Hi all, I am on a bit of a mission to see how low cost I could get a trading setup. I'm tired of spending thousands a month on what is essentially pulling a data a feed and putting it in to bar format. On a slow month, or a month where you are away from the screens for any length of time the costs rack up and personally i think theres got to be a better way. There are lots of cheap/free charting tools but none of them seem to let you chart synthetic spreads i.e take 2 different markets and create a spread (differential) out of the two. I'm tempted to go with CQG QTrader, however, their historical data is very limited. I emailed Esginal and never even got a response from their sales team. Any others I am missing? Thanks
www.esignal.com does spreads and if delayed spreads are ok then get esignal classic for $55 a month. Will also do ratio spreads like cqg. How much can you get the order entry software for?
Check metastock xenith which is a rebadged Reuters eikon for $150 a month. I think that does spreads and has cash bonds as well.
I use CQG Integrated Client and also TT Pro. But as mentioned this is a bit of an experiment and being based in the UK there are a lot of things like spreadbetting where i could bypass a lot of the high cost of the futures industry. I dont know if theres anything in it, but going to experiment with it as I see so many people turned off of trading by the high costs. I want to try and prove it can be done on a low startup
Use interactive brokers to send futures and exchange traded spread orders to the exchange. Unbundle the pricing to get a discount if you do size. Zero cost per month. Esignal will act as a front end to IB if you do not like TWS. TWS mosaic does spread charts I think and may chart exchange traded spreads.
If you do a lot of size you can buy or lease a membership at the CME or other exchange and then tell IB so you pay a reduced fee or no fee on every lot traded. Membership prices have fallen since the floor closed and ownership of the exchange was demutualised and floated.