I've been looking at quotetracker and have been about to go for it, except for some shortcomings. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Most important, if I understand correctly, even with the pay version the maximium number of days for, say 60 minute intraday bars is ten? I need much more than that. No opentick support, even as a backup to a live feed? No facility to display empty time periods (for accurate charting through sometimes thin overnight trading on minute bars)? Cannot properly handle globex emini hours? ie. the 3.15 close on Fridays (4.30 on the other weekdays)
Definitely no opentick support. I asked their support group about that and they don't do opentick and have no plans to do so.
With a TD Ameritrade account you get 20 days intraday. I just looked at an overnight chart of EMDU8 and there is proper empty space when no trades occur. Handles globex emini hours just fine for me.
Jerry Medved kindly and quickly replied to me privately, as he said he cannot (not allowed?) post publicly, I trust he won't mind my posting his response... "Paulxx I cannot post publicly so will answer here. Max # of days on regular registered version is 10. If you have a TD Ameritrade account and use it in QT (even if you use another one as well, such as IB), then its max 20 no opentick. Display empty time periods - should work. If you have a problem, please indicate exact situation emini hours - QT definitely handles all timeframes except early close on a particular days. For Globex, there is a CME Regular Hours timeframe available instead of CME Globex. Click on the yellow clock button on the chart toolbar to select it." Thanks for the response, here's mine: Got to have 30 or more days at least for large dense 60 minute charts which I use a lot (more detail than daily). Couldn't find an option to display empty bars/periods. For example in the early hours the YM or even the ES may not have any trading for 1 minute on several occasions. I think that means there will be no bar/s for that time period/s? ..... which can slightly throw out trend lines etc. later into the day. An option to fill the bar with a dash at the last price keeps a linear time axis. Blank would be OK too. This could also clash with the early Friday close on globex - if an option to display empty periods was available 3.30-4.30 on Friday would be filled incorrectly, throwing intraday charts out. Globex hours for eminis are 5-3.15pm S-T and 3.30-4.30 M-T, so there is no last 3.30-4.30 session on Fridays.
Another helpful PM from JM came in seems like jeb9999 is correct and a blank space is displayed - that is actually better than both multicharts (worked in v2 stopped in v3)and (until v7 later this year), Ninja. Holidays and half days are handled by QT much better than these also. But if QT can't cope with early closing on one day, then it must think that eminis close on Fridays at 4.30 like the other days. How then is blank data between 3.15 and 4.30 handled on the Friday? Are blank intraday bars displayed then or not? Still, I could put up with everything as it is except 10 days for hourly bars. 15 min and below would be OK.
If you set the time option to Globex you will see that QT does a good job of handling times when the financial markets are closed, as well as they have specific and unique time settings for all of the other financial, currency, notes and commodity futures. Ideally you need to give it a good test run to figure-out whether it can fullfill your trading needs or not. IMHO it's one of the best softwares out for trading. Good day.
Took another look at the globex time settings and it is not handled well considering the ES is maybe the biggest market out there. The 'rollover' time ie. end of trading day, beginning of another is set to 3.30pm. That means the Sunday opening is set to 3.30, but it actually opens at 5pm. So to chart the ES or YM you will get blank bars added over the weekend (3.30 - 4.30, Sunday). Add that to the 10 day limit which is inexplicable and not enough even for 15 min charts on occasion. So I'm left basically continuing with Ninjatrader, it looks good and will be adding 'display empty time periods' before the end of year. Sierra, Ensign, and Amibroker look ugly/amateur to me (fonts, icons design etc.), - that is important if you are looking at something a lot. They also have a lot more than I need - just good solid charts and basic studies. Multicharts are way overpriced after doubling and then doubling again in the last year or two, and offers little more than Ninja. Wouldn't even use a free or cracked version. It also adds an extra hour bar at 4.30 for no reason and have said on the forum they will not fix the 'empty period' bug even though the tick option is there and was working in version 2. If I had paid for it I would be angry. A pity that after all this time Supercharts/Tradestation still seem not to have been much improved upon - for basic charting. Quotetracker is pretty good and I would have moved over except for the shortcomings.
As previous people have indicated, if you have a TDAmeritrade account open with a minimum of $2,000 you receive 20 days of intra-day data. P.S. While Hourly charts arguably give more detail than Daily . . . Why would anyone want to have 30 days of hourly charts available for display? How does that help you? How can that even be displayed on a monitor with any significant value whatsoever?
It seems people get emotionally attached to their software........ I've heard of it but I thought it was only mac or linux people? Anyone else not have $2000 to waste on a non-futures broker when all you trade is futures? The next part appears to be a rhetorical question? Or is it an admission of ignorance? Glad you are happy with QT and your own strategy.