as ken said earlier..esignal is professional set up..i have really enjoyed there service ..except for the one weekend chart glitch..other than that ..i havent heard of abetter choice for the money
Ken, John, all, I just got a month trial of esignal v6. I've poured over the help files but can't find an answer to what is a fairly basic question regarding charts. If I take a 1 min interval chart and zoom in enough to trade, I keep having to mess around trying to keep the most current bars on page. IOW, the plots go off the right side of the screen and the only way I can get them is to zoom out, then do the whole zoom in thing again, etc. over and over throughout the trading day. Is there any way to get the chart to "auto scroll" in order to keep the most current bars on screen or is this something I have to do manually using the method above? I'm really enjoying esignal except for the problem I having...is there a way around this? Thanks for the help!! Best regards, Jim
I just signed up for the trial and downloaded the software. My first impressions are that it is not as flexible as qcharts. These are the immediate things I find lacking: 1. Charts - Trend lines are too simplistic. No way to change the colors or size of the lines - necessary for S/R monitoring. Also, can't find a way to change the background colors on the chart. Can't overlay the analytics on the chart where the price is being displayed. I didn't see Bollinger bands, but suspect all the pieces are there to build by hand. Sizing/Ranging of charts crude. 2. L2 (Market Maker) panel seems to lack color coding of the time/sales - (bid/ask/between/hod/lod). Since it is after-market, I can't tell about how it works during the market 3. No portfolio feature (allowing entry of long/short overnight positions, showing cost, size, market value, commissions, date the trade was entered, etc.) 4. No pre-configured anything. 5. Linking of panels is crude or not possible. 6. Overall - no way to determine if the application is waiting on data or what the data rate is to the application from the servers or what the servers addresses are - so that you may further monitor the data rate. Essential if the application is designed to wait hard for the requested data - if the data never comes or is delayed, the PC hangs. I should note that I had to ctrl-alt-del the application as it was waiting on data and essentially froze my pc until it received the data it was waiting on, which never came of at least was over 180 seconds. I'm sure there are some things that are better, but they haven't jumped out at me yet. Somebody tell me what I'm missing?
BigED Thank You for Your first opinion. doesnt sound so good. The qcharts and raven features, I really like best, but if the data is coming in like the last weeks, I have to change the provider. http://www.tradestationpro.com use S&P Comstock as data supplier. I think I will take the trial there or I will check S&P Comstock directly. I talked yesterday to somebody who is using realtick3 and he was fine yesterday, while I had no data with qcharts and raven. anyone using S&P Comstock ? best of luck eli
Hummm... i guess i better put in my 2 cents to BigEds comments.. >>1. Charts - Trend lines are too simplistic. No way to change the colors or size of the lines - necessary for S/R monitoring. Also, can't find a way to change the background colors on the chart. Can't overlay the analytics on the chart where the price is being displayed. I didn't see Bollinger bands, but suspect all the pieces are there to build by hand. Sizing/Ranging of charts crude. Trendlines cant adjust, can change background color by right mouse clicking on chart, bollinger bands??? i see them, maybe the lines are the same color as your background... dunno... sizing... i must admitted they suck... analytic values... click on the info button.. >>2. L2 (Market Maker) panel seems to lack color coding of the time/sales - (bid/ask/between/hod/lod). Since it is after-market, I can't tell about how it works during the market hummm again.. i have no probs... i can see above and below the best bid/ask (color wise), best bid as a different color, custom tier color levels, times and sales??? again, user color configurable (EXCEPT on the level window). I prefer to use the T/S window in addition to the lvlII T/S. The ticker version of the T/S is very powerful, and configurable... wanna see big blocks only?? GSCO/MSCO trade activity... bah blah blah... >>3. No portfolio feature (allowing entry of long/short overnight positions, showing cost, size, market value, commissions, date the trade was entered, etc.) again..... click on File/NEW/Portfolio window... BAMM!! enter your symbol,shares, date of trade, commission, hit enter... current value, gain(points), $gain, %gain, time and date of trade... >>4. No pre-configured anything. i have a shi* load by clicking on Layout... >>5. Linking of panels is crude or not possible. false again... i have my quote screen auto linked to lvlII, T/S, 1min,3min graphs, 5day chart, and more.. just by clickin on the symbol(s) i have on my quote window i can flip between stocks... >>6. Overall - no way to determine if the application is waiting on data or what the data rate is to the application from the servers or what the servers addresses are - so that you may further monitor the data rate. Essential if the application is designed to wait hard for the requested data - if the data never comes or is delayed, the PC hangs. I should note that I had to ctrl-alt-del the application as it was waiting on data and essentially froze my pc until it received the data it was waiting on, which never came of at least was over 180 seconds. hummm.... datarate is more dependent on your line feed... i gots a standard cable box, running a laptop for chatroom, celeron 300mzh runing quotetracker,email, and general web browsing, main esignal box - 400mhz celeron running a proxy server,esignal,omnitrader, sometimes tradestation, with 3 display monitors, cybercorps frontend all on 96Megs of RAM without a hangup even when the feed is inactive... with all this load, i have yet to crash... (knocking on wooden table now )... NOW for My pet peeve with esignal.... 1. PRICE!!!!! 2. could use more analytics... 3. PRICE!!!!! why do i stay with them???? Alot of the major software packages support esignals feed, and if you have access to evaluate many of them, not having to juggle between vendors saves time and trouble... But!!! only you can decide what works for you.... Happy trading
To all, but esp. Ken. I'm in the process of choosing a direct access broker and I'll probably go for their higher end software. Do you really need 3rd party data feeds? considering that 1- I intend initially to trade slower moving listed stocks only. 2- I'm getting really into TA and my trading system will be based mostly on this in the future. How much of a difference does it make, especially when you're paying more per month for the sevices of the broker (unless you're a hyperactive trader.....) Mr ED
Only you can truely justify its worth... I have esignal in addition to cybercorp's level II, as a way to insure that the prices are in sync, as well as the ease to demo new softwares that can feed off of esignal. If your trading style dictates using S/R without level II, so be it. No one method of trading is better than others, its boils down to what is your preference... cheers
Hi - for what it's worth, my first year trading I did fine learning with a datek/daslinger and quotetracker.com type rookie/newbie setup, did well enough with it to migrate to a higher end platform... if I had it all to do over again, I would have: 1) used win2k and 3-5 monitors from the start 2) used a dat broker (eg cyber/tradescape/mbtrading/ib whoever) from the start 3) learned chart patterns better from the start - eg buy 2-day high breakouts, short 2-day low breakdowns, hear me talk about it at tim bourquins http://www.traderinterviews.com site (click stock traders) re esignal, it's overall an excellent platform, I can afford whatever I want to use, I like it best, and wouldnt daytrade with anything else, but plenty of traders do fine with a realtick III and sortwiz type setup, so like the earlier post said, try out a few of them yourself... see my rig at the http://www.daytrading-university.com/6mon.gif page... it's what I trade professionally from, works great.. to answer the question, theres a lot you need to learn to daytrade correctly, I'd rather see you spend $80/month on a good 3rd party data feed than handicap yourself with a lower end platform and spend more than that on bad/missed trades... having sensitive 1-min charts is critically important ... a make it or break it difference... also, dont trade garbage like CIEN/JNPR, especially when starting...rookie chat rooms post trades on those so they can try and look good doing 3/4 point on a $70 stock, junk trading... focus instead on semis: VTSS LLTC AMAT KLAC NVLS at first, or even the tier 1s for order routing experience, eg CSCO SUNW INTC MSFT etc.. experienced traders try the INTU GMST GSPN RMBS BRCD HGSI MLNM BEAS etc with more volatility good trading... ken calhoun dtu
Hey Ken, Cheers for the advice, got a couple of q's. in response. Apart form the fact that you're trading platform looks more hectic than the flight deck of a 747 or the bridge of the enterprise (Picard's not Kirk's!) do you really recommend multi monitors from the start ? I suppose it's not really an expensive extra. Also how long did it take you to become profitable and how much did you lose during the learning curve? I'm trying to allocate my funds correctly, I appreciat it's different for everyone, just trying to get a balanced opinion. ED