ok, something different from previous responses, thanksyou to you too. I guess what you are saying is that on limit orders between 1 - 10 contracts you are satisfied and have had no bad experience w/c others dont seem to be very enthusiastic about too.
plus imo when you start trading size then you want to be with an FCM {Velocity, Transact, etc} and not with an IB like TS.
2 problems with what you are saying here: 1) TS runs best with no other trading platforms open - perhaps the X-trader architecture dominates and slows TS down while they are both open? TS is recommended to be run exclusively without a bunch of other programs open - so you are right there going against the recommended operation instructions. No wonder it doesn't work well for you. 2) So, you are saying that you queue up a limit order in TS several seconds before you add an Xtrader order at the back of the line, then the X-trader order goes off first? How is that possible? This defies how the exchange market depth works. I don't work for TS, nor do I care what you trade on, but I'm not buying this baloney. I think your setup was wrong and when they tried to tell you how to fix it you decided they had "attitude". I've never had a brokerage follow up on my minor issues over the years as well as TS has. This has been my experience. Several times I've had support reps actually call me to see if my problem had been resolved! I was shocked. When something that is better overall comes along, I'll switch - but I haven't found anything better in an integrated package. There may be some stand-alone stuff that is SLIGHTLY faster (like X-trader) but I feel that the tiny advantage in speed is lost when you consider the lack of integration. For anything but the most hyper-active, major-volume scalpers, TS works great. I "scalp" 5 or 10 cars all day long on it sometimes.
nope XTrader on one of my pc's and TS 8.1 was on my second pc, because i was fully aware of what TS "needs" to feel good {no other applications running on the pc with TS}. after a lot of digging i finally figured out how this could happen and lets just say that TS's order routing is not very "efficient". when it comes to integration --- i will take care of that. when it comes to speed --- i want the best and TS is slower then others for order routing. no it was not me with the attitude problem ----- VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV MacroEvent Registered: Jul 2005 Posts: 895 07-16-05 02:24 PM I just left tradestation and went back to Esignal for charting and datafeed---------the reasons are too many to list. I guess the ts customer support person who answered my complaints about freezing data feed and quotes up to 6 seconds behind my xtrader quotes with, "bummer dude" was about all I could take. Tradestation has been a big disappointment with the 8.1 release from my experience---------tradestations customer service was atrocious in all my dealings------------I even cringe when I see their adds in the magazines............hahaha! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ slapshot --- actually i am very glad to here that you have not had any problems --- the last thing i like to hear about is someone trying to work their trades and then have all kinds of technical issues with their orders.
Macro, Several times I have tested my TS quotes against other quotes, including my IB account and also e-signal. And several others. Never once has it been anything near 6 seconds lagged, not even .5 second. At most, it can vary 1 or 2 milliseconds - and all of them have their fast times and slow times. In fact, there are times that TS has been faster than e-signal. And we all know that IB can have issues sometimes. Once again, I am not the TS cheerleader but I insist you must have had some type of configuration issue for this to happen this badly. Otherwise I certainly would have experienced problems somewhere near the realm of what you are saying at least once. The only time I have ever seen bad quotes in TS was when the CME feed was edgy - and at the same time it was affecting IB also. I am sure that whatever issue you had that was causing that much quote lag must also have been causing the order lag. You could simply have had one line corrupted in your registry somewhere or some other installation issue or port issue that was causing this problem. I am only being insistent on this so that smaller traders looking for a good way to trade will not be scared away from a good platform, especially those that are not scalping 100 to 500 cars at a time for a tick or 2. This is under the assumption that anyone who needs to ask these types of questions isn't going to be a big-time scalper anyway. I am sure for that exact activity, TS is not the best, nor does it claim to be. One feature I really like is that TS plots trades and also orders on the charts in realtime. The way that it keeps a history of plotted trades on the chart allows me to go back and review trades from several days ago, with the winner and losers connected by the red or green lines so I can tell the outcome of past trades without needing to take chart pics all the time. This has really helped me learn how to trade better. Plus the TradeAnalysis feature showed me what I needed to change to start making money consistently.
well hopefully all those continuing new build #'s of version 8.1 have corrected the "matrix" problems that occurred when 8.1 was released. best of luck to you with your use of TS! hey did they ever get "inside bar" automation to work?
my experience has been much different slapshot i rolled out, configured and supported hundreds of market data apps on a floor for over 1000 traders for several years, and subsequently have been through every issue in the book with both tradestation and tws, using both every day for the last 3 years. tradestation has always lagged IB's quote speed here and it would be great to see that improve. actual execution speed is comparable, but if you're competing with limits in a rapid market with the quotes side by side, the limit prices captured from the quotes are late. it's not my hardware or my config, this is an inherent and unfortunately long standing performance difference. on the ts forum there's a well documented history of acknowledged widespread delivery speed issues (as is common with every retail charting platform). tws is leaner by nature and delivery speed issues are proportionately much less of an issue. i'm not a high freq scalper, but i do a fair # of turns and compete heavily for my fills, contract by contract with marketable limits and shaving. it's important to distinguish between delivery and execution speed. the quote lag is there whether you send 1 lot or 20, and capturing limit prices from the spread via hotkey on both platforms quickly differentiates them in fast markets my hardware and network are totally standard. unless tws is hijacking ts somehow, the mystery tweak is beyond me. i found out recently with an upgrade that it definitely isn't a hardware bottleneck. it's cool that TS improves many fills though. i really like that, and if they could get the delivery speed higher, it would only make ts a better value than it already is
If my options expire worthless, I understand TS will still charge me the commission, while IB does not charge anything. Is this correct?Thanks