Hi! I'd like to get your opinion about what a newbie should use to trade CBOT and CME futures. Basically I liked tradestation the best, it has the most analytics, can program my own indicators, alerts, etc. The bad side is that the platform fee seems to be around $100 which is too much for just to muck around as a newbie. I'm also considering Interactive Brokers, where the integrated account is a really nice thing, however their TWS software seems to be really crappy (charting is very lame, very few indicators, etc.) Basically I'd like to do intraday scalps (5-15 mins) and swing trades (4-5 days). Maybe it would be a good idea to use IB as an execution service and use some real-time data from somewhere else? I also saw Esignal, but tradestation was the one I liked the most. What is the cheapest way to use tradestation? Is it possible to use the tradestation software with IB? or only receive data from them, and I manually enter the trades into IB. Another concern is maybe that IB does not give all the data needed (for example no TIKI, as far as I know) I'd really appreciate any thoughts on this. M4inr PS: I also saw quotetracker, which I can use together with IB, what is your opinion about it?
QT/IB is about as cheap as one can get by and QT offers good charting. However, for futures, I'd recommend Opening an account through an IB of TransAct and use Trade Navigator charting and simulator ($49 mo). Ninja makes a good sim for about the same price if you go with AB/QT. If you think $100 per mo. is too much to "muck around" just try trading real money before you're consistently successful on a simulator for a few months.
Many choices. If you use IB as your broker you can use their data to power... -Ensign $40/month -Sierra chart $20/month -QT $6/month or even free with ad version and or purchase $60 license/yr There are a few others. Those are Big 3 to use in conjunction with IB who will charge you $10/month for data. If you need to write you own indicators Ensign and Sierra can almost certainly do what you need once you learn the syntax. QT is little weak there. As far as Tradestation, if you make 10 trades month through their brokerage service they waive platform fee except for exchange fees. Not the most stable in terms of reliability for execution in timely fashion but great charts and very flexible language writing capability. You are wise to consider keeping costs as low as possible as newbie. Just dont try and cut corners on your platform/execution. That is false economy. Good luck. Start small.
Luke24.5, Aok, thank you for your reply. Dont take me wrong, I don't wanna get greedy on the platform fee, but as a beginner I am not sure how much I'll trade and how much I'll just paper trade using the real-time data. Anyways TS's 10 futures trades is reasonable per month, however my main concert with them that IB is within the EU, while tradestation is the USA and I would feel safer to contract someone within the EU. Basically after reviewing Your replies, what remains a question for me: - is IB ok for execution? (compared to for example to the execution of tradestation, or someone you can recommned) - What does IB's "bunding of ticks" mean in practice? what to look out for? do you think this places some limitations on self-written indicators? - I know that IB has tick and trin for the nyse, does it have these for nasdaq as well? what about tiki and the putcall ratio? Thank you! M4inr