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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask DrBob -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: manfmnantucket who wrote (42931)	8/25/2001 5:19:45 AM
From: veryfinerastus	Respond to of 100058

MFN-BROKERAGES I use www.alaron.com & have for quite some time. They offer 50 free real time quotes per day & then 5 cents per quote thereafter. you can have a list of symbols on what they call on-line quotes, but each sym. is counted as a quote or they have a quick quote which u enter 1 quote. Both are almost instantaneous. This is ok for me but may not meet what you need. Commission is $20 plus exch. fees but do believe you can get comm. for 17. One thing that bugs me is quarterly fee of $15 (& they will try to get 30 but dont let them). There is a lot of info. to be gained by just visiting the site.(www.alaron.com). Executions, IHMO, are very good. Altho satisfied with Alaron , am looking at www.5perside. com. As one friend to another (and am sure you realize this) futures can bust your butt quick & big time. Good luck to you MFN & if I can help you in my limited way, let me know. -- VF

To: manfmnantucket who wrote (42931)	8/25/2001 11:58:34 AM
From: Louis V. Lambrecht	Respond to of 100058

mfn - re:futures brokers and trading tools. I have bad experience with trading platforms (they call a "ticker") and not so happy with my broker. Was perfect for the fisrt 6 months, then .... Most platforms have a problem with partially filled orders. You wouldn't imagine this from Globex, but it happens. Even for 2 contracts: they can be split on 2 trades and your broker has to handle these two trades on one order. Some trading platforms would show the first partial fill, not the remaining. Even your balance will be bogus then. And the remaining info (and remaining marketings's bells and whistles they offer). One way around is to send as many one contract orders as you need. Maening that you don't need a sophisticated client. Further, futures quotes have a low priority dissemination at practically all data feeds. In fast markets, you could lose your shirt if you don't have at least 2 real time feeds on different Internet backbones. Browser based systems are as fast as local applications as long as they use Java. Important also is that you always will have an Internet disruption at the wrong time (trust me, most of my losses happened that way). So, the good practice is to secure your trade with a wide stop-loss order as soon as you get filled (in case you lose connection). Or have an online account which allows you to phone a broker 24/24 6/7 (No trades Saturday's <g>). Price of phone orders is not relevant against possible losses. With all this in mind: - broker with a 24/24 7/7 phone access - two subscriptions to datafeeds - a simple (the simpliest possible) order entry system, as you will have to manually write on your trade blotter in any way. you would choose the broker with the lowest commission. Those commissions (RT fees) are negotiable (as your performance bonds requirement for day-trading are negotiable). Part of the fee is: commission and diverse exchange taxes, but also a price per trade for your application. I have no recommendation as I am changing of broker (and platform), but had some interesting mails lately: pmbinc.com check their PropTrader demo. Amazing, first time I saw a market depth on futures (as on standard Level II). And Walter Bressert's son Jerome, who has a multitude of trading platforms to chose from: onlinetradingselect.com

To: manfmnantucket who wrote (42931)	8/25/2001 12:34:21 PM
From: Lee Lichterman III	Respond to of 100058

You might want to give these guys a look. They are dirt dirt dirt cheap for trading and I have heard good things. I haven't moved there myself as I don't day trade and need the web phone capabilities of my current broker so I can trade from work but if I ever went full time, this would probably be my choice. interactivebrokers.com As for data feed, I haven't heard anyone that can beat E-signal. dbc.com Here are all the sites I have listed on our site for charting and quote feed..... MetaStock... equis.com ASC Trend... wintick.com Qcharts....... finance.lycos.com Trade Station...... tradestation.com TC2000..... tc2000.com E-Signal..... esignal.com Quote Feeds DBC ( E-signal) dbc.com Telescan telescan.com Dial Data tdc.com Reuters reutersdatalink.com Q Feed finance.lycos.com Good Luck, Lee