What"s The Problem With Cybertrade

I used CyberTrader Pro for quite some time, and it's pretty good software, no major complaints. They also have excellent customer support and an overall good staff. But I switched to Realtick because it offers the following advantages over Cyber:

• far superior charting -- Cyber's is limited to 10 days of historical data for intraday charts which means, among other things, you can't use 200ma's on 30min/60min/120min charts (as it would take, respectively, a bare minimum of 16/31/62 days of data); also RT3 offers significantly more studies for charting along with monthly views
• historical time & sales -- in Cyber there is none, all you get is ticker information starting the moment you enter a stock in a stock box (and it "remembers" back a maximum of only 40 prints); in RT3 you get as much (or as little) T&S prints as you want and it doesn't just start when you first enter the ticker
• access to signicantly more sector indexes; Cyber has always had a problem with this, leaving out many key sectors, and Cyber doesn't provide daily data for sector indexes (only intraday)
• RT3 "minders" provide considerably more fields than Cyber watchlists, and can be setup unsorted with sector groupings. Cyber's are always sorted (normally by ticker) so that can't be done. Also, you can set up unlimited minders in RT3, in Cyber you're limited to 6 watchlists
• RT3's TAL data feed is available to lots of 3rd party scanners such as SortWizard, TradeSeeker, StormChaser, iScan, mWatch; Cyber's is proprietary and you only have the built in CyberQuant (which is pretty decent, although it has it's own glitches); also RT3 comes with the Hottrends scanner (free), and you can subscribe ($20mo) to the Oz scanner
• in Cyber, ARCA is just another ECN (that most don't use since ISLD is cheaper [free?]); in RT3 you have access to ARCA stops, ARCA reserve orders, ARCA discretionary orders
• stops in ARCA sit on the ARCA server, stops in Cyber (via conditional orders) sit on your computer. In the latter case, if you are disconnected for any reason you lose all your stops. Of course, the compliment is also true, if the ARCA server goes down you lose your stops, but I found I was disconnected much more than the ARCA server going down.
• in RT3 you can quickly "flip" positions (i.e., you're long 400sh and you want to close it and go short, simply short 800sh); in Cyber you can't. In fact, in Cyber you can't put in multiple orders on the same stock in any respect (and this can get nasty, let's say you're long at $30, and you offer out on ISLD at $31, while also putting in a protective stop via conditional order at $29. If $29 is hit first, your conditional order is triggered, but Cyber "sees" you already have an order out on that stock [the $31 on ISLD] so it disallows the second order! In other words, your stop is ignored)
• Cyber has a 2-min rule where your order (or any portion of it) must be filled or it's a separate ticket charge; in RT3 if you place an ARCA order, say for 1000sh, and 300 are filled immediately but the remainder aren't, as long as you leave that order open you will only be charged one ticket charge no matter how long it takes; even better, you can also change the price and you still are only charged one ticket for the whole order
• Cyber's short inventory always left alot to be desired although I understand it's getting better; RT3 clears thru Instinet (not all, but many of it's brokers) and short inventory is superb

To sum up, CyberTrader Pro is good software, but to me anyway, Realtick provides many more benefits. And since they charge the exact same per ticket it's a no-brainer.

 

I don't know, I haven't used it (there's a good TradeStation thread going on the Direct Access [Retail] forum).

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=4690

The backtesting capabilities of TS6 don't interest me as I am a discretionary trader, but their new pricing model is intriguing and might be worth a look.