I am looking to leave TS and would like to know if anyone knows of any alternative charting programs that read easy language (EL). I dont think TS is worth 300/month there must be another way. Thanks, Grant
Bad suggestion. This program no bargain; it is still in beta. A lot of the features you had taken for granted in other programs, are either not ready, or not tried in real life trading. Furthermore, not all the EL is supported. And don't ask about autotrading, it is not ready yet. (even if they say it is working now, would you trust it with your real money?) Just go to the support section of the website, you will see they are doing bug fix by trial and error. The news gets worse if you plan to use IB as your datafeed. I know people who have QT and IBCharts with MultiCharts side by side. Both QT and IBCharts drew the charts quickly, but MultiCharts would sometimes hang there for hours, not knowing what to do. My friend called their tech support for help. Would you believe it, they blamed the problem on IB !!! How could it be when QT and IBCharts are working off the same datafeed? Their solution -- don't use IB and everything will be alright. Compared with TradeStation, TradeStation has been around for ages (more than 10 years). The program has been tested in real life trading by professionals all over the World. It will take MultiCharts 5~6 years of further development to come up to speed to TradeStation. Would you trade your real money on a beta program? If you are not happy with TradeStation, the chances are, you will be even more frustrated with MultiChart.
What comprises your $300/mo for TS? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think only $100 is for TS, the rest is for exchange fees. You can't avoid the exchange fees, in fact I believe they are going up Jan 1st. TS has just lowered their commissions (now less than IB), and you can omit the $100 platform fee with some minimal trading. I am sort of doubtful that there are better deals around. Maybe if you're not doing a lot of real $ trading right now, you can just focus on one or two exchanges and lower your exchange fees?
I don't think so: Options- TS: $1/contract IB: $.75/contract Stock- TS: $.006/share IB: $.005/share ES futures- TS: $2.36/contract IB: $2.36/contract ES futures options- TS: $5/contract IB: $1.65/contract Pit traded ags- TS: $6.99/contract IB: $6/contract Where is Tradestation less than IB?
I'll add that IB has just lowered the commission for large option traders. > 50,000 contracts per month = .25 > 100,000 contracts per month = .15 see http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/commissionStockIndexOptions.php?ib_entity=llc for details
Try TradersStudio. http://www.tradersstudio.com Unfortunately they do not offer free trial, not even a functionally limited edition. I contacted their sales, and the answer was No. If you can get them to do a free trial, please let us know.
Well, you are correct in that I am not informed about fees for various different instruments, only about ES. My apologies. This is incorrect. IB is $2.40/contract for ES. I just now confirmed with them. Perhaps 4 cents is not significant?
$2.40 for bundled pricing (i.e. all inclusive). On TS, you pay exchange fees separately. You can elect a pricing structure on IB which separates out exchange fees as well, in which case they're $2.36. http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/fees/futuresPricing2.php?ib_entity=llc In any case, your confusion is understandable--this whole bundled vs. unbundled thing can be a nightmare to figure out what you'll ACTUALLY be charged.