a reasonably decent API. Heck, if TS could attract the same customer base without charts they'll probably do it. Remember, these guys first provided a charting platform and then figured it all out and went for the brokerage solution. I'm sure the platform is simply a headache for them. I mean, really, how many actually autotrade with TS? Seriously.
Ive been using tradestation for a while now and couldnt be happier. I have an account there, but dont trade through them so I pay $99/month for the platform fee and $35/month for the CME package. If you only want the mini's, it is only $25/month. The $50/month you are talking about is for the full CME and market depth. I pay $134/month for the data I need and great charting package is bargain as far as Im concerned. I was with esignal and was paying close to double that. As far as the complaints about TS freezing during high volume times, it used to do this. I cant even remember the last time it froze up. Actually that is the reason I left esignal. While it is not free data, it is very cheap. I think IB offers free data, but there data is a "snap shot", not tick for tick.( i could be mistaken since I dont, nor ever had, used IB. If im wrong someone please correct me). Depending on what you are trading and what type, it might be or might not be a big deal. Since I use volume bars for intra-day trading I dont want the snap-shot. So there are pros and cons of every company out there. To say TS lied is a little over the edge. No where on there site does it say the data feed is paid for.
Yes I expect them to pay for my feed. EVERY broker gives free feeds. They should also. Global futures, IB, Elite trader, GHCO, Alaron, cybertrader, E-trade, Ameritrade, Genesis, Infinity, Velocity, etc...They ALL give FREE feeds to customers and to demo customers. Tradestation is the ONLY broker that charges. They buy the feed in bulk. It does not cost them the $50.00 a month they are charging people. It might cost them $1.00 per person a month since they buy bulk contract feeds. Then TS charges the customer $50.00 per month. They are stealing money from customers. These feeds can be leased by the month or year similar to leasing a seat for a price. If TS does enough volume then the CME will give them their feeds for free. TS is stealing from customers.