Bone how does esignal compare with cqg? Can you chart almost everything you can in cqg? Curious as to why you switched... Thanks
1. I was shamed and goaded into switching from CQG to eSignal by my clients in 2009. Prior to that, I had used CQG (and for periods Bloomberg) since 1993. As I recall, I paid about $800 per month or so for CQG with real-time data at the time I switched. 2. That was not the end of the taunting. Since I had clients who were making serious money using delayed data, I was further challenged to switch from real-time to delayed data since we were in fact swing trading and not day trading. 3. CQG is much nicer than eSignal. Personally, I don't think much of eSignal. In fact, it's low rent and not suited to professionals in terms of arbitrage and advanced spread modeling. But it is functional with inter and intramarket market spread configurations as well as many exchange supported spreads. If we need live data - just look at your order book. 4. If clients can: 1. Have really enviable performance metrics and feedback, and 2. Save $8K per year with a skanky workaround, I feel obliged to do my best to do the same. After all, I am doing individual 1-on-1 webinars daily with clients and it makes sense for all of us to use a common charting package. 5. I provide several "workarounds" to new clients in terms of making eSignal tolerable.
Thanks for your detailed response. How much are you paying for esignal with delayed fees if you dont mind me asking? Hey a penny saved is a penny earned but in this case its 80000 pennies a month which can lease you a pretty fancy car.
You can get eSignal with DELAYED US and European futures data for about $100 per month all in. Clients load my custom spread modeling .efs file which I provide. I've had many clients start live trading with only $15K or $20K. In fact, I show them how to use an FCM's execution desk in lieu of paying for an execution platform. If clients commit to both putting in the work with me and dedicating their own time to the webinars and materials I provide then a skinny live account is doable. Oh, and the other thing about swing trading spreads is that your brokerage will be very very modest.
what about if I have 50k and only want to allocate 5k to your strat, what the difference 1 lot or 1000 ?
Bone, have you tried barchart trader? It's 70$ per month delayed data for every major exchange, all exchange supported spreads and there is even a spread equation feature where you can chart every combination you want with a formula. That's what I use now( with X trader real time ). Only downside is you can't watch the expiry curve( I do it with IB my second broker ). I am interested to know if there are more features in esignal.
Sorry, not sure I follow. If you're asking about scale ability - that would be another advantage to exchange spreads, as the bid-ask volume and order book liquidity will almost always be much greater than flat price futures.