Since you mentioned DailyFX, I assume you are a FXCM customer. Definitely try out the free chart tools listed in the site. They probably have all the basic tools you need.
I agree with John. Neoticker could be a powerful program. When it works. I agree with John, just getting the data to work is problematic. Too bad. Achilles are you referring to Aspen Graphics? If you are Aspen is a top flight program. Nearly non existant scanning. But it can do anything else. Not certain how important that is to you. However, you need the right data feed. Reuters feed is probably the best one. Then perhaps Comstock. But DBC, parent company of Esignal now runs them and their data seems to have suffered. I would avoid the other feeds. In the next quarter they will accept Bloomberg data. Enough said. Aspen is not cheap. $200/month plus the feed ($200) plus exchanges. CQG is very good. But even more expensive. But their data is second probably only to BB. No Asian Futures or I'd probably use them. Tradestation platform if you make whatever number of trades is free. Better than most. Nice to have execution integrated. I've used all these and more. So if you have any questions let me know. Im currently testing Metastock Quotecenter with Bridge(Reuters) feed. We'll see how that goes.
Good luck with Metastock. I gave up on them after they were purchased by Reuters. You are forced to use Reuters data (marginal) and just wait until you have a problem and need to talk to tech support. Also make sure you are aware of the bugs in the System Tester. I last looked into it a couple of years ago so they might be fixed. Definitely check the Yahoo Metastock groups before you make a decision to buy it. I am now using Amibroker and I am very happy with it. There is a bit of a learning curve for the formula language so it will help if you have some programming skills.
I've used Metastock RT/Pro for nearly 15 years. If you are primarily a "chart player" [which I highly recommend as a style], there's none better. (For charts, Metastock is excellent. If you want to run all the fancy-schmancy bells and whistles, studies, exotic formulae, autobacktest, etc, I can't comment for never having used them much. I tested a few things but never found anything better than playing chart patterns.) I started using Metastock when the only alternative was to archive data on my HD [rather than running from eSignal server.. Data on Demand Cache], and I don't have *any* of the problems others complain of. I currently open nearly 50 live charts on startup and my CPU usage runs 10-15%.
Ensign will do all that. It's $39.95 a month. Data feed is extra. If you have an IB account, it will use that data (up to 100 symbols). www.ensignsoftware.com