I wonder if it would be an improvement if Qcharts would designate certain servers for limited symbol service. In other words, if the amount of symbols allowed were limited like with Esignal - would that eliminate the data lag on Qcharts when the market is surging?
Assuming that's correct (although the SWP site still says you need QCharts), then quote.com must now be using their Qfeed interface for Livecharts. That would mean that ANY Qfeed compatible software (including the QCharts program itself), could connect via Livecharts.
There isn't any one feed that will satisfy what i want to do. Qcharts is the best, by far, charting package in so many ways. Their data feed has the most intraday history, by far. I use them for scoping out new trading ideas. They don't have alerts based on tech analysis, and their datafeed is not reliable enough (or the data either) for realtime trading, especially fully automated trading. I have to have Esignal to feed Tradestation 2000 for realtime alerting, and then I have to have third party software to get the history into tradestation from quote.com for backtesting. Eventually Esignal will have plenty of intraday history and they might further replace quote.com in my setup but probably nobody will ever replace that chart program. Max
Believe it or not, it is. I've been using it for 4 months now: SWP with LiveCharts feed, $50/mo + exchange fees. Been using it to trade EMinis - sometimes the feed freezes, but if you change the server you get it back within 30s. And you have the IB quote as a backup until you get it back. So far no problems because of the data feed. To address other questions: LiveCharts is THE data feed that QCharts uses. You get T&S but no level II data - you need QCharts for that. You can open as many charts as you want, and you can link symbols/time frames of charts by 10 colors (as opposed to only 3 in QCharts). It has customizable chart studies and watchlist columns. It's integrated for trading with IB - SMART routing only - directly off charts or through TA alerts, but I wouldn't trust it with a purely mechanical system. Good customer service, email only, replies within two days. Drawbacks - SWP is a resource hog, it used to freeze my old computer. You need a fast machine with plenty of RAM. Also the workspace doesn't have scrollbars which is annoying, you are restricted to the monitor area. I don't know other software that uses the Quote.com feed, but whatever works with QCharts should work with LiveCharts too. For the record, I don't work for them, just a satisfied customer
vorzo - that suggests that quote.com must have quitely converted Livecharts over to use their qfeed/continuum datafeed (that's THE datafeed, Livecharts is NOT the datafeed Qcharts uses - however it's possible that Livecharts is not using the Qcharts/Qfeed/Continuum datafeed). If they've done that, then it should be possible to use any Qfeed compatible software (of which SWP is one of many) - including the Qcharts program itself. So, once you had Livecharts setup, you probably could just download the QCharts software and install it and use it against your Livecharts account since Qcharts uses the same Qfeed/Continuum datafeed software that SWP and the other third party programs use. That would be the ultra cheap angle. Would be interesting to give it a try. Only possible glitch is that Livecharts might be using the Qfeed interface now, but still using the separate server farm they had been using which could limit their capacity considerably compared to the Qcharts servers - which might account for your periodic freezes.
I stand corrected, you're right, QFeed is THE feed. What I meant is that QCharts uses the same feed as LiveCharts since SWP works identically with a LiveCharts or QCharts account. Including the freezes, which I got with QCharts too. I had QCharts before I realized I could use SWP with LiveCharts only, with the same results. This is what they say on their web site. http://www.crontech.com/swp/signup.html