I figure thus who spread and use CQG might find this interesting... better value than CQGTrader and not as expensive than CQG Integrated Client... http://www.cqg.com/Products/CQG-QTrader.aspx in case you wonder which FCMs are offering it... as of today... below listing that are offer QTrader: ADM AMP Berkeley DMG DBS Vickers ED & F Man FC Stone Jefferies JP Morgan Securities Knight Macquarie Otkritie Securities Ltd Phillip Futures RBC RCG RJO Scotia Mcleod State Street Straits UOB Vision and I can verify that AMP, Phillips, RCJ, RJO and Vision offer it as I contacted them and did the trial with all of them just for kicks to see differences...
That's a good comparison document. I've been messing around with the platform too. As a position trader most of the time, the DOM and complex orders are not that important to me. Some discoveries and comments about other features: 1. For now only 1 chart per page can be displayed. You can load a bunch of symbols in a watch list and double click on the symbol to 'flip' through your charts quickly, but they're all going to be on the same time frame and show the same indicators. I spoke with a CGQ rep and said this was overly restrictive. She showed me a tabbed chart feature they are *considering* adding which would permit running through charts with unique time frames (and I assume unique indicators). I know they risk cannibalizing CGQ IC revenue if they provide too much in QTrader, but there's a lot of ground ground between 1 chart and unlimited charts. 2. You can, however, create an unlimited number of option chain sheets on a single page. I was looking for real time ATM IV figures on a few commodities and QTrader would work for this. 3. My limited experiments with the RTD feature were successful. QTrader allows you to export an individual option contract's greeks and IV into Excel, whereas some platforms will only export the option contract's OHLC, Vol and OI. I used this feature to draw my own vol skews in Excel because for most contracts, the vol skews displayed in QTrader's "option calculator" are a mess and not useful. 4. Contrary to what's printed in the comparison document, QTrader does permit two or more Hist Vol lines per chart. They've disabled the ATM IV line, though. 5. It's my understanding that any of the RTD templates available on their website (some are pretty sophisticated), though designed for CQG IC, will work with QTrader. 6. I haven't explored the position/portfolio manager or any of the order entry capabilities. I've heard only good things about CQG in these areas, but I was looking at other things. 7. For an active spread trader, the spread matrix that populates for any contract series is probably a good tool. It shows last and bid-ask at the 'intersection.' If you just want to keep an eye on some spreads, though, the bid-ask adds clutter and it's not the best design. To be fair, I haven't explored all the formatting possibilities. I hope the bid-ask can be removed because I wouldn't want to have to create all the spread watches in Excel.
hmmm... I guess overly restrictive is relative... I am a user of IC, so I can tell you that 60% of the features I dont care for... QTRader meets 70% of my requirements overall but it breaks my indicators... so that was a no-no... yes, one chart per page can be annoying... I would have preferred at least 4 ... but in the future version you will have tabs that can have different timeframes like they said... there are some bugs in it still... but it works pretty good.. is not something they are considering, it is done for the 14.8 release for next year... (maybe on 14.7) RTD is great, isnt.... all the templates will work based on my tests... as long as they are not calling indicators that are not enabled for QTrader... my curves on beans, crude and rates all work still.. spreadsheet/portfolio trader is great if you manage a bunch of positions at the same time, it allows you to trim them as well.. comes in handy... I cant speak as to the options stuff, I am not an option trader myself... another annoying thing is that the ID is tied to FCM, so you cant have multiple FCMs at the same time with one ID... for that you still will need IC... but am sure that was by design...
We're thinking along the same lines - I thought two or three charts per page would do the trick, you thought four. I appreciate the additional comments and especially your confirmation that the templates work. So far I like most of what I see. The price seems fair for someone who's not a high volume trader, because those 25 cent per trade charges would add up. For someone who is currently using CGQ Trader, though, and paying the 25 cent toll, they get a fair amount of added functionality for the whopping price of $15 extra per month ($40 vs. $25). An upgrade to Qtrader would seem to be an easy choice.
Some news: CQG Trader is now available via Deep Discount Trading Trading/Crossland. www.deepdiscounttrading.com/TradingPlatforms.html (if a CQG rep is reading this, a good deed for the day would be to send Howard at Deep Discount a higher-resolution image for each of the CQG offerings)