<b>Plus Minus and everyone </b> I have been front run over a dozen times in the "stock market." Putting in a block buy lets say 20,000 shares on a $5 issue ... and I see my order filled through my Market Maker on Page 2 Level 2 T&S ... and .... hmmm ... my order does not fill (Meaning an in-house front runner) ... requiring me to buy at a higher level. (or dump a short from another account to spite the front-running a$$#%^&#'s and shake them off my account.) Greed, graft, deceit and evil are abundant where there is money and/or power. Steeling systems or methods of successful traders is very very real. Having a "phone home" connectivity may be a precursor to eaves dropping on skilled traders. This is not paranoia but real life and real experience.
Do you think institutional clients accept those kinds of terms? They do not, so why should individual traders? You have a fiduciary responsibility to yourself as much as hedge funds do to their clients. Taking on risks that expose you to your vendor's servers going down or security compromises is foolish. This isn't about misinformation, it's about prudence.
It really is about prudence. Realistically however the larger and more sophisticated the trader the more likely their reach is farther into trading realms of influence whether it be on the NYSE floor or the Chicago Merchantile where executions and security are spot on. Without that reach prudence should reign for the small investor.
Guys, just so we stay on the thread here... Agree that MC calls home but all the others such as QT and Ninja also do... Ninja is probably the worst, very slow. I also like eSignal charts a lot but miss one key functionality present in MC which is the radar. Someone asked about Tradestation and although I think it's a great platform I can't have an account with them as I'm in Canada.
Why do you say this? AmiBroker does not phone home. So when you say "all" the others do it is misinformation.
I didn't mention "disinformation" in response to your core question regarding a 20K trade on a $5 stock because without knowing the stock, the time and day you placed the order, the broker and what type of order you used, there's simply no point in commenting on that. What I was referring to was the idea that someone would eavesdrop on your trading. The US was able to determine that the Japanese were preparing to attack Midway Island by sending a disinformation message about their water supply. Likewise, a trader can detect if someone was eavesdropping on their trading by sending known false trading signals. Same goes if you think they're ripping off your trading system code. There's no way for them to determine if the code is genuine or is a purposely built sub-optimal strategy designed for you to front-run them by trading against them via another broker.