Their $tick is even more inscrutable than usual. pivots around 10,000 , every day? wtf Nice site though for other things.
They do have another symbol for charting the $TICK in conventional manner - $TICX https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/$TICX/interactive-chart It is also available via their onDemand API (requires data subscription)
I compared the values of "NYSE-TICK" on TWS with "$TICK" on ThinkOrSwim. They track each other quite closely, though the values seem to be about 30-50 apart all the time. Based on eyeballing the values for a few minutes, ToS appears to be updating every 2-3 seconds. TWS appears to be updating about every second. The $tick values on bachart.com appear to track right in there with ToS and TWS. Clearly none of these sources are providing $tick in real time. If you think about it this makes sense since $tick is the number of up-ticks and down-ticks for about 10,000 stocks on NYSE. To provide real time $tick would require the same type of data service as any tick data provider such as IQFeed. ToS, TWS and barchart are all providing sampled snapshots of $tick from some common high speed source. As a result $tick will be a very noisy on any platform and not particularly useful except for a general market sentiment reading.
Comparing poo with poo means you always get poo. It might smell a bit different, look a bit chunkier or sloppier but it's still poo.
Well, no need to be gross. My point was that a fast-changing value can only be represented imperfectly on a normal retail platform. This was demonstrated by examining 3 platforms. If you're saying $tick isn't particularly useful, I must agree.
There will be minor differences among providers. I don't know about TOS, but I have compared it with eSignal and Barchart. TWS is not even remotely resembling the other sources. The situation is worse when the breadth is lop sided. If you can post a comparative chart (TOS & TWS), it will be useful. My understanding is that $TICK is computed from about 3000 NYSE listed stocks. Here is Barchart for Sep 1 Here is TWS On Sep 1, $TICK never prints positive after about 11 EST. There is some kind of error in calculation that seems to be cumulative through the session. Does TOS $TICK look like this? Whether it is useful or not depends on the trader and the way it is used. It is/was key part of my tool set used in VST trades. I have put trading index futures on hold and focusing on other products for now, till I get settled on a new data source.
geosing, its totally hosed. Ignore the idiots here trying to defend it. And they know about it for WEEKS. A disgrace.
stevegee58's observation is TOATALLY wrong and fabricated. Another loser. The diff has been running as much as 500 points between tws and tos
Sadly some people only acknowledge opinions and observations that are in line with what they already believe.