All, Unfortunately I use Tradestation and they suck big time. 1. Only one person on the trading desk off hours. You have a trade issue that can't be taken care of in 20 seconds you get put on hold. 2. Version 8.4 build 1688, trailing stop doesn't work. Copying your previous workspace messes it up. 3. Have to log in twice to show correct buying power. 4. They must be cheap, because so many other packages offer so much and they don't. They don't want to hire the people to improve things. What about range charts? 5. The current CEO is bailing ship. 6. The sales people are all full of themselves, with the sales VP at the top.
When a broker is limited to their own in-house trading product, customers don't have a choice. I would suggest using a smaller professional brokerage firm that is software neutral, which gives the customer a suite of market data/trading products to choose from. Consider ProTradeFinancial.com if you're interested in learning more.
To me TradeStation is a good backup platform but their outages kill any chance of primary platform. Nice charting package, poor customer service.
There have been some important points raised. I've just have too many to keep track of. Yea too many outages to name the least. One sales rep didn't return phone calls, the support manager didn't either, etc., so on and so on. It is quite dissapointing but such is life. Posting on their forums to death doesn't do much good either. I heard the ceo likes to check out the competition and was walking around the Las Vegas Traders Expo. I guess he doesn't get it because he probably isn't a trader having to use their own platform. Anyone can window shop. Anyway, research and use another platform. Tradestation fell from grace and until it recovers stay away. They are unwilling to spend the necessary money.
When I used them it was mainly to get the charting, and had to do the 10 trades per month for a free platform. I said to hell with that when the second time I had a problem while in a trade and I couldn't get a hold of someone within 20 minutes. First time it took 30 minutes on the phone to get through to the desk and get out of trade and confirm all orders canceled. Second time they had a system outage and the phones were jammed. I couldn't get through and was on hold for an hour. When I got through the guy at the desk hung up on me after answering. I called back and got a message saying their phone system was out. An hour later I got through and they denied that the phones were down and said it was my fault. Only problem I called on the cell phone and home phone and let the dick head here the wait music playing while I was talking to him. The wait music was on the line I had gotten " we are having phone problems at this time please hold on" message. He got ticked off. I closed up the next day.
R in thanks for your reply. Ha, they think you are mistaken, bad sign.... represents arrogance. Again they are not willing to spend the money. One guy at night on the desk and probably two during the day, probably understaffed in all departments. Though who are you using now, are you missing any features with the platform, is customer service good and are you happy with them?
Your platforms appears to have ZERO automation capability.... not even in the same league as Tradestation. Looks like your fees kinda suck too. Drop the ticket charge and the monthly platform charge (as your platform is nothing special) and pass thru ALL ECN rebates and you may get some business. Brokerage services aside, the TS platform is a good software package for backtesting and autotrading. If... you don't mind the occasional hiccup (which ALL platforms have from time to time).
I use Ninja trader with TT data fed via my broker. A few brokers offer the combo. You can chekc Ninja traders website for brokers.