Looked into storm chaser and it seems that it can only scan 1000 stocks. 1st alert may be cluncky, but it works I used it for 2 years and had minimal problems , You need win2k , 256 ram and min 1.2 ghz
First Alert used to be a decent program. Unfortunately the company's insistance on creating new features before the bugs are worked out of the old ones has really pissed off a lot of people. I also now hear word that their funds have begun to run low...not suprising considering the recent progression of their product. My theory is that they are desperately tying to come up with new features to generate new cash flow to pay their mounting bills. The resulting effect on their product has been dreadful. For example, there hasn't been a new standalone version distributed since LAST DECEMBER!!! I know they're trying to migrate to a "thin" version but this thin version is lacking in several respect, and their existing standalone customers are getting royally screwed in the process. (By the way, my First Alert crashed 2-3 times a week for two years--without a fix--so I readily admit that I have a serious problem with this company.)
firstalert is realtime, not delayed by 30 seconds. perhaps there is a lag of a couple seconds or so, but not much at all. the reliability is the only major problem with it. well, then there is price of course. i use the thin version and i have problems with it pretty much every day, several times. it goes out for a few minutes at a time. once in a while, it goes out much longer. tradetrek and the traderprofile alerts are not comparable in my opinion. i've used them both. the filter capabilities of those two programs are not even close. for me, they're useless. that said, i still use it, have no plans to switch, and have learned to deal with the instability. you can program anything you can possibly think of. there is nothing out there that can match it that i am aware of. i heard people mention insight, but there is nothing else.
dafugginman, In FA, can I do a scan on the entire market? That is, I want to be able to scan the entire NYSE, the entire option chain for every stock for every exchange, etc? In other words, do I have to say, I am interested in these stocks, tell me when so and so occurs, or can I say, I am interested in any stock that trades 1M shares a day and it has crossed it's 200 day MA and it will show me all of them? nitro
How much do you want to program? The reason I ask is that you can do everything you need to do with Townsend Analytic's Toolkit API (which uses RealTick data). See: http://www.toolkit.taltrade.com There is a learning curve for the API - but you can do almost anything you want with it. Carl
Carl, 1) the link above does not work for me 2) Do you know if the TA feed is a broadcast feed? By that I mean that it sends in one "spurt" the entire market at that time. This is as opposed to feeds that just send whatever you have up in a chart, etc. SPComstock, Hyperfeed and ILX are examples of broadcast feeds. Most are not... nitro
1) My bad about the link - I meant: http://toolkit.taltrade.com Guess I'm used to typing "www" all the time. 2) I'm not sure the TAL API is a "broadcast feed" according to your definition, but I think so. You can set up an application that will receive streaming tick changes for as many securities as you want. Whenever there is a change in value for something you are watching for (like bid/ask price), the data will stream in on a per stock basis. I.e., if you are looking at 1,000 stocks but only MSFT's bid has changed, you will only receive notification that MSFT's bid has changed. You can monitor every single stock trading with the TAL API - you aren't limited to whatever symbols you are currently looking at in a chart. And when I say "stock," I mean any security type. Hope this helps, Carl
Carl, Then this is not a broadcast feed. A broadcast feed sends out the entire market on every pulse. BTW, I assume when you say "...., if you are looking at 1,000 stocks ..." you mean that I have to tell the API which stocks I am interested in? In a broadcast feed, you get the whole thing whether you want it or not, and then you sift through what you want. DTN satellite is the least expensive [and worst] example of a broadcast feed. nitro
Ok, now I understand. You are correct - it is not a broadcast feed. You can specify something like "I want all the bid/ask updates for every stock on the NYSE" and you don't have to specify every stock (just "NYSE"). Carl