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Strategies & Market Trends : E-Mini Pit -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: the-phoenix who wrote (6016)	8/24/2002 10:35:12 PM
From: Ramus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11288

"I would really like to see how this program works while it is adding real-time data second by second. " Well, I believe it updates on a 1 second interval and is a function of the data source. Anyway, you can see candles and volume bars build during a minute interval(minute chart for example). "How well do the trendlines "stay put" as the data scrolls or as bar heights change, or if you change timeframes?" Why would they move? Sure the data is drawn to the right and the screen will scroll to the left but lines and what not move accordingly, no problem. "It looks like a program that works similarly to the IQCharts software that I think you (and I) used to use." Uh, IQcharts is a basic charting software, real minimum capabilities. Sierra is the full blown big bananna. Features by comparison... IQcharts should cost about a $1 per month in my opinion. I liked IQCharts because it's so cheap and basic and I don't need all the bells and whistles but it's not really comparable to Sierra except they are both charting programs. "That is, it refreshes the charts at the defined interval (from 1 second up to whatever) as opposed to "streaming" charts, like QCharts?" Yeah, I think the refresh rate is 1 second minimum. Do you mean "tick" charts where trade data is added as it occurs instead of in specific intervals? I think you'll find the fixed interval to be very common in charting software. Reason? It's a lot easier to accumulate data and apply it to the chart in a fixed interval. Makes it a lot easier to make linear drawings. I would venture a guess that most do it this way as doing it any other way would just add work that really wouldn't add any value. I mean, last time I checked it was really hard for me to tell the difference between a second and a half a second, know what I mean? The software is very very capable and has many features that I haven't explored. If you're a programmer you can write your own code and store it as DLL's and have them added to the program on startup. Or you can use an Excel compatible spreadsheet(built in) to build formulas there. And the output of these spreadsheets can be plotted on charts as well. You can take chart data and pipe it to formulas in your spread sheet...perform calculations on that and then pipe the output to a graph and plot it. Again, I haven't done any of these things but there is lots you could do with it. Another example is Nemers 3rd derivative of price vs time...the ROC of the ROC...you could do this type of thing no problem. I would sum it up like this. For charting you can probably do anything any of the others can. For ease of use, I don't know. Lots of people like it, others might prefer something they are more used to. I don't remember what I was using just prior to using it but when I thought I would try it and I did and I didn't like it at first. I wasn't used to how it was layed out and how you went about using it but I gave it a chance. After a couple of hours use I realized that it was beyond the call of duty, better than anything I had used prior. At the time the really cool thing was that it used Mytrack data(I already had that) and it was only $95/year(it's even cheaper now). When I looked at other possibles for comparison the price/capability just didn't come anywhere close from anyone else. It's been a no brainer ever since. But, like I said, depending on what your doing and what you're used to, you may or may not like it. That's true of them all. "I couldn't figure out how to do something as simple as change the size of the price bar section and reduce the space taken up by the indicators?" (bear with me as I cover several related things here) If you're in a chart(it's highlighted a la windows) just type in a 5 or a 3 or 2 or whatever and hit return and it will become a 2 or 5 minute chart. You can use the left and right arrows to scroll left and right(or use the slider at the bottom of a chart). And use the up and down arrows to spread the graph out or tighten up the view(without changing the time base). You can also use the pgup and pgdwn keys to do this in giant steps. If you want to size the regions taken up by the indicators use the "tools" menu and select "ajdust regions" or type alt-0(alt zero)..your cursor will turn into an up/down arrow and an otherwise invisible line will be highlighted when you move your cursor over a region boundary that you want to size, just drag it (a la windows) to where you want it, to make a particular indicator region taller or shorter. One other thing, there is a chat board on the SC website where you can ask questions and get answers..and also look over past questions and answers. Since the IB data feed is a new one for SC there are some things folks are getting used to like the proper format for some symbols with IB etc. You'll see a lot of that on the board lately. Walt