Just out of curiosity, how much do you utilize the EPIQ? I'm guessing you're trading a thick book - ES or ZB maybe? I trade mostly 6E (outside RTH) so the b/a is usually pretty thin. With the bots fighting it out in the liquid markets, is est. queue useful (or accurate). Would like to pick your brain a bit here if its cool with you
If I'm playing an outright then I indeed like the ZB. $31.25 a tick and low commissions! Sure I think it's useful at times but I am not using TT (which might tell you all you need to know...) I have only done a demo and seen others using it. I can't speak to how accurate it is, I would only use it for ballpark estimates but it's handy to know if you're in the front of the line and have a nice cushion behind you or if you're dead last and about to be on the wrong side of the market. As for the bots - I wasn't around before they came on the scene so I only know second hand of their effect...there are better people on here to answer those questions but I suspect most will say tick scalping is dead.
Lol, the big tick is nice but that market grinds too much for my tastes! Thanks for the response, I assumed it must be a deep market for EPIQ to be useful (I've never used it myself). As for ninja, you don't think for someone on a budget (or just starting out) it's a solid choice? I have to say I've been pretty impressed with NT support and if you're point and click, its good bang for your buck (or no bucks if you choose). I'd focus more on the data feed accuracy and stability if I was the OP as opposed to the front end.
Yeah I used NT for a little while but didn't like the DOM. I have heard a lot of complaints from former users (there are some threads at bigmikestrading) and I was clearing through IB and they were really slow on the updates, I had to use an old version of TWS and it was a big headache. Then I was using marketdelta and considering switching to the Gomi indicators but found out that you can't backfill the footprints. So it was trouble after trouble and not worth it. There are other better budget alternatives. You can get CQG Trader, T4 and TT (If not Canadian) for a per side price, so why go with anything sub par? If you're not doing huge volume you probably won't end up paying out much more then NT. I would agree data feed accuracy and stability are a good place to focus, but with NT then you're going to need third party tick data so you are just paying more again. Ultimately if you're intraday trading you're front end is going to be your most important tool. I tried skimping and saving every last penny when I started and I just ended up feeling like I was at a disadvantage.
I can't argue with that. I hate having to record the market profile and CD in binary - I believe Sierra has CD feature though which would be a HUGE plus for NT. Thing is if you aren't doing large volume, chances are you probably aren't tick mining or running any hft algos either. So if you were to run say zen vs cqg for example (under avg order flow) would a discretionary trader really suffer any adverse fills or miss opportunities due to a slight lag? I demo'd both side by side through AMP and didn't see any noticeable difference. I chose AMP/CQG purely on pricing knowing I would need minimal support but knowing I was undoubtedly not getting unfiltered CQG data either.
IB is 85 cents per side including commission and platform. DeepDiscountTrading is 50 cents per side commission plus typically 50 cents per side for the trading platform. So IB is cheaper in that case.
Yes, I agree. Perhaps if you are making your decisions off 5 minute bar charts or something then TWS will be a suitable platform. However, if you are trying to watch the order book it is not suitable. I have used it in the past and I have also used buttontrader, neither was a suitable platform and the snapshot data was a big problem. I was relying on third party tick data and charting packages in addition to paying for the front end and a news feed, total cost was ~$500/month.
Looked up commissions for Liffe/Eurex and for IB you're looking at $1.00/$1.20 (CAD) per side (<1000 contracts/month) vs. $0.5 with deepdiscount. For Australia it's $3.68 vs $0.5 and Singapore is $1.79 vs $0.5. So big difference if you're trading the overseas markets.
I think you may be missing that in the case of overseas markets with IB "All exchange and regulatory fees included" according to http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=commission