I must be lucky. RT works great for me - not buggy, and I can't remember the last time it "crashed". Been using it for almost a decade.
My conclusion so far is that I can't find a platform for my needs which is as good as Realtick. Of the platforms which were relatively ok I got demo's for lightspeed, ninja, IB and esignal and none came close. This may not be the case for other people as everyone has different needs. It can pretty much do anything and if you think of a functionality which you would like then chances are there is a way to do it on the platform. The technical support have been very responsive however not that helpful (although they not responded to my last email which had all the relavent files). I have rebuilt all my charts and redone all my analysis. Reading through forums every platform has its bugs so like one previous post said "pick the less of two evils" Fingers crossed they can sort it out...
An update for anyone who cares... Realtick were not able to sort the problem out which went on for over 4 weeks. During this time the platform would crash when too many trendlines were added. They acknowledged that this was a bug which they had and they were "working" on it. So given my platform was unusable I politely asked if I could have the month refunded for the platform cost. They said yes which I was happy about and then they said no I couldn't and that I was povided misinformation but the customer consultant I spoke to first! so I canceled and walked away. In summary my experience: - Their customer service is prompt at times but ineffective. - The software is unrealiable for all its functions and combinations of those functions (and it has a lot of them). - I lost confidence in the platform as it was like playing Russian roulette when I would add something to a page and it would crash if the it didn't like the combination and you would have to start all over again - Their customer service provided misinformation and said I could have a prorated refund and then told me I couldn't. It is a shame as the platform is really good if all the functions worked ok together. I'm sure others use it fine as their way of using it doesn't conflict with the bugs it has but mine didn't. Thanks for all your previous posts SWAS
SWAS: Have you checked out the Sterling Trader Platform? Terra Nova is one broker that carries it. You can download a demo and see how it compares to RealTick.
Hi ScalperJoe, I had a demo of Sterling and it looked really good. Unfortunately it would not save trendlines on the page for stocks on my watchlist i.e. the next day they are gone. I tried about 7 demos over a weekend and tested them at the end of the trading day when volume was high. After all this none of them met all my criteria and as a last resort I actually relooked at esignal as it was the best of the original lot I demo'd and was one of the only ones which saved TL and spent a lot of time setting it up and really testing it. I was very suprised to find that it works as good as Realtick in fast markets when flicking through symbols, the charting tools are superior and it saves all my trendlines on my pages automatically and keeps them until I delete them. Plus it has charts for options like Realtick. It doesn't have quite as slick interface as Realtick, or the tabview option which is a really good way to condense shortlists and mutiple timframe charts which is why I did not test it properly the first time. But it is more reliable and I have gotten around the absence of tabviews with a small amount of creativity. Mate it feels really good to have a platform again that suits my needs (and to not have to demo another platform) and I know esignal has copped some flack from people on ET but it works well for me. I have a brand new computer - Intel i7, heaps of Ram etc plus a good internet connection by Australian stadards (17Mb/s and A+ rating on Pingtest) and it works really well. This is in the context of a swing trader. Not sure what it would be like for intraday traders. Cheers SWAS
there are tons of third party apps that are used with IB that work very well for different types of traders. They are listed on their website. IB has over 140,000 accounts now so you know all types of traders have found a software solution.