They're not in the brokerage review section, so I thought I'd vent my frustration here. I honestly don't know how this firm stays in business. For the longest time I had a problem where if you had the software running for a couple of hours, it would freeze and you would have to close it and then restart it. That's bad enough, but it would take literally a couple of minutes for it to shut down, then even more time to restart it. It was probably a good 5 minutes to restart this thing. I'm not exaggerating. For a while I had a problem with my backup computer, and I couldn't run Tracktrade on it, so I assumed this was caused by something on my main computer. I reformatted the hard drive on my main computer, then fixed the problem on my second computer, and the software freezes on both. You can tell if the software is frozen, because there will be an hourglass instead of your mouse pointer if you place the pointer anywhere in the program workspace. I called TT about the problem, and I was told that other customers complained because they were getting the hourglass as well. He didn't know whether their software was freezing like mine was, but I assume that to be the case. I can't imagine anyone complaining just because an hourglass showed up, as long as the software was running ok. Anyway, he told me to call back when the problem was actually occurring, and we could get a better handle on what was happening at that point. So a few minutes later my software was frozen, I called back and talked to the same guy I had just talked to, and I can't remember what he said, but he didn't offer any help like he promised. Also, the 'smart' order routing would always send an order to the trac ecn, which is just about worthless. Even if there was an ecn or MM at the price you specified. The order would just sit there, and cross or lock the market until you canceled. I think the only traders with access to this ecn are traders who use Tracktrade or Mytrack. The guy said there was a way to disable trac, but I couldn't find anything. Even if I could, I'd still have unreliable software. Oh, and I called up yesterday to close my account and request a wire for all my available funds. They gave me a # to fax it to, which I did, and I called to confirm today and they don't have my fax.
Sounds sort of like my experiences with Mytrack, not that bad at all, but it is bringing back memories. Trac is a funny organization. You have to really, really work at it just to find out what all the features are with Mytrack!! Nobody anywhere in the organization can explain what anything is, eventually your curiosity just wins and you sign up for a feature just to see what the heck it does. I had their newswatch feature for a long time, you could never, ever tell if you were getting realtime news or 15 min delays, one day it would be realtime on PRNewswire and delayed on another one, the next day they would reverse, nobody in the organization knew why, including the woman in Chicago in charge of the software for that feature. The lost fax sounds familiar. My partner spent 8 weeks trying to get them to find his check, his paperwork, and open a trading account. Their CEO lost $25 million at one point trading his personal account. They are just a strange outfit. Max
I know what you're talking about. If you go to the Mytrack website and look at their software subscriptions, there are about 30 or so different services offered based on which subscription you have (basic, silver, etc) and there's no real explanation of what these services give you. Simply Stocks, 10K Wizard, Hemmington Scott, Barra, Market Guide... The news thing sounds familiar too. Was this about 4 years ago? I remember not being able to figure out whether the news I was getting was real time. I remember getting a news story, and I would look at the chart, and there would be a big spike 15 minutes prior to my seeing the story. For example, it woule be 11:00, you'd get a story, and then check the chart, and starting at 10:45 the stock got a sudden surge of volume, maybe went up a point or two, then came back down.
Years ago, and I mean years, maybe mid '90's I used the Track Data quote service. It was the predecessor to My Track but was more of a highend product similar to RealTick. In fact, it looked pretty similar to TrackTrade, only no order execution. It was actually very good, except for the crude charts. Everything I'm reading above is familiar to me. When a new version of windows, I'm thinking 98, came out I had exactly the same types of faults described above. PC would gradually lose function then lock up totally. They had no idea what the problem was, and I kind of thought at the time that MyTrack was introduced to "solve" it. Some people thought the original software had been designed for Unix and modified to work with windows and somehow, it was incompatible with win98. No idea what the real story was, but I dropped it. I recall someone else here saying they kept MyTrack only because of a proprietary index indicator they had. I remember that as well, although I don't recall the name of it. It was actually very effective, and I hated to lose it.
I have used MyTrack execution and charting software on both of my computers( XP Pro and 2000 Pro) for the past 15 months simultaneously without any problems. No problems at all. Granted, I don't download a bunch of web junk on these computers, that may cause some of the problem , you guys have described. I use a 3rd computer for browsing the web and for trial software. I place an average of 4-6 trades a day and I am constantly monitoring my RT charting software(Tradestation 2000i with esignal). I am real happy with MyTrack. Mytrack support is fine for me. I use their chat feature to talk to them and to resolve any problems(like check request, wire transfers...etc) before I call them. I used to use their api and I had no problems, so I suggest you guys give your computers a checkup before assuming it all a mytrack problem. Computer #1 is a 1.8 ghz Pentium 4(256mb ram) and Computer #2 is a 450mhz pentium 3(256mb ram). I like their flat rate fee of $12.95 plus ecn fees. I would rate them as far my experiences a 8 out of 10. Well, this is my experince with mytrack .
Like I mentioned, I assumed it was a problem with my computer at first. But then I formatted the hard disk, and I still had the problem. And it was the identical problem on both computers. Plus the fact that it sounds like other customers have the same problem, all leads me to believe that it's their software. I'm guessing that as a Mytrack customer, you don't use the Tracktrade software, correct? Maybe whatever software Mytrack customers use works fine. I know a guy that trades with Mytrack and position trades about 25000 shares at a time, and he never mentioned anything about problems with the software.
So, as just as you said, Tracktrade sounds like it is the problem. Sorry, to hear of the problems you are having; as a trader they can be very fustrating.
I wanted to mention here that I am also a satisfied TrackData (myTrack) customer. I like it for being rock-solid.
It was about 4 years ago indeed. Made me crazy, I put a lot of effort into researching trading on news, a lot of effort, and then I found that "you can't quite do it". I really don't have anything against Trac, or myTrack or any of them, their mytrack software is rock solid, their data feed is known to be very good as well, if I get to where I am doing size I will want to use their API for sure, it is just that they seem to be one weird organization. Max
Toonces: I've also been a myTrack customer for many years. I've run it on Win95, NT4, Win2K without difficulty, so I'm guessing that the problem is with TrackTrade or something in your environment. When you say you "reformatted the hard disk", can you say exactly what you mean? Did you actually do a DOS format? Did you do a new Windows installation, or just a "repair", or did you maybe restore your system from the manufacturer's "restore to initial configuration" CD? Did you then immediately install and test TrackTrade before installing anything else? Did you grab the latest version of it from their web site or did you install from an old copy you had stored somewhere? And yes, they routinely lose FAXes. It doesn't really make any sense to me - I've never seen someone do this with such astounding regularity - certainly not a brokerage. The main issue seems to be that they seem to hire from the "bottom of the barrel". It may have something to do with more qualified people not being willing to work in Brooklyn, or maybe they just don't pay well. I do know that there are a few people there that know what they are doing, but none of them are on the "front lines". Some of the chat hosts are pretty good, and some not. I don't think they are actual employees - I think they are customers that agree to do some chat duty in exchange for something. maxpi: Their attitude about their (many, many) additional subscription features is that trying it gives you more information than they could possibly provide or keep up to date. That's why they all have 30-days free eval before they start billing you. In their defense, myTrack is just plain always up. They simply do not have server failures like every other platform I've ever used. Sure, they may very occasionally have problems with their data from a particular exchange, but I don't run into it much. As I recall, they were even up during the major blackout in NYC last year, and during 9/11 and the following days. I guess there is some upside to being in Brooklyn I also use, and am happy with, their API. It was a little rough at the start, but the PACT guys care about what they do, and have turned out a pretty decent product. A little quirky, but that's mostly related to the nature of the (old, stable) API to the servers that it encapsulates. I like that it is a direct API to the servers, and not to the client like some other vendors (e.g. IB).