Brian,
The 2 free sites, IMHO, are worth just what you pay for them. The offer a lot of indicators, chart size, MA's etc, BUT very little flexibility--and this can get you into a lot of trouble. For example, I refer to Parabolic SAR a lot--but ONLY the way GET calculates it. The free ones offer ZERO ability to change how it calculated--this is based on volitility, yet they calculate it exactly the same way for VVUS as for an electric utility. Dont use it. WOW also offers Parabolic SAR, and allows you to set any acceleration factor you want, but the default is 0.0200. On VVUS, 0.0100 comes close to GET's optimized SAR--but how would you know where to set it? Optimized Parabolic SAR is an excellent entry/exit tool; I regard other's as junk--worse if you try to use them to trade with.
Big charts uses 14 day RSI--unchangeable. The slow stochastics is 5 day--also unvariable. You cannot relate a 5 day and 14 day indicator--both have to be the same to have any meaning. 5 day is a very short-term indicator--14 day (almost 3 weeks) is what I consider an intermediate indicator. Moving averages are very useful when one average crosses over another. The freebies only allow you to set the first time frame, the 2nd is an invariable 2X the first. Again, too inflexible.
I have never used TC2000, but have heard many discussions about it vs. primarily Quotes Plus. Realize these are both primarily data providers, and arguably provide the "cleanest" or most error-free data. TC2000 can provide many years of historical data--6 or maybe 10 years of data, whereas QP only provides 2 years. QP2 will be released in a couple of months and will include 6 years of data on 10,000+ stocks and 5000+ funds. From what I know, right now I would give the edge to TC2000, except is it much more expensive for an equivalent amount of data. When QP2 is released, it will be head and shoulders above the present TC2000, and scanning ability will rival WOW and Metastock for Windows, but will have far fewer indicators. With either of the providers, you really also need WOW or MSWIN. Cacaito uses TC2000 and really should be the one to tell you about it.
In short,the free sites look impressive--but beware. I could list a dozen more problems that could arise from depending on them, but this is too long already. A far as I'm concerned, I really would be afraid to trade based on them.
Above is just my opinion--dont want any of these sites or data providers suing me.
Will answer question re: VVUS this weekend.
Regards,
Gary |
