Doesn't matter if someone's using tea leaves...whatever they're using should be at least calculated and displayed accurately, right?
I have rarely had a refresh affect my trading in over 10 years. I use indicators but keep things simple. If you need something perfect to run a system.....it will rarely work in the long run (in my experience). I looked for "reasonably reliable" indicators years ago and have been using the same ones since. I would say you would be better served with CQG. E-Signal (I used them when I first trading...the ole DBC signal on cable!) is way overpriced IMO. CQG is cheaper in the long run for someone like you and CQG is great for people that need your type of system accuracy. By the way, their tech support (CQG) helped me code my stuff back in the day. So always ask if you are building a system on their software and are stuck cheers and happy trading
The refresh refers to; each time you reboot your computer you must manually force each chart to update all missing data from when the computer was shut down to when you restart it. If a person monitors 20 charts like I do intraday, each reboot is an hour or more worth of unnecessary chart work. And don't say leave the compuer run because Ensign has a memory leak if you have too many open charts. Bottom line, IMHO, Ensign is a great software program if you are trading or monitoring a few charts but anything more than that and it becomes an unnecessary aggrevation.
BS. If you monitor 20 charts there's no way a refresh takes an hour. I have about that many charts and probably around 30 symbols for which I collect historical data. A full refresh of everything takes 5-7 min. And this is on my 5 year old Athlon XP 2800 512 MB RAM box. It sounds like your gripe is with your data provider not Ensign. opm8
Reaver, this is the point, not that one should not depend on MA crosses, god forbid, but that milliseconds should not mean that much if you have a system based on price action and established support/ res.
Thats not the point. The point is if you use IB to feed ensign and if you have to refresh for what ever reason the chart changes, nothing look like it did before the refresh. Their is just no way you can use this software and trade size in the futures market. Well I guess you could if you wanted to. Anyone that trades intraday and trades size more than likely puts their trust in CQG.
It's like the blind leading the blind. Who knows how accurate the data is. Ensign refreshes automatically, I don't understand what you mean Aaron.
That was 3 years ago, maybe it is faster now but then it took about 3 minutes per chart due to the amount of historic data I use. I load about 3+ years of data per chart. Now it is irrelevant. Weekends I monitor over 900 symbols (stock, futures & commodities) and I know Ensign can not handle that. As I stated previously, if you like it, use it. I simply require something more robust.
Someone please answer me this, IB used to state repeatedly that it doesn't include all ticks in its feed. Has this changed? Cap'ncod, Aaron's point (as an example) is that, if you refresh your chart mid-day, your chart will look differently than before the refresh. This is due to an idyosyncracy some where and if it doesn't appear in other software using the same feed . . . well? For those of us trading size and trading for a living, we want as accurate and as stable a charting package as we can get. For me anyway, after using it for over 8 years, Ensign is not it.