I received a detailed reply from buttontrader and I will post that below with their permission for the interest of the thread. Ditch, I would not spend $50 for the answer of a question I can ask for free, whether I had $100 or $100,000. A tight arse? Absolutely. Slow? Not usually. I also never said I was raking it in big on my swing trades. Thanks for your feedback regarding the simulator though. Here is the response from buttontrader. I hope it is not breaching any rules of the forum. If it is I apologise in advance. Hi Mark, Thank you for the direct email. Someone of the Beta-testers noticed me of the ET-thread, but although I like to respond. I may not do that because the moderators will not allow someone from a commercial-product to use their forum (without paying them for it {which we will not do because all our resources go into development and not in marketing}). Now to your question: who realistic is the Simulator? This is actually a very difficult question so Iâm afraid I will need to give you a somewhat complex answer as well. First it depends where you enter your Limit Buy Order: 1. Above or on the current Ask-price. 2. Below the Ask but on the Bid. 3. Below the Bid but in the MarketDepth region (5 ticks for ES) 4. Far below anything of above. Only point-1 will immediately give an execution and your trade will be 100% realistic. For points 2 till 4 there is a second condition: it depends on how long the waiting-row in the Order-book is, and where your position in the row is on a point in time. In other words: your Order enters one of the waiting-rows (every tick-price has one) in the back and during trading-time your position is moving in this FIFO-row. Your actual question is: "how realistic can a simulation program like ButtonTrader determine on any moment of time where your Order is in the row". Well no program can determine that with any realistic accuracy because needed information about the OrderBook and the modifications on that OrderBook are not present, not up-to-date or even available (point-4 of above). For points-2 and â3, the IB data-stream only delivers the current length of the row, but these rows are changing every micro-second with new enters on the back, executions in front, and what is very common: pull backs in the middle of the rows. (The big guys regularly manipulate the OrderBook by entering very high volume lots and pulling them back before any execution, and then entering the same quantity back in the book: by this they can create a visible but fictive resistance level in the Book). Bottom-line it is not possible to tell where your Order would be in the row, so also not when it executes in the simulator. The only way is to approach this by "probability calculations". And that is what ButtonTrader does. It tries to calculate the waiting-time that your order is in the row before your turn is on. I can not publicize a detailed explanation of this probably calculation but several dynamically changing parameters are involved like the Ask/Bid/Last and MarketDepth sizes and the volume and volatility in these sizes (and some more). The result is that the simulator will execute your Order sometimes too quick and sometimes to slow compared with the reality, but that on average it will come close. Back to your original question: is it realistic for ES with 1 to 3 Tick scalps. Well to be honest: I doubt it. Trading 1 or 2 ticks on an OrderBook, which has nowadays more then 1000 lots per level will probably result in too many turnarounds that did get executions too soon. So to be at the safe side I would divide your simulated turnarounds by 2. Why? You will ask. Well I made the "probability calculation" more then 2 years ago. At that time the NQ did 100 Lots and ES 400 Lots maximums (these days it is NQ 600 and ES 1500). And I tested the algorithm at that time in real trading and at the same time in simulation trading (you can do that in ButtonTrader: trading 2 strategies at the same time in Real and Simu in the same ButtonGrid to see the difference in executions)). The algorithm is tuned to that but now you have triggered me to look at it again. Probably I need to fine-tune the waiting parameters a bit to approximate the current market-situation. Mark: Long answer and I hope you appreciate it. Feel free to copy this answer to the ET forum if you think it is of interest by other users (As I said, I can not do that). By the way: there is indeed a Yahoo-group (one of the Beta-testers was that enthusiastic to create it), but nearly all ButtonTrader users know that they get quick and honest response when they email us directly. So nearly all communication goes directly to us instead of through forums. Hope this answers your question, otherwise please ask. Robert
Apology for not getting back at you, mark. Please realize I'm getting a $hitload of PM's these days, and I neither can, nor feel like answering all of them. At some stage I tried to answer them all, these days I just click on all the new "yellow ones" and reply to only the best questions or those of good friends. The others will inevitably get discarded as the inbox reaches the limit. So you better write up some good question or comment before you bother PM'ing me. Sorry that this is the way it is, but I have a life, too and don't want to spend hours a day answering PM. If you wanted info on scalping or my trading, you could just search my post history. There's plenty of stuff there, but ultimately, you've got to figure scalping out for yourself. Good Luck! You can have my take on ButtonTrader Sim, too. Here it goes. I'll start with the bad news and then the good news, is that OK? The Bad News: The executions in simulation mode are not realistic, they are favorable, and the degree of deviation from realistic execution depends entirely on how many RT you're doing. If you're scalping for 1-3T at a time, I tell you, you'll get a lot better fills than you could possibly ever get in real life. In fact, if you're going for 1-2T, your sim results can more than double. I can do marvellously well on the simulator, multiplying my daily profits, I have managed 20pts/day on ES on the sim, which is hard to do scalping in real life. I'm telling you this frankly because I don't want you to get hurt (which you may, very badly), and want you to realize that you can get very hurt thinking you can scalp and succeed in real life like you can on the sim - You can't! But the sim can definitely improve your performance. The Good News: Of all the simulation platforms for IB that I have tested out there (and I've tested many), ButtonTrader Sim is by far the most realistic! RjS has built a complex timing algorithm into the software to simulate executions as realistic as possible, or even better! How can I say this? Well, in fact, it is basically impossible to give you a 100% realistic fill experience through anything that plugs into IB's system. Why? Because IB updates depth data in snapshots, which get updated in a relatively slow pace (350-500ms on ES), and every time you look at the depth window from TWS, you will see nothing but the latest snapshot, giving you an approximate idea of where the density and queue is right now, while in reality, it would have updated literally hundreds of times within that period. Button uses an algorithm with timer to compensate for this and give you the most likely FIFO enqueueing and fill realism at any given time. If it is for platforms to use for sim scalping through IB, or even real scalping, then ButtonTrader, at least IMHO opinion, is the best and only choice. And if you compare the features, reliability & support to those of other plugins, then, it's a lot cheaper than anything else out there, too. You can send RjS an email anytime, with any question - They will always give you a full reply - Should you ever encounter a problem, they'll take care of you immediately, if necessary even program for a few days & over the weekend straight, just to help you. If you are subscribed, they will even reply within one hour! This is the kind of European service that has died in mighty America about 25 years ago. That's why, once I discovered Button, I dumped everything else and never looked back. But why listen to me? Try it yourself and see. My comments on simulation and real execution are not pulled from the wind, by the way, but rather from hundreds of hours of testing the platform in simulation and real-mode. I hope this helped. I wish you best of luck in your real-trading pursuit! Scientist.
When I was using buttontrader in simulation mode I always bought at the bid and sold at the ask as that is how I was trading at the time. I got pretty aggravated because it was hard to get fills. When I went realtime I did not really notice much difference. I wish I had kept stats but I didnt.
Thanks everyone for their generous comments. Scientist, I figured (1) you were busy and (2) you don't know me so don't worry about it. This thread has been most helpful. 1. Buttontrader is a good product with excellent service behind it. There has not been one negative comment from the real-time users, and on a public forum I think that speaks volumes! 2. The simulator is good, but the fills are too generous. This is an area I will look at closely in future sim sessions and try to make adjustments to compensate for that. Buttontrader will be looking at this issue soon. 3. My scalping was not that brilliant. But I suspected that from the start and why this thread was started. Mark
I just downloaded BT. I have a few questions. 1) Does the real time version let you plot the chart in candlestick format? And can you overlay technical indicators? 2) Do they have historical data for any day of the year? I'm interested in practicing on certain days in the past? Do you have those? Or just the ones in their demo. thanks!
For question one the answer is no & no. The main reason for the software is for order entry & management. That chart only consists of about ten minutes of data. So if your not scalping off of ten minutes of data provided from IB, It is advised to also have a charting & data provider. And for question two. They do not have historical data for any day of the year available from the website. They just have a few sample days to show you how the software performs on those days. But maybe if you email them, they might have that data backed up & they can get it to you somehow. I've only recorded a few days here & there. Those files start to take up alot of room, if your following alot of tickers.
OK. So, the charts are not tick by tick movement by rather 10mins chart? Cuz I swear I thought it was pretty much tick by tick. OK. Let me email them for Question 2. thanks
The charts are tick by tick, but they are just about ten minutes of tick data provided by IB, so they are not true tick charts, but close to it.
IB data used by Buttontrader is data that comes in every 0.7 seconds. Which probably means the depth you see in Buttontrader at each level is actually quite different in reality... By how much? Only those with real tick by tick data can compare...
Version 77 IB data used by Buttontrader is data that comes in every 0.7 seconds. Which probably means the depth you see in Buttontrader at each level is actually quite different in reality... By how much? Only those with real tick by tick data can compare... ================================ How can the ticks be any different from any other broker or provider as IB gets its data direct from the exchange? You can check against esignal for example and see that they update at the same time . Has anyone compared Ninja trader with BT?