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.

Non-Tech : CyBerCorp.com -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jebj who wrote (652)	5/24/2000 6:58:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1001

<<What feeds have you found that are good>> I get my LII from another broker - whom I'd rather not name (I have an account w/ them, but don't trade there, only use the LII) - but I'm not sure who their source/provider is. Found them pretty reliable. I also use Tradescape - again, I'm not sure of their provider, but I also use certain tricks to keep an eye on the quotes. F.ex. you will notice that often a position will open on ISLD (market inside quote) and it will take as much as 1-2 seconds before it is reflected in the composite quote on Cyber. Basically I arbitrage Cyber, Tradescape, my other broker's LII and Datek+ISLD (LI), to spot who is the fastest at any given time. Here is what I'd like Cyber to do. Instead of me having to arbitrage, why not have Cyber also get quotes from, say 3 separate sources, and then Cyber's programmers could come up w/ some program that can do this automatically? That is assuming that there isn't one provider who is known to be the best (Bloomberg?). Failing that, write a little arb. program. I'm not a software guy, but it seems to me, that if I can do it by using several sources, it should be fairly simple to come up w/ some kind of little program to automatically kick in the quote that's the "freshest" at the moment. I cannot stress how important it is to have the timeliest quotes possible. I often trade volatile stocks, where momentum shifts very dramatically multi-point, and having delayed quotes means real disaster - because you are reacting to a situation which has already occurred. That results in not getting executed, because you are sending orders to "ghost" offers which are no longer current - hence bad quotes equals bad or NO execution, "chasing" etc. These problems made me give up scalping quite some time ago, but even when you are trying to judge what is happening to a stock for a bigger trade, you need to have the most current information, because you want to get a jump on the momentum - otherwise you will simply not get executed as there are too many orders ahead of you - and you just sit and watch the stock get away from you. Bottom line - for a trader this is life and death - to an investor, it matters less. And it would be nice if a daytrading broker had reasonably reliable quotes - perhaps the solution I suggested would work. Obviously, you can't expect perfection - but the better they do, the more people will trade. I personally have cut back on trading because I can't rely on all my tools working - so I can't go for the "small" trade - I now look for bigger moves, and fewer trades. Fewer trades = less commissions. Seems they should have an incentive to provide the best. Morgan