Why beat yourself up trying to use Sierra charts or IB charts? They are clearly not designed for custom spreads. Just use Esignal. You can pullup calendars, flys, condors and boxes very quickly and easily.
Thank you all, lots of good input here. i960, thanks for posting all that detailed info. I have found another possibility in Sierra chart if you want to create a spread with 3 legs. You can do with this with the Spread-3 Chart study: http://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?page=doc/doc_TechnicalStudiesReference.html#s53 But it still seems that Sierra and IB make this overly complicated and limited in its functions, so I will try both esignal and cqg to see what works best for me.
I did some more work on this and was able to get the high precision stuff setup with the Spread - Butterfly study: You should be able to just load that chartbook and it should work. If it doesn't, check the symbols used (I use IB) for charts 1-4 (GBS, GBM, GBL, GBS). Chartbook here (probably has to be put in C:\SierraChart\Data): http://mercury.signalpunk.com/~clayne/et/fly_precision.cht
Mainly it's a money issue, IMO. Some of us already have IB + SC and other brokers and don't need yet another thing they need to pay for each month. Data is already expensive enough as it is.
And here's a CL jul/aug/sep fly using the "high precision" chart setup: http://mercury.signalpunk.com/~clayne/et/fly_precision_cl.cht That should be enough to get SC people going on an inter-commodity and intra-commodity setup. The main parts that are important are the various multipliers used within the spread - butterfly study and the diff studies on the separate legs. The intra-setup also has continuous contracts disabled.
Ok I understand. I use Esignal on demand for $55pm. The data is 10 mins delayed which is fine for swing and position trading as you have the live spread price with your broker. I rarely day trade anymore but you can add in whatever exchange you need, granted if you need them all it adds up. Another alternative is to open a free xtrader account with amp with $500. You then have xcharts and free data to chart whatever you want. Then execute your spreads elsewhere. I dont know if they have minimum trading requirements but you can scalp out the occasional treasury tick to satisfy them. GL
i960, good work on those SC spread charts ! Thanks alot for your input. Londonkid, good idea with the small AMP account and getting the free Xtrader But I think I will just switch to CQG Integrated Client with one of my accounts, it seems to really have all the tools one could ever need :-D
Or just trade through AMP. I'm all for freeloading when it is necessary but in this case it isn't called for. There are only two brokers that offer soft dollared TT and I'd hate to see it go away.