Agreed ... except for eavesdropping. Lets not get sidetracked on such a minute and rare event as this however. One would have to be trading hundreds of thousands of dollars daily with a win ratio of over 75% to even have the potential of getting on any possible radar for that kind of intrusion. So chill on that issue ... it can and does happen ... but it is so rare as to be a silly distraction to this thread. I only mentioned it in passing ... with no intention of offering troll or flame food. <b> My apologies for the distraction. Lets please stick to the thread. This is a great bunch of people and active thinkers and posters.</b>
I am asking myself similar questions, depends also on the purpose - basic charting with canned indicators (1) - superior charting with customized indicators and advanced strategies (2) - order execution capabilities with trade management (3) - backtesting (4) - automated trading (5) A possible short list for retail platforms would be the bunch of platforms contributing to the Traders' Tips in the TASC magazine. A second criterion is the way the software companies run their forums. This tells me quite a lot. Then I also look for third party tools sold for the software packages - this shows me what is considered serious by software developpers. The final question is, whether I can get along with the scripting language (my personal shortcomings). I mostly use NinjaTrader now, which is fine for discretionary trading. But I do not think it is stable enough for automated trading, and I am not happy with its backtesting capabilities. These are my ideas: Charting (1) and (2): NinjaTrader, Multicharts or eSignal should do equally well. Key issue for me is intermarket indicators. Order execution (3): Now using NinjaTrader, might want to try X-Trader or something else for E-Minis. Backtesting (4): I am bit lost with NinjaTrader here, thinking about other options. Amibroker is certainly a serious option, but I do not volunteer to get involved with the scripting language. Does eSignal or MultiCharts offer proper backtesting? Automated Trading (5). Must have protected servers and backup, would not consider NinjaTrader. What about StrategyRunner? Other experience: Have found QuoteTracker, SierraChart and Ensign Windows be reliable charting software, Possibly VT Trader is also worth mentioning. Tried ButtonTrader for order execution with IB - well performing but to many options for my simple mind. Also tested AmiBroker and found it reliable and particularly priceworthy, but did not like the charts. Please let me know, what you think about MultiCharts...
I use four vendors, presently. My strong hope is that within 5 years the vendors reach a suitable level of services for supporting traders. I read this thread and jotted some notes down regarding the events that made progress possible in the past. Currently, it is possible to attach libraries of functions to most vendor's offerings unseen to the vendor. This is very necessary. The current interface with providers and traders is undermanned and has a limited scope and bounds. I would say this is why most people cannot apply ATS's for trading. That will not change soon for two classes of reasons. I feel the interrelations among providers is based on competition rather than being excellent and standard setting. This means the trader is not served well. What if vendors knew support services to traders was a trivial cost? If they did they would go for the market where cost is not a factor but supplying the need for excellence is the key factor. I range the quality of the provider sectors in the following order from best to worst: 1. Trading support staff. 2. Lower ranked technical support people 3. Sales people 4. Upper level technical support people 5. Corporate technical planning decision makers 6. Corporate administration. 7. QA information flow specialists. Currently, it can take as much as a year to get the vendor to determine his supplied data has errors of a specific nature. Historically, the way things operated and how peope did the things they did are roughly unbelievable in terms ot the current poster's experience (low). Anyone curently trading to take the markets offer in the range of its capacity would need to share his trading in portions among many trading platforms for security reasons.
I have done a bunch of platforms lately and over the years. Many I have forgotten about. Recently I loaded up Amibroker and QuoteTracker and NinjaTrader ... Amibroker and QuoteTracker just don't have pro level charting capabilities. Not customizable enough to define tradeworthy pictoral information. NinjaTrader is marginally acceptable and for that matter very do-able though some indicators are a bit anemic as they are set up visually. (Exple: no 50+/- mark on Chande's Momentum?) NinjaTrader is also the most Non-intuitive Software I have used in a long time. But it is what I have accepted as a solid base for stocks and minis and to recommend for my friend. VT Trader is near perfect. Dealbook360 is also near perfect. I will use dealbook for minis. CQG is hands down the reference for me for stocks however. Light years more intuitive and functional than NinjaTrader. Are there ones I am overlooking? One element I must have ... I realize it is a must now ... I must have clear control over candles ... I must have the ability to easily shrink or stretch the X and Y axis of candlestick charts and all indicator panes and also squish all panes either out of view or almost.
You may wish to post a snagit of your screens. I'm not sure of ET policy on naming names, but it wouldn't hurt for others to see how far you have progressed in "seeing" the markets. you have looked around for a while as I understand it.
That I would be uncomfortable with. My trade setup is easy to recognize with standard spec indicators. Even though I have them tweaked to get me about a 5 min lead ... it could be pretty easily duplicated by an experienced trader and work without the customized tweaks. So ... negative on that one.
Okay. I asked because I wanted to see what you had not considered (unobtruxively); there are some interesting platforms that are introducing more than the traditional orientation you are saying you have. All the indicators had to be modified from their originator's defaults when the PC came into being. As new markets come on line, some of them supply a broader selections of variables than the traditional indicaotrs porcess. The US is coming into a new era and new markets will appear to handle the securitization that is now gridlocked. Probably the better way to trade is through anticipation; for position trading equities is is convenient to have a lead time of about a week on streams of capital (two or three turns ahead for each capital stream). In commodities it is more like chess where 15 to 20 turns ahead is in hand (google traderzones a while back). So far I have never noticed any well founded approach failing to work nor any system made public changing the markets regarding its profitability. People say it happens but there is nothing in the literature.
I thought this thread was on charting software, but it seemingly has quickly degenerated into a regular's table discussion of day-to-day economic policy. I would like to come back to the subject: I am currently using a number of proprietary indicators that I do not want to disclose. They are running as compiled DLLs that I have encrypted to prevent decompiling. Does anybody have an idea, which of the charting packages allows me - the compilation and encryption of proprietary indicators - a license management to share those indicators with others without disclosing the code Is this possible with Multicharts or CQG?