I need to receive open price ticks as soon as they are available first thing in the morning, for a database of about 8000 symbols. I use Amibroker for charting/backtesting. Which service do you think is better eSignal or IQFeed? what are the pros and cons for each?
DTN's "IQ-Feed" hands down. It's not even close. But that having been said, they have an 1800 limit on symbols.
I use IQ feed. They just keep increasing the rate though but I heard esignal is just as bad with the rate jack ups.
risktaker: i actually dont need the continuos feed that much. the most important thing to me is to be able to get all the open ticks as soon as possible. so they told me I can request 200 ticks at a time, then i can switch the tick list and get the next 200 and so on. they said the ticks download instantaneously. after scanning all the open prices then i can decide which 200 ticks to receive for the remainder of the day. so far everyone seems to agree on IQFeed. no one for eSignal?
What are the differences in the fees? I used DTN/IQ Feed also, btw. It's a solid performer for the retail client, they have online support and a 1-800 number you can call as well. All-in-all, it's a pretty good level of service and product IMHO. Good trading DTN/IQ Feed Website
Can anyone compare vis-a-vis Barchart? That's what I'm using now. I've seen a couple incidences of dropped connections...
On whose part? There have been data inconsistences from the DTN/IQ Feed which have been noted by many experienced traders on this board (use the search feature). traderNik is one of them ... etc.
I've had Barchart drop out on me. I'm using NinjaTrader, and I know my connection to IB/TWS is still up... it's only Barchart that goes kaput. On one particularly bad day, it probably dropped 5-8 times... once every 20 minutes for several hours hours.
If you've got the cash consider DTN's other offering, NxCore. If you need first quotes on that many symbols in real-time, it'll be hard to beat for the price.