I just noticed on the MC forums Marina Pashkova is moving on in life. You have been such a tremendous addition to support. I wish you a wonderful life.
I am very impressed with the way that MultiCharts collects ZenFire realtime data. Does anyone here know if it is possible to connect to "TF" and "DX" on "NYBOT" exchange with ZenFire in MultiCharts? I also tried "ICE" as an exchange but that did not seem to work either. My first screenshot shows that good results can be achieved with a wide variety of ZenFire futures symbols in MultiCharts, but the symbols that are working in my screenshot are all affiliated with the CME exchange in some way. Of course, in my first screenshot "TF" and "DX" are currently disconnected because so far I have not been able to get them to work. I can get both "TF" and "DX" in realtime with ZenFire on NinjaTrader, but I prefer to use MultiCharts. Since there are many positives to MultiCharts that I have recently discovered, below I have tried to provide some ideas that I have recently been thinking about in the hopes that they may be useful to others. The current release version of MultiCharts 5.0 "gold" is also available as a downloadable demo from the TSSupport website, so I have taken that opportunity to do some testing here. The first picture that I have attached shows the symbols that I have been testing in QuoteManager. I am currently evaluating the ZenFire demo at Mirus Futures, which is also available at a few other brokers such as Amp Futures. In my recent tests, I have been using NinjaTrader just for discretionary order entry and trade management while doing the bulk of my charting in MultiCharts. The first step was to enter my demo username and password information to the "data source" settings for ZenFire in QuoteManager. I usually exit and restart QuoteManager after making important changes. The next step was to add some symbols to QuoteManager. One of the many features available in QuoteManager allows InteractiveBrokers customers to browse from a list of available symbols and add them to QuoteManager. I was able to make just a few small changes to the InteractiveBrokers symbols that I added in order to convert them to a format that I could use with ZenFire. After that, I was collecting realtime ZenFire data for about 20 or so actively traded futures symbols without much trouble at all. When I first open QuoteManager, I have noticed that I get better CPU and memory performance when I manually connect each symbol for "realtime data collection without plotting" one at a time. I can sort symbols in QuoteManager by datafeed, so all of the ZenFire symbols can be quickly placed at the top of my list for editing or other tasks. Once each symbol is connected successfully, I open MultiCharts. Each day I do that around 5:30 to 6:00 EST and leave everything running overnight. 24 hours later, I shut everything down and restart the computers, but before I close QuoteManager, I select all of the symbols and choose "disconnect". I repeat that process each day to keep my computers running at optimal performance levels.
In QuoteManager, one may need to define the correct sessions, pt values, etc. for each symbol that one wants to use in MultiCharts, but QuoteManager provides a lot of "expert-level" flexibility when it comes to allowing one to reduce annual datafeed costs. In my case, I was able to define my symbol settings based on examples that were provided with QuoteManager in many cases, and in other rare cases by copying examples from various places on the internet such as my broker or the exchange. The latest beta versions of MultiCharts (and the recent release of OwnData 2.7 for Tradestation users) ship with a template that automatically assigns user-defined information to new symbols whenever they are created, but users may want to modify the list as needed. I have attached a screenshot that shows which fields in the list apply to which fields in QuoteManager, in case anyone is interested in how to get started making modifications to the list on their own. My suggestions appear in green text, but I did not try to cover every case due to time restrictions here.
I have also attached an example of some of my settings in QuoteManager for 8 futures symbols. Maybe they are not "perfect" settings, but so far I have not noticed any problems. It shows among other things how one can use the "as is" setting for YM, and a different multiplier for 6J than for 6E, and in the case of CL it seems possible to simply let QuoteManager "use exchange settings". Other symbols may require some different tweaks, but one should be able to figure out what to do based on the examples and some experimentation. Session templates in QuoteManager are defined separately from symbols, so one session template can be assigned to many different symbols if desired. I did not include any screenshots about session templates. If one is not sure about session settings, many of the futures markets can be charted on a 24-hour session anyway, but for US equity index futures most traders already know to use 9:30 to 16:15 EST for the daytime session. In any given chart, MultiCharts allows me to merge historical data from one datafeed with realtime data from another. It does not concern me at all that MultiCharts does not collect historical data for ZenFire, because I have a wide range of choices for historical data available to me in MultiCharts. Because I use a few quantitative analysis methods that require speed and accuracy, what is important to me is the high quality and low latency of the ZenFire realtime feed. My next task will be to identify a historical datafeed that has the same accuracy as ZenFire, but not necessarily the same realtime speed. When I merge the historical and realtime symbols in MultiCharts, I want the data to be of similar if not identical quality.
Everybody has a different approach to trading and analysis. For me, I prefer not to try to do all of my analysis and trading on the same computer. However, that can cause datafeed costs to skyrocket if one is not very careful about implementation. Computers may not be as expensive as datafeed costs, especially if one builds computers from parts. Personally, I plan to use other related software tools such as "Global Server", "HistoryCentre", "TS Data Hub", and "MetaServer RT" in conjunction with MultiCharts and a venerable old copy of "TradeStation 2000i" to manage a historical database of price and volume information on one computer and then share that with other computers across a local area network. With the tools mentioned above, it is possible to designate just a single computer as a data server, so all of the necessary database maintenance can get done in one place and then can be pushed out across the network automatically whenever charts are opened in MultiCharts on the client side. On the local computers in a network, MultiCharts can handle incoming realtime data from a wide range of datafeeds, and also backfill history from GlobalServer on demand. Obviously, realtime feeds such as ZenFire are offered for free nowadays and their quality is very good. Expensive historical feeds need not be duplicated on each and every computer thanks to the innovative tools mentioned above. I can even collect my own ZenFire data in realtime, and import it to GlobalServer if I am in a pinch using a tool such as "HistoryCentre", but I prefer to let a program like "MetaServer RT" automatically update GlobalServer so I don't have to. It looks like eSignal, IQFeed, and Tradestation Network are all available, and even InteractiveBrokers if I am not concerned about the accuracy of my data. I think InteractiveBrokers is "good enough" for minute based resolutions, and the coverage is very broad at a low price per month for customers. The others may or may not be of similar quality to ZenFire but I will have to find out by testing. Needless to say, I love the way that NinjaTrader collects ZenFire history and makes it available on demand, but I don't want to do duplicate database maintenance for each computer on my network, so for now I plan to limit my use of NinjaTrader to the one computer where I actually execute trades. For all the other computers where I need to calculate and display a lot of indicators in near-realtime, I suspect that MultiCharts may run faster as a charting platform because it has deeper support for multiple processing cores, but I have not tested that assumption yet. The data import and export features in QuoteManager are very robust, and one can even automate the user interface with third-party task-automation software if necessary. Each week I tend to import the previous week's data from a text file into a recent copy of the database that was saved from the previous week. That way, I can control the rollover process whenever that job becomes necessary. When it comes time to roll futures symbols, I usually just rename the existing symbols as needed, and that keeps my data collection relatively continuous. Of course, I also do a little bit of editing before I import the data for the previous week, so I may take three days worth of data from a prior expired contract and paste it into another textfile with two days worth of data from the current contract. It may not seem obvious at first, but there is an advantage to importing text data on a weekly basis, because one is encouraged to keep separate records of one's very valuable tick data for each week, and store them offline every now and then in compressed zip files or some similar format. Have you ever noticed how big a database of tick data can become if you just keep adding to it forever? It will eventually become corrupted after too much use, in my humble opinion. GlobalServer seems to have a nice feature that automatically discards tick data that is older than a user-specified date. So that is another reason why I like the idea of using "TS Data Hub" in conjunction with GlobalServer to push historical data out from a central data server to remote MultiCharts clients over a network. On the local client side, the incoming realtime data that gets temporarily stored by MultiCharts in QuoteManager is very useful because it provides a "smart cache" that helps keep gaps from appearing in the local database, at least on the client side. History backfills from the central database or even from the datafeed are only requested for the data that is not already in the local "smart cache", and the database files can be discarded each weekend prior to starting a new week of trading. I have not seen the "smart cache" feature anywhere else, and in my opinion it is very useful. For anyone who has read this far, I hope that you have found some food for thought and I wish you success in your trading.
kh_model, I'm really excited to see such a deep and accurate analysis of MultiCharts features. Thank you! I can add that MultiCharts 5.5 Beta 5 has a fix for Zen-fire/Rithmic. The bug we fixed was 'Zenfire and Rithmic listen to market depth instead of best bid/best ask.' Moreover I can confirm that MultiCharts can uses DX and other European symbols. Our customers use it successfully.
TS2000i Global Server is robust enough to handle any type of data, of any frequency. However that application is nearly 10 years old, and the market has changed much since then. Half of the data vendors supported by Global Server no longer exist. New datafeeds like IQfeed are not supported without add-ons (eg Metaserver RT) that require you to re-enter all the symbols in your Global Server universe. I also found myself spending way too much time adding new symbols and new exchanges to keep up. On the other hand, Multicharts QuoteManager is just as robust, IMHO and would be a better platform in which to base a historical database server.
I've tried to contact MC but can't get a knowledgeable person to answer my questions. I would like to use MC to display cumulative delta, similar to what MarketDelta or Investor/RT does. Does anybody here have any experience with this? I once had a delta indicator used in Tradestation, but the problem with Tradestation is the delta (volume on the bid and volume on the ask) would only print in real time, when you load a chart the delta doesn't appear. In MarketDelta, IRT and soon Ninja, the delta can be plotted historically. My question is: can MC plot the delta historically, and if so, are the delta figures accurate? If I need to clarify, please let me know. Thanks for any input.
gravitonium77, I have successfully tested the features that you are describing in both OwnData and MultiCharts, but I used some home-made code instead of MarketDelta to do my tests. I think that you can find some of the source that got me started if you go to the discussion forum at TSSupport and search a bit. My experience with QuoteManager has been that "Bid" and "Ask" are supported by appending a suffix after the symbol in question. For example, ESU9 signifies the "trade" ohlcv. ESU9:B signifies the "bid" ohlcv, and ESU9:A signifies the "ask" ohlcv. Depending on your datafeed, the various streams may not be properly synchronized as has been discussed on various threads on other forums. I have had no trouble displaying market-delta like representations.