Hi all, I'm currently using IB and their ChartTrader tool to place orders, but I'm a little frustrated with their alert features. For example, I'd like to set an alert on a one minute chart when the volume of contracts on a security hits 150k or more. However, IB's Alerts only allows for the measurement of volume for the entire day, and not for a particular timeframe. Does anyone know if another retailer allows for this? Additionally, if there is a retail trader that does, are they competitive or close to IB's fee structure? Right now, I'm getting anywhere from 1.50 to 3 dollars a trade (and I do about 3-5 each trading day). Thanks in advance for any help or advice. - Spider
look into tradestation and their radarscanner - they might be able to scan for intraday vol. most traders buy a separate charting program and/or data feed and use their broker solely for execution b/c it's hard if not impossible for a broker to be great at all three - and if they were the price for commissh would be way too high.
Hi FrankSlaughtery, Thanks for the suggestion! I just spent about a half hour going through Tradestation's site and their products. Unfortunately, the alerts they have are based on charts and not intraday volume. I did find a thread back in 2007 where someone wrote some custom code for another that allowed for a volume alert: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/coding-forum/3016-alert-tradestation-volume.html Beyond that, I'm still browsing for a solution. Just went through eSignal and didn't see anything in their features at all. Any other suggestions for a third party site are welcome.
>Spiderbird Oh yes you can do that in eSignal. Attached is the alert you discribed on a 1 minute chart. Hope this helps.
You may want to look into Trade Ideas http://www.trade-ideas.com/ You can pretty much set up the parameters you want. I've been using them for a while now.
Hi Learner2007, Thanks for that. Does the dropdown for the "Volume (Total)" area include one for volume in a particular timeframe, or is the example you gave for a one-minute timeframe? If it's the latter, then it fits the bill I think. I'm also attaching a screenshot to give a visual of what I'm trying to get. The image was taken from ChartTrader in IB, using a one minute bars with no indicators beyond looking at volume. It sounds like what you're showing in eSignal may work (if it's indeed for a one minute timeframe). Hope that helps. - Spider
Hi Candlesmon, Have you tried doing automated trading with their platform? I haven't ventured into that at all (wanted to research first), but was curious to see if you're doing it currently. And like the previous post and image... does TradeIdeas allow for volume alerts? I went through the Help forums and the features of their software, but I couldn't find anything. There were a couple of areas that required registration and didn't proceed further (i.e. automated and semi-automated trading). Thanks for the help all the same.
You can scan for just about anything with Tradestation. I'm willing to bet someone has already coded this in EL somewhere on the TS forums. Unfortunately you have to be a user of TS to access those forums. IMO TS is the most user-friendly and versatile retail platform. As long as you don't need to do portfolio backtesting and any heavy Stat stuff it should work great.