Hi Big B, (off topic)
I've been using Interquote for about 1 1/2 years and have been satisfied with their service interquote.com , about $75 per month.
You can set it up to give you just about any kind of current information you want. Open, close, last sale, size of last sale, volume, bid, ask, PE, 52 week high/low, bid/ask size, change, ticks..... I currently track about 60 stocks and I have all the information at a glance on one screen. Although I don't trade most of the stocks I follow, it lets me see what the rest of a particular sector is doing. Watching the trades in real time lets you see the point where it starts to get weak and is likely to start pulling back or the other way around. It takes awhile to get used to in the beginning and each stock seems to have it's own little nasty habits, but with a little experience you can get to where you can time your trades pretty close. It would be an expensive toy for someone that buys 100 shares to hold for several years but for trading it's something you just about have to have.
Level 11 gives you the order cue for the market makers. Sort of a coming attractions deal. Level 11 runs from $150 per month and up. It's generally offered by brokerages that specialize in pure day trading (5-20 trades per day) and they will probably let you have the quotes free if you do 100+ trades per month. Unless you're scalping 1/8s & 1/4s on 1K blocks on a real regular basis, you probably wouldn't find it very useful.
In an active month I'll usually do maybe 10-15 trades. Some months only a couple. I do trade in quantities where 1/8s and 1/4s make a difference. I wouldn't touch the stock market without real time tick by tick quotes, and I have two ISPs in case one goes down. It's that necessary, IMO. It's not for everybody but for what I do, I have to have the information.
SI has threads on just about everything. If you start at the beginning of the right thread, you can probably get most of your questions answered in the first 20 or so posts on just about any topic you can think of. daytraders.com is also a good source of information on brokerages and quote services.
Regards,
Don |
