Just started trailing Sierra Chart. Still having a feel around the software. But unless I am missing something, you are only able to link charts together, you can't link e.g. a trading DOM to a chart, and that is quite frustrating if true. I have also just requested beta access for medved. Let's see how that goes as well.
As mentioned, I use charts, DOM and T&S. As I understand it, buttontrader doesn't have time and sales having looked through the documentation.
I have to agree with the original poster. I do not like the interactive brokers T&S, but I will also add the the order entry is very clumsy for direct market access orders. Very disappointing compared to other front ends like Lightspeed and Laser.
so how is buttontrader these days. I am thinking of subscribing again: light or pro version?. Any comments on the strategies?
I cancelled ButtonTrader approximately 1 year ago after my transition from Swing/Day trading to longer term Swing/Position trading. When I was a subscriber, BT worked well for intraday, scalping and volatility events. There were two minor issues which attributed to my decision in terminating BT though. #1, Portability. I have multiple computers throughout the house from which I trade. I found it tedious needing to close BT and copy paste environments to a new station whenever I moved location. I much prefer the ability to log on at new station and have a dialogue box pop up asking if I want to close the other session and open new session on this computer. [Both IB and MC do this] It always was a "Pet Peeve" for me. #2, I was never able to configure a strategy for my desired order entry method during volatility events. I always had to rely on manual entry, which limited the number of instruments I could effectively trade during fast markets. I basically wanted a trailing buy/sell stop for entries on volume spikes similar to trailing stop for exit. Wasn't a great demand for it, so Robert never pursued it for me. Had that been available, I probably would have kept BT just for volatility events. employment #'s/rate, FOMC, inventories, earnings reports, etc... I currently use Multicharts, DOM & Chart trader which is an adequate solution for my current requirements. albeit, I do find myself using TWS often to modify. MC is still relatively basic for discretionary trading. If you are an inter-day trader, scale in/out often I would still recommend BT. Light or pro? depends on number of instruments you are trading and/or number of entries. If you are only trading, occasionally, 1 to 2 instruments at a time, 1-3 entries. Light should be sufficient. However, if you are an active trader, trade multiple instruments or multiple entries then just go pro. It becomes very annoying being limited to number of entries and/or instruments with the light version. I went from pro to light when I transitioned to longer term trading and noticed the nuisance the limitation created. I missed a few trades because of it, which eliminated any perceived savings.
Thanks so much for this comprehensive review! Yes one of the biggest issues for me re BT is the lack of mobility between computers; I wish he had a app for iphone (the TWS one is excellent). I bought a multicharts lifetime license years ago so it is interesting you are using it as well.
I am not skilled in reading order books and order routing tricks. However, Ninjatrader 8 seems very promising. If 9G Dom is compatible with it. That would be gravy. If your into market profile, you can get add-ons practically for free.
MotiveWave (https://www.motivewave.com) connects to IB TWS as a good IB front end alternative. Due to IB's restrictions on their API, they do limit the historical data, but you can connect a data feed like IQFeed to pull the historical data and still trade through the MotiveWave charts with IB. Here are the instructions for connecting to IB TWS with MotiveWave.