Hi All, I'm in the process of reviewing our charting software. Currently I use CQG, but have found recently there have been network buffering issues when the oil prices spike. To be fair this may be an issue my end and I am working with them to resolve. However, it made me think about whether we have the optimum solution for energy. I wondered what people here used for charting, especially when charting synthetic instruments like cracks and flies. Can anyone recommend any charting platforms that perform particularly well for oil and oil product futures? Perhaps they have good forward curve charting, or maybe some kind of scanning tools. Or is CQG still the best? I assumed because it is the most expensive, it must be; but I want to research other possibilities. I would have put this in the charting section - but it's energy specific. Look forward to hearing back from fellow oil traders. Thanks Papa.
Your optimum solution for very short term sampling timeframes and rather simplistic technical studies is using the TT XStudy or the CTS T4 charting tool. They take the price data off their own dedicated execution servers - not the exchange price data servers. The downside, of course, is usually the lack of historical data in some cases and the limited utility for custom technical studies and expressions. I have several clients who have worked with CTS to modify the technical study features.
Papa, the challenge for myself and my clients is the fact that we use custom technical studies designed expressly for futures spreads. For TT and in many cases for CTS, you will likely find that the charting flexibility is crap. Bloomberg is also getting better in this regard as well, but they have a ways to go. Of course, very few experienced technical traders are satisfied with standard study default settings.