I am in the process leaving esignal and move over to QT or NT. I execute my trades with IB, only trade ES, put on about 3 - 4 trades a day. I do not use any indicators. I feel that I am just wasting my money each month with esig. I have read many good things about both QT and NT also some negatives. I am only interested reliability and accurated info on my charts. I've read that IB data feed is not very good with QT. If that is true which other data provider should I look at? If I were to use NT most of the traders here recommend using Zen, that means that I have to use different brokers like Mirus and few others. I have no idea how Mirus is. If anyone can share your comments about QT, NT, ZEN and Mirus I would be very grateful!!!!!!!!!!! Thank U Hen
I have had no issues with NT/Zenfire through Mirus! The data is robust, and customer support issues get addressed in a timely fashion through NT support or Mirus. Try the free NT/Zen demo for yourself and see. el surdo
The whole reason I use QuoteTracker is because IB charts suck so bad, but I rarley have problems with IB data in QT charts. QT give the best bang for the buck with a scripting language FAR easier than TS's Easylanguage, certainly easier than C++ or VB. No way would I switch back to esignal and NT. Those cost me over $250 a month just to run, and I get my data and charts now for $27 a month. Easy choice. But some traders want to spend unneccessary money to feel 'big time' Whatever floats your boat.
Im using QT with IB feed. You have the possibility to subscribe to IQ feed for a special fee. IB feed is fine and very reliable if you don't use tick charts. The backfill of IB has been a crook in the last few weeks but the issue was fixed over the weekend (new servers I think) according to some representants . For order entry you can use BookTrader from IB. I use ZeroLineTrader and am very happy. You can define strategies with it. If you don't write codes for indicators and stuff like that, QT is best. You can use paintbars and thats just fine if you don't use indicators.
You've misunderstood, IB's data feed works just fine with QT. If you use tick charts like I do, then it's best to collect the market data in real time via IB 24/7. Just keep in mind IB's tick data it not a true tick by tick data, but rather a snap shot feed. It's not really a bad thing, as long as you know the limitations, and work it to your advantage If you just want a basic, no frills easy setup charting, then QT would fit the bill, but if you're the kind who likes to write custom indicators, and what not, then QT is showing it's age, and not as nimble as NT. Schaefer
First of all, I would not want to compare QuoteTracker and NinjaTrader. QuoteTracker is a nice and intelligently designed little charting tool, which is easy to use. I loved it because of its paint bar capabilities, which are easy to understand even for non-programmers. I used it with IB data and then stopped using it for two reasons: - It only allows to store 2 weeks of intraday-data, so it cannot display Monthly Pivots or Fibonacci Retracements that relate to data further back (say for ES I would also like to see Fibonacci lines based on the swing highs of 09-19-08 and 10-14-08) - Indicators cannot be customized I still love QT for its simplicity and intelligent design but I only rarely use it now. NinjaTrader is designed to do next to everything, which includes - advanced charting with unlimited backfill (even with IB, you can get 120 days or more of intraday data) - order execution capabilities (including bracket orders, trailing stops etc.) via the DOM - a native programming languange based on C# - programming custom indicators (including paint bars) - developping automated trading strategies - backtesting of trading systems (but no portfolio backtesting) - evaluation of trades (basic trade journal) NinjaTrader has some shortcomings as well: - if you put on too many instruments at once and connect it to backfill and realtime simultaeously it tends to get a nickup and destroy its data base (same thing happens when suddenly disconneted, may take you an hoor to rebuild the data base) - unlike QT you cannot remove spikes (backfill of IB sometimes produce unwanted spikes that falsify my Pivots and Fibonacci lines - you cannot build charts based on several instruments, so you cannot plot any index or indicators based on other instruments into your ES chart IB backfill is cheap and bad, so you get what you pay for. When the backfill sucks NT tends to lock itself, while QuoteTracker cuts off and retries after a time. In October backfill for ES was horrible, so I connected to OpenTick backfill before the market opened and then collected realtime data via IB. Actually both QT and NT can only display IB data as good as it is. There is still a number of issues pending with IB relating to false volumes, wrong time stamps etc. Holes in the charts left by non-performing servers that were down and false spikes are rarely corrected. To answer the question: If you do not need more than 2 weeks of intraday data and if you do not use Pivots, Fibonacci lines or custom indicators, then it is easier to use QuoteTracker. If you need Pivots or Fibonacci lines, semi-automated order execution, evaluation of trades, custom indicators then take NT. IB is good value for money, their backfill is little value for little money.
Harald, I would appreciate it if you could explain this a little more. I'm a new NT user, every time I connect to zenfire it seems the days ES tick data seems to load very fast. What is the database you refer to, why cant NT just reload the data?
Sometimes I tried to connect to 20 instruments realtime and also backfilling them, which occasionally caused NT to lock itself. I guess it is not necessary to do this, so if you just want to trade ES, there won't be a problem.