i'm sure this has been touched on before, but can't find a good thread w/ search. whats the deal with open tick? is the data reliable? whats in it for them? etc.?
I can't say anything about the reliability, although the impression is that they are not bad for real time data, even if people complain. But I found something for the "what's in it for them" question: http://www.opentick.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46 As I'm sure you may be aware, this is a difficult industry to enter into. We are simply looking to gain a userbase and get people using our product in an effort to make our service better. In the next year or so we intend to be launching a number of additional services, including FIX based broker-neutral order routing. At that time, users not utilizing order routing may have to pay a nominal fee for market data service.
I talked with them last year and i expressed my hope that they could always keep their market data costs very low by finding a way to make money thru some market related method... i still hope they do so...
They're also getting pretty widespread support in various charting and system development software, so they'll definitely be in a position to compete with other feeds if they cease to offer data for free.
That was two years ago. I still see no service they can monetise on. Who are they and what are they doing?