Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert Graham who wrote (3352)	8/30/1999 12:08:00 AM
From: -	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

<re: comparing real-time quotes delivered via the internet> Bob, To respond re: my QCharts posting -- I agree with you that many full-time traders will also want to have a "hardwired" (e.g. satellite or cable) datafeed. I have an S&P Comstock satellite feed myself which runs an extra $800 per month, just so that I'll always have reliable quotes. However, despite that I continually experiment with internet-delivered feeds and quote packages, both because I need them at my regular trading location to supplement the Comstock data (not everything will run off of Comstock, and there are other reasons), and because I trade while traveling quite a bit. QCharts is very compelling - it is a state of the art charting and quote delivery package, offered at a competitive price. It is so compelling, 5,000 have quickly signed up for it in a short period of time. That makes it all the more frustrating that the data feed behind it is not reliable enough for me (yet?), because the software is great and the price is right. The intent of my post was to share with others the lack of adequate stability in the quote servers, and the lack of adequate customer support. These are legitimate issues which many of us as QCharts users are concerned with. FYI, for educational and information-sharing purposes, I have tried these other internet-delivered data feeds recently: - Window on Wallstreet (WOW) driven by FDCN (Financial Data Cast Network). Nice package, but in my experience their quote servers tended to "choke" in a hot market (this was 4 months ago, they may have fixed it). They vehemently deny it, so we came to a standoff. I was unable to live with this, since my quotes would tend to freeze when the market was the hottest. There were also issues with the customer support which were not really a net positive. The lesson I took away from this one was, don't buy your real-time data from a company that does data as a sideline. - DTN IQ: I quickly dropped this one, as I found the state of the software development for the package it's bundled with to be woefully early. Maybe later. - RealTick III: Still using the real-time quotes, they do a pretty good job although occasionally there are problems. This is where I get my level II quotes. - CyberTrader: Good real-time quotes via the internet, but switched to another brokerage too quickly to really conduct an evaluation. The next internet quote package I plan to try, is E-Signal driving MetaStock Pro, as a replacement for QCharts. I like this one because DBC knows how to deliver quotes (that is their core business, not a sideline). This looks like the right approach - get a quote provider that's good at serving up data, and bundle it with a top-class charting package. I like MetaStock because you can do backtesting, even on intraday data. Although DBC doesn't exactly have a shining customer-service legacy, the word is that they've really improved with E-Signal, and all the new competitors. Good trading, -Steve