E-signal screen freezes w/Tick Charts

Discussion in 'Trading Software' started by the4xczar, Jul 20, 2007.

  1. Anyone else have/had this problem? E-signal's tech support is questionable at best sometimes, so I'll throw the question out to e-signal users. I'm sticking w/them, so don't bother responding by saying,"they suck, switch to__." I'm going to stick w/them because of other programs I use and studies I've purchased that only run on e-sig. If you had this problem and reported it to their tech, what was their solution, if any?
     
  2. mtwokay

    mtwokay

    If you experienced problems at times with today's market then join the real-time data feed crowd. Twice today my IQFeed froze while ER2 tanked 2 points, and when I was a TradeStation user their platform would always freeze up in a busy market. That's just the nature of real-time data feeds. Now for IB, no problems whatsoever. In fact that's how I knew IQFeed was freezing up.
     
  3. No, you don't understand. The tick charts NEVER work properly. They even freeze when the market is closed - has nothing to do with a fast market.
     
  4. mtwokay

    mtwokay

    Ok, then please clarify.

    When you say eSignal "freezes when the market is closed", I understand, the market is closed. Why would you expect data?

    Obviously you need to provide more details about your problem.
     
  5. Dude, with all due respect, you can still analyze a chart after the market closes. This is actually a common problem with e-signal, which is why I asked for e-sig users to respond: they'll know what I'm talking about. I can pull up any type of chart any time of day or night - during mkt hours or after - it doesn't matter. When I pull up a "tick" chart, e-signal freezes and has to be shut down. Obviously you don't use them and that's fine, I was looking for a reply from an e-sig user. Thanks.
     
  6. mtwokay

    mtwokay

    As an ex Ensign/eSignal/TradeStation 8.x/TS2000i user, "freezing" typically refers to charts not updating. When the entire application "locks up" that's a different problem.

    Sry for the misunderstanding. Good luck!
     
  7. This has been going on for years . . .

    I used to have a 2-minute ES chart up against a 2-minute SPX chart. One would "freeze" after about 5 minutes, and a couple of minutes later the other would "freeze". This was back in 2003. I see that nothing has changed. I spent nearly 15 hours on the phone with their tech-support guys trying to help them troubleshoot their own software, to no avail.

    It was a complete waste of time.
    E-Signal, never again.

    :(
     
  8. the esignal tick chart rarely if at all freezes for me. They are plotting not only last trade tick, but a plot of the bid ask tick - actually 3 lines at once - not sure if tradestation has it but I know alot of software doesn't. If you miss a tick, they have a tick replay feature, sort of like TIVO for your charts. It all depends on your computers memory! professionally speaking, I would have an IT guy do a kernal analyzation when the program is running as a diagnosis. Did I mention that I also run redi with esignal, and my monster computer can handle tick charts. internet connection a must too- just think how much data 1 tick chart is alone.:eek:
     
  9. K-Rock

    K-Rock

    The problem could be your hardware (cpu, graphic card, memory, internet connection, etc...).
     
  10. For the most part, I'm fine with tick charts, but it's been getting a little slower pulling in the data as the market has been growing. I've heard that the number of ticks from the exchanges on the heavily traded symbol is actually doubling or more every year, so I can accept that the tick charts are getting worse.

    I have a question and a suggestion...

    Are you looking at raw ticks as with an interval of T, or are you looking at tick bars as with an interval of something like 100T? I've noticed that the increased quote traffic has made raw tick charts a little worse than the tick bar intervals because of the fact that they also pull in the Bid/Ask data and there's now a ton of that.

    Something that helps me with both types of interval is using a time template. You can create a User Defined interval and enter T in the interval field. Then enter a 1, 2, or whatever for the #Days. Pick a number as small as you can get away with for your needs. This sends a request for an exact amount of data rather than the chart making an educated guess at how much to request. I only need to see the current day's data so have a 1 for the #Days field.

    Then apply this template to the chart when doing a tick chart and it should come in better and freeze less.

    Also, as someone else mentioned, it best if you have a good processor and enough RAM as most of the freezing is due to the amount of memory needed to pull in all that tick data.


    Good luck,

    Paul
     
    #10     Jul 28, 2007