Eg. Quotetracker will be free (or about $50 a year if you don't want adds). You can have it run within 15 minutes from now if you start the dowload. It is much more flexible than TWS-charts will be in the coming 5 years. It has so many features, chart-types and event-filters, I still don't know them all. If this amount of investment bothers you you're doing yourself a great disservice. Just try it and you will understand what I mean. Well it seems to be more difficult than the experts at IB expeccted, because it develops very slowly. But maybe you know better how to develop this. There are a lot of packages aroudn, but many are flawed or hard to use. If it was as easy as you said, the perfect package would be available already, and it isn't. Ursa..
Lots of good ideas being kicked around here on this thread. I would like to see IB make further improvements in their charting. Some time ago they made vast improvements; then charting upgrades seemed to become low priority. Here's one thing that has bugged me for a long time. On IB charts, the timeframes are illogical. For example: Open a 5 minute 1-day chart. The times for the candles are noted as such: 09:32, 09:37, 09:42, etc. Of course, the times should read as such: 09:30, 09:35, 09:40, etc. The market opens at 09:30; not 09:32. The good folks at Interactive Brokers are not stupid. All they have to do is take a look at QuoteTracker; then compare them to the charts available at IB. There's little comparison. It's quite easy for traders and the folks at IB to readily understand what needs to be improved in the area of IB's charting. They simply have to put it back near the top of their priority list. I say do it right or don't do it at all; then just maintain a great TWS connection and fast executions capability. Otherwise, I will have to stick with QuoteTracker. Still wish IB would have beaten TDAmeritrade to the punch on the buyout!
Being able to view specific date ranges of history. Having to view all history to the current date is annoying and doesnt allow for more detailed review of the timeframe.
Thanks bsam. Dave over at IB messaged me on that and told me about that. And he's watching this thread (thanks, now I don't have to put together a long email). You guys are coming up with good ideas. Just keep them coming if you have opinions on charting improvement. Dave is listening.
No doubt about it! If they want to stay with Java, and I'm sure they do, then they should have a look at Net Dania's chart applets. Superior, IMO. http://netdania.com/ChartApplet.asp http://netdania.com/ChartStation.asp They could even charge a certain commission level like $50-$100/month in comms and it's free.
QuoteTracker does not support Macintosh, so if IB does indeed got better on their charting department I'd be very glad
quote tracker is better than IB's charts, but overall its still not that great. just look at ibcharts.com or metaquotes.net or tradestation being a software engineer, i know it is relatively easy.
Speaking of charts, I still have the problem of the chart module refusing to close, after a time and sales window is opened. Does not happen every time but often enough. You can close the t&s window, but the chart will not close and will not shut down. java has to be killed to exit TWS Anyone else see this???? I redid my entire setup thinking it was some xml corruption , but nope. Using the java 6 beta build 104.