Tradestation has nice optimization features but can't do simple things like enter and exit on the same bar, to name one. Neoticker is the most powerful, but has a steep learning curve. For simple stuff they have a formula wizard deal. Esignal is rather new at this, best to let the dust settle on this one, imo. Although the rest of the platform is excellent. Wealth-lab is the easiest to program with. Has a free website version. Never worked with it intraday/realtime tho. Neoticker, Tradestation, and Wealth-Lab have a similiar style of programming syntax. Esignal is more of a java script style.
I'm not sure what it's going to take for TS to clean up their act, and I no longer think I'm going to wait to find out. $200 a month is so much for this level of service. I am hearing very good things about neoticker, and am curious about wealthlab too. In the beginning I didn't want to engage the hassle of scouting out a separate feed and possibly maintaining data, but now that I've hit a few areas where TS's backtesting capability is insufficient, they are only making the decision easier with persistent outages. Plus, I have heard from the start that WL is more flexible, and now neoticker too. Heck, the learning curve will reward sweetly I'm sure. I thought I might have trouble getting up to speed testing in TS when I started, but it was a cinch. Questions to WL and Neoticker users... 1. Is there a historical datafeed out there that can provide two years of tick and bid/ask resolution futures data on demand? Or would I have to buy this myself and create a local database on my pc? 2. Any Idea what this data would cost, how dirty it would be, and how you go about keeping it up to date after you buy it? 3. If you're testing with tick data on WL or Neoticker, do they allow you to parse time into seconds? Do they facilitate multi symbol strategies well? I'm really curious about both of these platforms. Also, if there's anyone out there willing to share your experiences with either or both, who made the switch from Tradestation and was glad they did (or not), I would love to hear what you think. Another great thing about platforms that have separate feeds, maybe they won't take your whole PC down like TS did to mine today.
You have to buy the data you are looking for. I don't know about costs. Neoticker can do everything you asked.
Yes, we have direct lines for all US futures. We are also set-up to get data directly from NYSE ( through SIAC I believe) and NASD. Indicies come from a variety of places, most notably the CBOE, for which we are also directly connected. Our goal has always been to connect directly to each exchange and with the addition of Comstock to the Interactive Data Corp family, we will now have the ability to directly connect to dozens of other exchanges worldwide. Puts us in pretty exclusive company. Thanks.
Sixthbeast Awesome, so neoticker will let you write code that recognizes seconds... so cool. Which do you find more flexible and accurate, WL or Neo? Can WL parse time smaller than minutes?
I think all servers have problems at times. TradeStation is direct from the CME, which works best for me. I am not sure one is really better than the other. I think all of them tend to stall with extreme changes in volume. When it stalls is when I go for it! Ride the bronco if I can catch it! Today TS was particularly bad when it shut me out for 25 minutes. Never had that happen before!!
comparing WL to Neoticker doesn't give justice to Neo. Neoticker is in a class of it's own when it comes to capabilities. It's systems capabilities are not for a neophyte, it's for intermediate and advanced systems programmers. Aside from the system writing capabilities, Neoticker has the most customizable charts, awesome volume distribution chart, and lots of other cool tools like the pattern recognition. However, Wealthlab has it's own strengths. It works great for backtesting on a universe of stocks.... something Neoticker, Tradestation, and Esignal aren't suited for. Also the Wealthlab community is huge.
Jay, Tradestation has Comstock feed and it has full of holes. Now you mentioned Comstock, I'll definetely stay away from e-signal!
Neoticker users, If you make calculations in a chart using an indicator, can you access that indicator value from a different chart--does Neoticker have global variables? For instance, you can't do this with TradeStation directly. You have to make dll calls between charts to transfer values. Thanks.