I've been playing around with NeoTicker for the past couple of days. It's certainly an interesting piece of software. Not intuitive at all, but if one takes the time, some neat features are discovered. Or, in the worst case, one might actually browse through the manual and go through some tutorials (remember, when all else fails, read the manual) I'm disappointed in their limited "demo trial". I could only open two charts! That's the limit! Heck, I can even make two IB charts look good if I take the time and give it a full monitor. IB shows it's ugly Java platform limitations when you open many charts and spread them across monitors. That's when you realize it's a serious resource hog and even the fastest computers come to a screeching halt begging for mercy. If you're experienced with NeoTicker, please give your feedback. I've seen feedback on it's programmability, back testing, automating, etc, but what about just good charting, not eating up computer resources when you have 4 monitors worth of charts, and manual trading? And even with 2 charts, it seems awfully slow in pulling up charts for various symbols. The manual said something about caching at the beginning of the day to speed things up, but that seems absurd for daytrading purposes. Is it really that slow or is it the IB feed affecting it? I didn't even have it going back too many days in pulling in the data (3 minute charts for 10 days). Any feedback is appreciated on NeoTicker. It's a shame it costs $200 just to get started and try it out for a month in full swing.
Have found NeoTicker to be excellant for having a number of charts open and not being affected by large surges of volume or lags... since it is multi threaded it handles that very well... but support is quite slow since its done by forum or slower by email... its best if the user is very tech savy...
As a long time NeoTicker User I would say that the slowness is caused by trying to use IB as a data feed. You need to use a true data feed like eSignal or one of the supported feeds listed on their web-site. My workspace consists of four 24" monitors, utilizes lots of NeoTicker charts and trading systems and it loads quickly. The software is extremely powerful and most Users will only scratch the surface. It does have a significant learning curve but almost any software that offers more than a few features will require a lot of time and effort in order to become proficient. I'd recommend that you post some questions on their support forum.
Absolutely agree here. NeoTicker may feel slow when you are trying to do something crazy like a loading 5 years of 1-minute data into a chart but for what the Traderham is trying to do loading data from disk cahce should take less than a second. What happens is by default NeoTicker loads 4 last trading days of data from the data feed whenver a chart with a symbol is opened or symbol added or replaced. With IB as a data source it's quite a slow proces. If you want to speed things up, there are 2 ways: 1) From the top menu open Manager->Cache. On tab Data Integrity select "Disable". Now Neoticker will request data from the datafeed only if it doesn't have the data already. 2) From the top menu open Manager->Cache. On tab RAM Cache click button Options. On tab Smart Tools select "Insert as Locked Symbol." Click OK. Now whenever you load a symbol in a chart or quote window, NeoTicker will keep tracking updates to this symbol and will not need to request market data when this symbol is viewed again. It is also possible to start tracking a list of symbols whenever NeoTicker starts up. Note IB has a limit on how frequently a user can request historical data. So, depending on how many symbols you choose, loading historical data on some of them may be rejected by IB. Anyway, on RAM Cache tab click options, on tab Preload Symbol List select the list of symbols you want to load on start-up, click OK. At one point I used NeoTicker with a few dozen charts open and just keeping them open never resulted in CPU load more than a few per cent. I second this suggestion. Even the question in the opening post is worth re-posting there.
Thank you all for your suggestions. The problem is that I sometimes daytrade on breaking news about some company. So there is no way I can load all companies charts ahead of time. And the wait is just too long with NeoTicker. The same charts come up much faster on IB charts than using the IB feed for NeoTicker. And when I daytrade, I have 5 charts with 5 different time frames. One is weekly, the other daily, one on 60 minute, one on 8 minute, and another on 3 minute. I also load studies such as daily and weekly pivots. I have a feeling all quick trading opportunities would be lost due to the extreme wait. As an example, I tried to load a 15 minute chart going back 25 days and it took 30 seconds! And that's only one chart. And it absolutely sucks on how the demo version doesn't allow any more than 2 charts open within a group. And you can only open one group!!! Is it even possible to have multiple groups open at the same time. One thing I really miss from Tradestation is the ability to have multiple "workspaces" open at the same time. Using 4 monitors, I would have one workspace per monitor. I would like to have one group per monitor with NeoTicker (if possible). Since I also have e-signal (which I want to get rid of), I tried setting NeoTicker to get the data from e-signal instead of IB. The same chart that took 30 seconds to load with IB took only 10 seconds to load with e-signal as the data provider. While 30 seconds is not acceptable, 10 seconds is workable. What still worries me is that it's still only 1 chart. What about 4 monitors filled with charts? Why is it that some platform/vendors don't even make you worry about "days to load"? E-signal, Tradestation, etc, don't even have these settings (I could be wrong). You just load up a chart and scroll and everything fills. Why do some other platforms make you jump through hoops? I really like some of the functionality of NeoTicker's charts, but wish they didn't have all the downside I discuss above.
I just loaded a 1-minute chart with length of 6 months in 4 to 5 seconds. A 500-tick chart (length 100 days) didnt take much longer. All data was stored in local cache tho. Its reasonably fast with locally stored data. When Neo has to request data which it has not already stored, its obviously limited by the data-provider (or Neos implementation of the interface to the data-provider). With the IB api (which Neoticker has to use) you have to be really careful on how much requests you send concurrently, it will cut you off without notice if you send too many, its slow. IIRC, eSignal is the fastest for Neoticker, when it comes to request historical data. You can set the number of concurrent data requests in the options. Not sure what is reccomended for IB, i suspect 1. I would ask on the neoticker forum whats a good setting for esignal. Personally, i have only a limited number of symbols i follow. I preload those upon program-start. Charts for those load pretty much instant. Besides charts, the thing i use most are quote-tables and dynamic tabels. I dont know any other software that does this as good.
If you follow suggestions from my earlier post, it will take some time to load the first chart but other charts with the same symbol will load near instantly. If you follow a smal number of symbols, you can take time to revew (by loading a chart) each symbol in the morning and after that the symbol will load pretty much instantly when you load it again. Last time I checked you could open multiple groups in a demo (maximum 2 windows per group though). Then you can go through all open groups fast by clicking PageUp / PageDown.
How about the paid version? Can you open multiple groups at the same time? Meaning one group on one monitor and another group on a 2nd monitor? From what I can see from my demo, I can only open 2 charts total. I can have one chart in one group and another chart in a 2nd group, and no more. Or 2 charts in one group and no charts in the 2nd group. It's really limiting. And I appreciate your comments on how to speed things up. I have no problems with data in the cache. But I'm not a basket trader. I can see caching is very helpful to those who follow the same basket of symbols. But every day, I look upon many lists to find daytrade candidates; such as stocks with high option volume, high volatility due to news, biggest decliners/winners, etc. I would have to have the entire NYSE, Nasdaq, and AMEX in my cache! I don't want to give up on NeoTicker. I love their dynamic cell setups! Very friggin cool! The question is do I want to pitch out $200 to really test their software ($100 setup and 100/month). Their demo is extremely limited to make any decisions.
In NeoTicker "group" is a list of charts that you can see on the screen(s) simultaneously. When you switch groups, one group gets hidden and another group appears on the screen. You can see a few groups open simultaneously so that charts (and indicators) are updated in all groups... but you can see only one group at a time. A chart can belong to more than one group. I am not aware of the limit on the number of simultaneously displayd charts. 10-20 charts displayed on 2-3 monitors seems a very common usage scenario. If you screen stocks for incresed volume etc, you might want to do this using NeoTicker too. I know people track a few hundred stocks at a time. It's mainly a datafeed limitations... and large number of simultaneous symbols doesn't come free. If you track all these stocks you can as well keep 1-minute data in cache for fast charting What features are there in the full version that aren' in the demo? I am aware only of 2: the number of windows is limited to 2 in demo and demo can't send orders to a broker. If your concern is the performance (it can handle 2 charts, can it handle 20?), best ask a question on NeoTicker forums. For example, there is a hardware thread. You could post a brief idea of what you are trying to do and ask how powerful a PC you would need. If you want to test what a full-blown set-up with a large number of charts would subjectively feel like, I am not sure tehre is a solution here. Maybe you can E-mail Tickwuest and ask if they'd give you a full-version to drive for a couple of days (as an exception)... or they could send you a screenshot of a similar chart set-up.