I have posted many times on esignal problems. Simply put their data absolutely blows during fast markets and sucks most of the time in normal markets. However they are the best at charting and making a traders layout look pretty. I have been using cqg and dtn/sierra for the past 2 weeks as I cancelled my 5 year esignal subscription. I am paying $780 a month for cqg and about $250 for dtn/sierra combo. I will continue to pay for both for the next few months to see if cqg is worth over $500 more a month. So far cqg is not worth it. Their data is a little faster than dtn but not great as I still had tremendous lag last Friday when BSC got cut in half. My reuters quotes through my schonfeld level 2 was blowing cqg and dtn out of the water speed wise on that day. Cqg and dtn has been better this week but still not as fast as my reuters feed. I'm thinking the reason my level 2 platform is so much faster than these two feeds is because schonfelds data center is in great river Long Island and I am about 15 minutes from there. Also the data comes through a vpn which might make it faster. I don't want to get into a fight with cqg lovers or anything but the program imo is very overated. It has a mystique I think because of the price. All you guys having problems with ecrap should take the 2 week trial to cqg and see what you think.
I've been working with Scott Johnson (VP) on the major problem that eSignal has with bad ticks, lagging data and lacking historical data from their servers. All of a sudden I emailed him and got an auto responder message that he was out of the office till March 31st. I guess those of us using the service need to go on vacation too since he felt the need to disregard the problem, go have a good time and not pass the problem off to someone to follow up.
Have no idea. It is not the metastock feed for sure. I tried that a couple years ago and it was lagging badly. It is probably reuters institutional feed which is $2000 a month. I spoke to Mike Sedek at schonfeld and he said the data comes from their direct line to me over vpn.
Anybody use Bloomberg? Specifically "Bloomberg Anywhere," which produces a Bloomberg terminal on your PC?
After 5 years of trial and error, leaving ameritrade for scott, then tradestation, cybertrader, back to tradestation, then IB, then e signal I finally settled on my current config. My comments are based soley on the performance of data through my DSL and my current computer config. If I don't run too many charts at Tradestation (I've actually run up to 200 open windows before locking up), it works great. Their level 2 was a nightmare for me after they added a second server, though. I strictly chart equities and real time major indicies with them. Do some swings to pay for the platform cost, which is cheaper if you have an account with them. E signal charting has issues for me. The 60 minute chart, the heart of my strategy, bites. Not possible to have a 60 min with the start time at 8:30 CST and a finish time of 3:00. I will see the aftermarket prints on my charts until 3:30, which often messes up my S and R. Of course you can use the 30' to get around that. They say there isn't enough demand to fix it. I have also seen the above or below bid ask ticks on charting and they wont appear at TS. Not sure if they activate my stops at IB. Having said that, E signal's level 2 data has been great for me in high volume. Even when IB data is messed up during extreme volume, E's level 2 has performed well for me. Between TS and ES I can pretty much still trade in the worst environment. One can verify the other. Gives me a backup. When IB, TS, and ES are all three are messed up, it is usually an exchange issue with extreme volume. Break time. I fill my day trades through IB for cost and shorting purposes. I like that fact that I can have different sizes in a single bracket once transmitted (full stop with partial target for example). Can't do that at Tradestation with out setting up an extra trade and the associated cost (last time I checked). Also can fill orders at IB through E sig. If you have a non PDT account with Tradestation, their system will not allow you to enter more then 3 trades in one day (they assume you will liquidate them all in the same day, I guess). I have a real problem with that. I know it's extra cost, but I pay for data feed mostly at e sig, where I track futures, tick, etc. The 60 minute issue doesn't matter on those. In the end, the cost of both presently is about what I used to pay for cyber trader alone (I pay 1 year E sig to get discount, maintain small TS account to get discount), which sucked for me as bad as scott trade elite. I have found a way to make the candles at Tradestation look like they do in other platforms using data overlap, which ads to the amount of data coming in, but if you want to run lot's of chart's, and your PC can handle it, that's the way to go. Each has drawing tools different from the other that I like. I keep TS on one monitor, ES on the other with IB. TS + E Signal + IB solved my problems for the most part
It's the same as the standard Bloomberg service. $1800 per month. You just get to use it like PC "Anywhere", home, office, etc.
For what it's worth, DTN "IQ Feed" doesn't even support Level-2 for NYSE and AMEX. That to me, is just a total joke.
What in the world are you talking about? CQG offers no Level-2 on stocks. Not for Nasdaq, not for Amex, not for the NYSE. They are primarily a commodity data-feed. DTN does not offer Level-2 for anything other than Nasdaq. That means NO NYSE, and NO AMEX or the ETF's that trade their like the SPY's.
Did I say cqg or dtn offers level 2. The better question is do I care since I have level 2 through my broker. Read my post next time.