I've been with SC for well over 10 years. I strictly am trading Asian markets. I used to use their offered HKex data feed but when I asked them to add extra symbols offered by HXex they gave me an extremely rude reply, basically telling me to go somewhere else if I want to trade Asian markets. The level of rudeness and anger from the SC staffer (probably Anthony because he is mentally unstable) towards a customer was shocking and astounding. I really couldn't believe it. They are happy to say they offer HKex but they don't fully offer all the exchange symbols because they are too lazy to contact barcharts about the symbol and setup a symbol mapping. The symbol I wanted trades more volume per day than the entire small exchange, but they will put time and effort into connecting to that. I felt like they are being intentionally deceitful saying they offer HKex but they don't offer all of it in reality. The same mentally unstable SC staffer also said they were going to scrap their Barcharts feed in a couple months. Then when a couple months came along they said they were not going to scrap it. Their mentally unstable staff will frequently say something out of anger and then backtrack on it later. This leaves me (us) the customer potentially stuck between a rock and a hard place. In my case I had already put the effort into changing brokers from IB to a CQG capable broker and in the end because of their flipflopping mentally unstable public platform directions, this considerable effort of mine was for naught. I am not going to pay any price increase for services such as their data feed to US markets that I have no need for. It is the worst timezone on the planet for me to trade anything in the US. Some people are too lazy to stand up for a principle of what is the right thing to do, that is fine, it is their choice. But I will not.
I completely respect this position and think we should all be voting with our wallets. But what will you go to? I guess Ninja charts can in some ways be similar, but I could never get the hang of it. I also tried Multicharts many years ago, and that didn't go too well. For some reason, Sierra Charts match the way my brain works and the amount of customization is insane. For me, its kind of like Lego. All the new sets are kind of boring because you build one thing with it, and sure, it looks like a nice fire truck, but if your Lego set just comes with blocks in all sizes and colors, you can literally do anything with it. I'm also a very light user. I just have a bunch of lines on my chart that I program in like overnight levels and previous day levels, a bunch of different time frames, and multiple instruments, and that's it. I have it set up to copy some stuff from some charts to other charts. I also have it set to match scrolling positions between some charts but not others. (ie. all ES charts match scroll position, but all NQ charts follow their own scroll position) All of this is simple stuff, but I'm not sure if other platforms could give me this much control. Some charts also use candles, others use bars. I change the background color for some charts, and therefore need different colors for the bars or candles. And then I even have a 2nd instance open which uses the SC delayed data feed to show other markets that I don't day trade. SC allows me to do all this. Luckily I don't have to talk to support though because it sounds like a nightmare.
Years ago I used Equis/Meta Stock (multi time winner of "Best Software" from Stocks and Commodities magazine... cost ~ $1,695) with eSignal data. Then Reuters bought out Equis and changed the data options to support only Reuters Data... which was much more expensive. (Reuters offered data in "modules" for different parts of the overall marketplace... each module cost $180/month.. so if you're trading various instruments, data costs + exchange fees could get very high for a retail screen jockey.) So I went looking for an alternative. I tried MultiCharts and Rithmic R Trader Pro and didn't like either. Then I tried Sierra and found it to function very much like Meta Stock (for my use, I've found only one feature of Meta Stock that I like which Sierra doesn't have... and several that Sierra does better)... and is much to my liking in spite of the management's attitude and hubris. Besides, I wouldn't want to waste time trying out new packages with all the fumbling around, looking for settings only to decide "I don't like this one, so I'll try another"... and who knows how many software packages I'd have to sift through to find one I like? Lots of annoyance. My $.02
I've been on the receiving end of one of the infamous rants and I can say I enjoyed it. Something about Bill Gates or illuminati I can't remember. But it was hilarious, and gives character to the company.
You mentioned AMP, so you trade futures. Give a try to Quantower that is free and good enough to daytrade The only limitation they have right now is that you can't use trailing stops with CQG OCO orders are server side
Quantower has strong ties to Ukraine. Usage may bring geopolitical risk to your trading infrastructure. I am aware of at least 3 platforms, free or paid, with strong ties to the current warring nations. Just something to consider. Not mentioned as a political statement. https://www.quantower.com/
email received from Quantower: "Regarding the military invasion of the Russian forces in Ukraine, we can say that the Quantower team is currently working in its normal state. All of the back-end infrastructure (licenses and accounts servers) is located outside of Ukraine, mainly in Germany & USA, is working fine and can even proceed to work autonomously." That being said, you have CQG web desktop and CQG Android app for backup (free). Or you can always running live for the same account (FOR MONITORING PURPOSE...) another CQG platform like CQG Qtrader, CQG Trader or CQG Desktop paying only 10$ month + exchange fees (double credentials). Same for Sierra Chart and the other TP
Thanks for the suggestions folk. I like the SC platform (as I was an early adopter (version 37 IIRC and wrote tens of thousands of lines of code, which I gave away in open dlls) but have become increasingly concerned about aspects of their operation. I'm going to take a look at alternatives. I'm starting "simple" using a python framework to expose the data that's relevant to my trading plans. Not sure if it'll just be a QT gui exposing key numbers or I'll add a small chart to display this data (m15, m5 on m1) to prompt my intuition. I'd prefer to just enhance TWS and CQG charting rather than move to another platform but I have been watching Quantower particularly as they have indicated they will move to native Linux operation.