Thx for the informative post comparing RealTick and Cyber. Humm, can you put it in table form, and can you compare all the rest of them against each other, and can I get it by Monday? Ducking - Just kidding... nitro
That's the most meaningful comparison of RealTick and CyberTrader I've seen. Very well done. Expand that into an article and submit it to S&C or Active Trader Magazine. You have a valuable understanding of both platforms. I'd like to see that published. Surprisingly, almost no RealTick/Cyber comparative information or reviews can be found on the web. What can be found is usually biased or superficial (written by some seldom-trader staff writer). Cyber used to have a lengthy feature comparison table on their site, but of course Cyber was equal or superior to RealTick for each feature listed.
One thing Cyber does have , that Real Tick does not (as far as I know) is the 'heat bars'. That's a graphical representation of a stock's price movement based on customizable parameters. Setting up a list of these (say for the DOW or SOX) can give you a very quick heads up when trends change. If I move over to Tradestation because of the lower fees, I would sorely miss this.
Just a comment...the above is a bit misleading. During the 2 min window with Cyber you can modify your order as many times as needed to get the fill. It used to be 5 mins which was much better imo. As for commissions, don't forget that if you are an established trader you can bargain with Cyber (as with most brokers) to lower commissions. You may even want to ask a sales rep ahead of time if they will allow this after you have proven yourself so you can take that into account when choosing.
I traded with Cyber for one year. My commisions where the highest of any broker I had traded with. They have extra charges for just about everything. Their 2 minute rule is a method they use to double charge you for commission I saved over $20,000.00 a year by going with IB and using QCharts for my charting However, I am now using eSignal. I really like their new Charts in the Beta version.
That's true, I never was able to use them effectively, regardless of the time parameters I entered. But they were always interesting to look at... Again true, did not mean to imply that you couldn't, only wanted to state that not only do you get unlimited time for your ARCA orders to fill, but during that time you can change the price as many times as you want while you're following the market. To be 100% fair in this comparison, here's a few points in CyberTrade Pro's favor that I wish they would incorporate into Realtick: Cyber permits IRA trading online. Realtick accepts IRA's but, to my knowledge, you still can't trade them online in the EDAT software. (I understand this is in the process of changing as they modify their servers regarding permissions, margins, etc.) Cyber shows shorting availability (+ number of shares) at the top of the stock box. In Realtick you need to check on a website to confirm availability, but truth be told, with Instinet as my clearing house I have never had a problem shorting an NMS stock, so I've never bothered to check... In Cyber, using conditional orders, you can place self-cancelling above/below orders. In my previous comparison and example of being long a stock at $30, instead of posting out to ISLD at $31 you can setup a conditional order to "close position" at $31. And, as in my example, you would have another conditional order to "close position" at $29. With this setup, if the $29 is triggered Cyber will execute your stop order because it doesn't "see" another order out there on the same stock (as the other is not yet a true order, only a condition waiting to be triggered). And let's say after the $29 is triggered and executed the market reverses, goes up and triggers your $31 conditional order. Here's where Cyber has an advantage in that the second conditional order will not execute because you specified "close position" and you no longer have a position, so it's ignored. In Realtick you can also setup conditional orders above/below but when one is hit you have to manually cancel the other or, in the example above, you would be short at $31. The downside of the dual conditions on Cyber is that both sit on your computer, and any disconnect they disappear. On Realtick I never use conditional orders, in the example above if I wanted to place above/below I would post the $31 on ISLD or ARCA, and place a sell-stop at $29 on ARCA. The nice advantage here is that neither sits on my computer, but as I said, when one is hit I have to manually cancel the other. Cyber has the CyberQuant built-in scanner, and despite it's many glitches, it does allow you to set filters and do very crude programming. In Realtick the Hottrends and Oz scanners do not permit this, and you need to go to a more expensive scanner to set your own filters or do programming. In Cyber you can logon from more than one computer. In Realtick you can't, and while you can switch between multiple accounts in Realtick, sometimes it's more useful to isolate different accounts between 2 computers and do multiple logons. Hope this has provided a balanced view. Like I said in my earlier post, CyberTrader Pro is good software, I simply find it's few advantages are far outweighed by it's many disadvantages when carefully compared to Realtick.
For Terra Nova, IRA trading is available online on RealTick® for many of our traders now. This was made possible with an update to the order servers within the last few months. If you are trading on RealTick, contact your broker to see if you may trade online in your IRA. *Please note IRA accounts are cash accounts and day trading is not allowed in these accounts. Regards, Michael Garvey Client Services Terra Nova Online
Same experience than Magna and Cyber. I did not write anything because Magna covers it perfectly. I always like the conditional orders with Cyber. Worked pretty well too. The stability of the platform is questionable (disconnects if you have too many hops on your internet connection to them). Their customer service is very good to excellent, but that's no reason to overlook all the rest. Look elsewhere : Terra, IB, etc...
I also had quite a few stability problems with my connection to Cyber, getting disco'd quite a bit. Finally, in desperation, I got a static IP address and stopped using my router. That seemed to clear things up and my connection was mostly stable after that. Went back to using my router when I switched to Realtick, no problems. Interesting thing is, when I get cutoff from Realtick (or any of it's servers) it almost always manages to reconnect on it's own. With Cyber it would tell me it was trying to reconnect, but it never succeeded. Anyway, didn't mention these issues in my comparison lists as I wasn't sure if they were unique to my situation.