I trade commodity futures spreads, both ones that have an actual order book (time spreads, energy cracks), and also "synthetic ones" (for example, 3 corn vs 1 soybeans). I am looking for a platform that is well-suited for trading/analyzing these, with not too high fees, and ideally also has some analytical capacity such as backtesting spreads, or identifying seasonality. I have looked at IB (very laborious to find/construct a spread) and Generic (limited analytics). Does anyone have experience with this/any suggestions? I am beginning to view that commodity spread trading is sort of below the radar for most platforms, but if there is an exception I'd be happy to be corrected.
@bone built a analytics platform, but he charges $5000-$6000 for it (along with general training on spreads). He also can recommend you more "spread friendly" brokers and trading platforms. EDIT: From my research, CTS T4 is a reasonably-priced spread-friendly trading platform (with a new autospreader) and Advantage, Crossland, RCG (and their Introducing Brokers) seem to play well with spreads. Moore Research Center provides a lot of good seasonal analysis of both outrights and spreads.
https://www.seasonalgo.com/ https://www.tradingtechnologies.com/solutions/spread-trading/ I have not used it as had to make my own, but there is so little out there, and I always took this as better way to trade.
I use Seasonalgo for spread analytics. It's great. Backtesting + historical curves... Also if you want to chart more obscure spreads( delivery point basis, OTC stuff...), long historical datas and fundamentals, have a look at DTN ProphetX. I really liked it.
T4 works. Has access to all exchange traded spreads, historical data easily exported to excel and has a sniper add on that allows you to construct synthetic spreads.
Personally, I don't like the spread analytics capability and the historical database on CTS or XTrader - at least what I've seen and have had clients try out up to this point in time. From 1997-2010 I personally used TT X-Trader for execution and CQG for analytics. These days, I recommend eSignal or CQG for analytics and according to the client's situation one of three execution options: leasing TT or CTS on a transactional basis, or using a certain very limited list of tier 1 FCM's 24 hour execution desks. For low price points eSignal is workable but for a higher price point and more capability CQG is the other alternative. I have a handful of special clients who have had my custom analytics package programmed onto their Bloomberg terminals. But yes, I have engineered analytics and execution alternatives for different clients with different capitalizations. I've got independent specs with $20K accounts, I've got big specs with eight figure New Edge accounts, and I've got CTA's with Wall Street IB accounts. Like I said, I have to have workable analytics and execution for a broad spectrum of traders.