Fast & Reliable Software

I need some help. I am about to change software package and I want to know what you use and what you recommend. I am looking at RealTick, First Alert, A-T, Q-charts and Tradestation. The most important part is reliability, second comes speed (streaming quotes) and least important is price. The first 2 pay for the third... Is there another software that I should consider?

It would be great to hear from people actually using it.

Thanks

Pitbull

 

Easy. First Alert. Just makesure you get hyperfeed or comstock for the data feed.

If you know how to use it FA will pay for itself in less than a day IMO.

 

I use AT over the net. I commented on it under 'software.'

 

I've had eSignal and MetaStock Pro... 10 years +, including earlier versions.

 

i have used every single one. I recently dropped quote.com/ erlangerquote because the expense of the two together did not make sense to me when I was already using real tick and tradestation as my main feeds and studies. Quote.com was good . then became unreliable then was reliable until about two months ago and it started screwing up. Over the internet it was surprisingly fast.

My office uses realtick and I think it is great but we switched clearing firms to get to realtick and I own the office so, you may examine my bias.

tradestation is generally quite reliable, however they use comstock data. apparently the comstock data has messed up tradestation, quote.com and aspen graphics lately.

First alert is a good concept, but my signals were getting way to many false returns and it was driving me nuts. I also did not like having to maintain the data on my own computer. Now, I understand that they have a product where you do not have to maintain the data locally so I would consider using it again. I hope they have improved the accuracy of their customized scans.

AT has very good presentation and graphs. but not nearly as many indicators as it shoud have. (some guys in my office refuse to switch from AT for even at cost savings so it obviously has its proponents.

Overall, most of the time I pick real tick for speed and reliabilty, but they are all pretty close and not perfect. I suspect your location and the location of the nearest server farms may make the biggest difference.

Executions are another subject all together.

 

I basically posted the same question a while ago. Depending on what markets you like to trade and also on your trading style. If it is just charting with fast data and some indicators, then I think anything will do. If you like to test systems and trade them I recommend Wealth Lab. WL does not support tick level charting at the moment. I don't need it, but some like to watch the monitor all the time .I also looked at AB and TR before I decided to take WL and I can only compare WL to TS and to Real Tick from my own experience.

S.

 

I am using First Alert with the comstock data feed. I never had a week without a problem, that is delayed quotes. People from First Alert blame it on comstock and tell me that it is being worked on and will be fixed very soon. I do not know if they ever fix it but when I used hyper feed I never had problems of the sort. The choice of data vender depends on my office owners if it was for me I would switch to hyperfeed. First Alert has a thin client version which is supposedly fast and reliable but there is a drawback you can not filter on the all stocks as with the fat client. You can only get a sub result set of the query that is run on their server.

 

Thanks a lot guys. It sounds like I should take a closer look at Realtick and First Alert. Is there any happy Tradestation 6 user out there?

/PITBULL

 

I'm fine with TS6, for data, analysis, and brokerage services. For my purposes (day-trading equities off pattern-based set-ups, price levels, and market internals ca. 10 round-trips/day), the total package is terrific. Despite the already-noted problems this week apparently relating to S&P Comstock data, the service has been very reliable.

Instead of going on with another review of TS, I'd suggest you do a search for some of the rather extensive discussion of it that's appeared her in recent months, and that's included comparisons between it and IB, RealTick, Cyber, and others.

I think it comes down to your specific needs, limitations, and trading approach. On some level, it's probably also a matter of taste. If you were more precise about what it is you'd like to be able to do, or what you like or don't like about your current package, we might be better able to advise you.