Should I move to Tradestation ?

I use Multicharts with IB for trade execution (I need a maximum of RT quotes from 20 different "vehicles" at the same time) and Tradestation for research and morning scans and for one specific live strategy. I think, that Tradestation is much better than Multicharts. And IB much better that Tradestation brokerage.
Easylanguage is really Tradestation language and they offer years and years of data. Regarding execution, price, fees, margin fees... IB is just the best.
So, I made the move from Tradestation to IB and Multicharts (years ago) and then decided to use them all!

 

Thanks Fonz for that valuable feedback !!

Which data subscriptions are you using with IB/Multicharts ?
For me, it's looking like sticking with DTN IQFeed is the best way to go......too costly for professional data subscriptions on IB. More importantly, DTN has historical data in TICKS....as my strats work on a tick count (200,400,1000) basis instead of a time basis. To me, that is huge.

 

You are welcome Syswizard.

I use IB for data as well. Everyday I scan with Tradestation first. Then, I set-up 5 to 20 charts with Multicharts. I add 1 strategy per chart (no indicators). With Multicharts, my trading is short term (between 1 and 5 days) and I use daily charts (221 bars per charts). I usually avoid the IB data request limits... And wait few minutes when that happens, specially if I didn't respect the 15 sec. between requests (not great).
interactivebrokers.com/en/software/api/apiguide/api/historical%20data%20limitations

I use Tradestation for anything more demanding, which is most of the time for research.
I do have RT strategies open in 3 charts (minutes and ticks) with Tradestation.

If the quality of data is very important to you, you should avoid any broker data (IB or Tradestation) and use a RT data provider like CQG and DTN.
I tried in the past a tick by tick RT data provider, and that didn't add anything to the profitability of my trading, probably because of my style and strategies. On the other hand, a good broker for executions (fast with low fees) helped me a lot. And for my Tradestation strategies, being able to trade futures from down town Chicago (with a VPS) helped as well to reduce my slippage.

 

I worked a few years with TS2000i. What was the debacle????

 

The developers of the initial release got PO'd and left the company.
As tons of bugs started to surface, they brought in a consultant to look at the internals of the application, mainly the coding. When he saw what a mess it was, he made this huge estimate of the cost to repair it.
That's when the decision was made to scrap it and go with a service-oriented version.
This all proves how complex a trading platform can be.

 

The only problem I had (in 2005 because after that I stopped using it) was the charts freezing and cpu constantly at 100%. The cause was the fact that this program was written for single core cpu's. The result was that, when the volume of the ES grew, the real time calculations could not follow anymore. Too many tciks a second. That's when is gave up 2000i. But for the rest I never had any problem.
Modern programs use more cores and the smart ones even let you define the rate of recalculation.

 

I've never had an issue w/ TS

But I don't use it for algo trading either

RN

 

I am very happy with NinjaTrader - allows you to do some very funky stuff. C # easy to learn and very flexible.

 

While I use tradelink to execute trades in Sterling API, I use Amibroker and Multicharts.net for research. I was very impressed with NinjaTrader as its extremely fast, but opted for MC since I had formerly been a Tradestation user.

 

Algomatizing a solid approach is no easy task. It requires mathematization of market mechanics. I can't even count how many times I almost gave up on the idea