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

To: WaveSeeker who wrote (7121)	3/5/2000 4:26:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Townsend Analytics provides AB Watley's quote feed. You might get better results by calling Townsend's tech support line directly, at (312) 453-0300 Also, be aware that you CANNOT do a complete traceroute to the quote servers. Townsend's firewall is programmed to drop all ICMP packets to the quote servers, presumably to prevent the kind of hack attacks that have plagued some high-profile web sites lately. (ICMP packets are used, among other things, for traceroute and ping requests and replies. These hack attacks have employed ICMP packets.) Townsend maintains a special server that DOES have ICMP enabled: beacon.taltrade.com Although tracerouting to this site won't guarantee that the quote server is up, it will show that you have a path to their server farm.

To: WaveSeeker who wrote (7121)	3/5/2000 4:48:00 PM
From: Don Pueblo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18137

LOL! What a crock. I'll bet there is an inter-office memo instructing all the 7s to say; "We are not aware of any problem, [sir/madam]." Now, if that had been me, I would have said, "Yes, I am, because you just lied to me. I pay your salary, and I demand service, and you should know what is happening at your own firm. If you don't know, then you should say, '"I don't know."' "And after you tell me your CRD number I would like to speak to the Compliance Officer. Thank you." After hammering these people for over an hour early last week, I finally found out that they are doing beta testing on some changes on the site "in order to improve service". The "beta testing" is happening during market hours, it appears...since that is the only time that their service is used by most people. Nobody at Watley would give me a direct line. Nobody. The one good thing is when I AM in a bind, and I manage to get through, and get to a trader, the trader is very competent. I've dealt with three different guys, and all three were very competent. There is a guy named Brian that is a real good trader, he really knows his stuff. Once I get through to him, I never ever have a problem. And I have had exactly one problem with Penson in the last 3 years, and that one time, they fixed it instantly even though they were not sure I was right for 3 days. Penson is a great clearing firm in my opinion. The problem arises when I cannot get through on the phone. I want them to fully understand that if I am getting a mid 4 figure rebate every month on my commissions, that I should get some damn service when I call on the phone. On Friday, the 800 customer service line was busy for 45 minutes straight. I have NEVER before had the customer service line been busy. When I finally got through, it was like "What? What problem? One of our servers was down for 45 seconds about half an hour ago, but that's it." If any of their servers are down at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, the 24 there is going to wish he had never opened my account. But I don't mean that in a bad way.

To: WaveSeeker who wrote (7121)	3/5/2000 11:24:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

<<I'd be very interested to hear from other traders on this thread who they would recommend for high-volume trading, upwards of 200 trades per day. I'm looking for a broker that offers direct access and is technically excellent. I'm also looking for a change from RealTick, which hasn't really changed in the past five years. Can anyone recommend some really great trading software with direct execution and broad ECN access, with the capabilities of RealTick and more?>> You may consider CyberTrader: cybercorp.com Mind you, they are not perfect. Some much prefer the interface to RTIII and there certainly are more bells and whistles. Frankly, I think a lot of those bells and whistles are unnecessary, and I configure it a bit differently. A bigger problem is occassional software instability, and it is a bandwidth and resource hog. Penson has its problems too, though from what I hear S.W.Sec is worse. Cost can be an issue too. I think that generally you will pay more than at AB, though I haven't done an exact comparison. For my money, hearing about the constant problems at AB, I'd give Cyber a whirl, especially if you want something other than RTIII - I do believe the CyberTrader software is cutting edge. Of course, they do have their problems - but who doesn't? Morgan