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There is a real need for a disinterested comparison of CT, MBT and ABW. None exists, as far as I've seen. It would be quite a job. Cybertrader's effort to compare itself with a generic RealTick is an advert; put another way, Townsend could most probably put together a list of its features in such a way that Cybertrader could be made to look bad. So much for rhetoric.
I am not up to this assignment, tho' as we all do at one time or another, I am trying now to piece together my own private comparisons.
What follows is a woefully inadequate start.
Cybertrader is a very elegant piece of work, with many nifty features -- too many, I suspect, for the individual trader whose bandwidth and inhouse tech support is limited. And their pricing is higher the others, most notably in the form of many little fees for such things as pulling an order. For myself, I would only feel comfortable using CT in an office setting with wide lines and techies on call.
Manhattan Beach Trading appears to have the largest customer base at our (nothing but the best) level; and certainly it has the largest group of user-suppporters on the net. Their pricing is marginally lower than the others -- for example, no extra fees for split fills or ISLD trades, and they calculate your per trade costs retroactively from the end of the month. Their diversity of fill choices: ARCA, SOES, ISLD, Selectnet and ISI seems to be as wide or likely wider than one or both of the others. I can't be sure. Their modifications to Real Tick seem more extensive than Watley and their offering of extra tools such as the Weisel shows at least a desire to keep their customers well armed, much like Cybertrader. The demands of the MBT feed are, in my impression, less demanding than CT. And their LVII screen, showing bids and offers above the inside market is helpful.
Finally, Watley has a loyal following of some 2000 traders, but many of these I suspect are subscribers to their delayed, or mini-data-feed services, leaving a rather smaller population of LVII-like traders. They have also gone through some recent changes in software and in a few weeks will be moving their operation to larger quarters -- all of which may increase strain on the system. However, I trade with an irc group of solid traders, several of whom have been with Watley so some time and I have never heard them complain about the feed or the fills -- this is a high recommendation. Their version of Real Tick is hard to compare alongside that of MBT's version, but I certainly would like to see this done. In the meantime, they appear to have fewer trade placing options -- for our purposes -- than either of the other two. (I cannot be sure of this.) And they don't offer the ISLD book which is offered by both of the others
So that's my start. My highest qualification for objectivity and my limitations as a savy critic are rooted in the single fact that I do not now have an active trading account with CT, MBT or ABW. Soon, I must choose one, or the other, or the other. It is a hard one. If I had to say right now, I would choose .... but that is unimportant. More to the point is whether this casual set of observations might lead to a fair and complete evaluation and comparison of the three.
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