Best Charting Software?
- Thread starter jayr95241
- Start date
I've been trading equities for a long time. I've also been reading Elitetrader for a long time. Somehow I've never felt compelled to give my option of which moving average is best or which candle stick pattern best reflects a reversal. But software choice is very important. Living in a house with traders, after all, what do engineers and computer scientists do for fun? We've been through a lot of software.
I hate the question, "What's the best trading software?". That's like what's the best vehicle to drive to work? In New York City that would be a subway train. In Texas, an extended cab pickup truck. The answer is personal and depends on the person's life details. Married, single, kids, etc. Trading software is no different. You should think about what your trading would encompass and how you would enact it. Equities, options, crypto, day trades, swings, longer term, a single broker or multiple, technical or fundamental, feeds, etc. There are so many parameters to decide on. And as you get seat time and evolve, those assumptions change.
Once you have a general idea what you want to do you need to find a broker to execute your trades. Unfortunately in my case and many others, one broker may not fulfill all requirements. One broker can get you good fills but they never seem to be able to fill your short orders. Or you have a broker you like but their data feed is too slow or doesn't support Level 2 or in some way is not a fit for your trading. In this case you might need a third party data feed. Guaranteed that somehow your particular trading style is going to point out a resource problem.
Many brokers offer a free trading platform. I like free. I consider free. I try free. But free can cost you. In my opinion brokers offer free software to promote their business model, not yours. They're not mean and evil, they're a business. To me that means that there might be a conflict about what I want and what they want from my desire to take on risk and trade. Offering a free financial TV window means nothing to me since I already have a TV on the wall next to me. But it could be great if you're using a laptop while sunning on the beach. Brokers like to keep their customers so don't expect their software to interface to other brokers. You might end up with software from three different brokers plus a feed. Good luck trying to piece together a picture and placing trades as you constantly switch windows. Also expect one of those platforms to crash and take down your whole PC just as you click the sell button. And imagine the amount of time, and stress, after restart to get all the software up and running again. And it won't be "my PC crashed and I made even more money". The market knows when you're screwed. If a broker decides to discontinue a platform and replace it with something else, throw out all your customization, code, experience and prepare for a new learning curve.
I wrote more than I expected but I hope you get the decision making process. For me I realized I needed a third party trading platform to integrate all my brokers and feeds into one efficient app. Worrying about spending a few hundred bucks for it is silly since I could easily make that much on a single trade quickly executed. I decided that the PC, not me, should spend its time scanning the market for opportunities based on my algorithmic criteria, so I needed software that I could write scanning code for. When writing code you will invariably write something that doesn't work and when you contact tech support you don't want to hear "why would you want to do that?", or "we'll tell our tech people", and then never hear back.
I don't want to mention the platforms I've tried and rejected since they might be a perfect fit for someone else. Currently I'm using Medved Trader. I'm amazed at the number of brokers and feeds they support. They combine all the feeds into one program. For me I can be looking at a chart with a feed from one broker while I place a trade with a different broker while looking at news from another broker. I love the flexibility. And I can link to Excel to try out a new trading idea I have. So form a picture of what you want to do, check out the platform I mentioned plus others like the list on ET and see what works. Keep an open mind, one small feature could make or break your plan.
Share what you have tried and what you have decided to use!
I hate the question, "What's the best trading software?". That's like what's the best vehicle to drive to work? In New York City that would be a subway train. In Texas, an extended cab pickup truck. The answer is personal and depends on the person's life details. Married, single, kids, etc. Trading software is no different. You should think about what your trading would encompass and how you would enact it. Equities, options, crypto, day trades, swings, longer term, a single broker or multiple, technical or fundamental, feeds, etc. There are so many parameters to decide on. And as you get seat time and evolve, those assumptions change.
Once you have a general idea what you want to do you need to find a broker to execute your trades. Unfortunately in my case and many others, one broker may not fulfill all requirements. One broker can get you good fills but they never seem to be able to fill your short orders. Or you have a broker you like but their data feed is too slow or doesn't support Level 2 or in some way is not a fit for your trading. In this case you might need a third party data feed. Guaranteed that somehow your particular trading style is going to point out a resource problem.
Many brokers offer a free trading platform. I like free. I consider free. I try free. But free can cost you. In my opinion brokers offer free software to promote their business model, not yours. They're not mean and evil, they're a business. To me that means that there might be a conflict about what I want and what they want from my desire to take on risk and trade. Offering a free financial TV window means nothing to me since I already have a TV on the wall next to me. But it could be great if you're using a laptop while sunning on the beach. Brokers like to keep their customers so don't expect their software to interface to other brokers. You might end up with software from three different brokers plus a feed. Good luck trying to piece together a picture and placing trades as you constantly switch windows. Also expect one of those platforms to crash and take down your whole PC just as you click the sell button. And imagine the amount of time, and stress, after restart to get all the software up and running again. And it won't be "my PC crashed and I made even more money". The market knows when you're screwed. If a broker decides to discontinue a platform and replace it with something else, throw out all your customization, code, experience and prepare for a new learning curve.
I wrote more than I expected but I hope you get the decision making process. For me I realized I needed a third party trading platform to integrate all my brokers and feeds into one efficient app. Worrying about spending a few hundred bucks for it is silly since I could easily make that much on a single trade quickly executed. I decided that the PC, not me, should spend its time scanning the market for opportunities based on my algorithmic criteria, so I needed software that I could write scanning code for. When writing code you will invariably write something that doesn't work and when you contact tech support you don't want to hear "why would you want to do that?", or "we'll tell our tech people", and then never hear back.
I don't want to mention the platforms I've tried and rejected since they might be a perfect fit for someone else. Currently I'm using Medved Trader. I'm amazed at the number of brokers and feeds they support. They combine all the feeds into one program. For me I can be looking at a chart with a feed from one broker while I place a trade with a different broker while looking at news from another broker. I love the flexibility. And I can link to Excel to try out a new trading idea I have. So form a picture of what you want to do, check out the platform I mentioned plus others like the list on ET and see what works. Keep an open mind, one small feature could make or break your plan.
Share what you have tried and what you have decided to use!
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I don't understand why in a forum of people that are trying to share ideas and improve their craft you have to make a strong derogatory statement with little details. Maybe you could elaborate on your experiences and tell us what type of trading you do and what platform you use and why? That would be helpful to people who might be thinking of trying something that could be very difficult and potentially financially harmful.
You couldn't have used Medved Trader 15 years ago, it didn't exist back then.
And yes, in MT you can build custom studies, in C#, and apply them to charts (as paintbars) and to portfolios (as scans). Not sure what applying a custom study to a position means.
If that's what you want that's fine , but I think if you want to trade stocks , ( get stock data ), I think you might need a couple of thousand deposited, and perhaps a fee for radarscreen, all I can say is when I looked into it the advantages to opening an account as opposed to subscription only were minimal.
Guys, I’m currently in the process of adding day trading stocks to my day trading of futures. For the futs I use SierraChart and have done for 8-10 years, currently via AMP/CQG. I am really happy with SC and they allow me to have another feed for free. However my stocks broker is IB and SC is full of warnings around IB data and horror stories on the support boards of traders who’ve experienced some of these serious issues. In addition SC don’t support level 2 for stocks, not that I currently use it but in the future I might. I’m in the UK so IB is the obvious choice, I can transfer GBP via their London bank and it shows on TWS within minutes. Tomorrow I’ll be connecting SC to the IB paper account to see how it runs, but want a plan B. Ideally I’d love to be able to trade off the chart, wondering if Medved integrates IB data better than SC? If not looks like a new broker required. Suggestions appreciated! Thanks
There is a desktop version of TradingView if you don’t want something browser based. The library of user written code is very large and easy to modify.
www.TradingView.com/desktop
www.TradingView.com/desktop
If I don't plan on trading with trade station, Wouldn't it make more sense to open an account with $500 and be inactive vs the subscription for trade station which is $100 a month? It looks like both options give access to tradestation unless I am missing something
Hi @T441 ,
I've seen SC's comments about IB integration and can certainly understand their position on IB API support. Calling IB's API a mess would be overly generous. We have been dealing with IB API since it became available (Back in the QuoteTracker days). With Medved Trader, you can trade pretty much anything IB supports except CFDs. Level I quotes should be available for all. Level II is supported, but IB's Level II API is crap. They show wonderful data for Level II in TWS. They do NOT allow you to get all that data via API, which creates lots of confusion. Plus they have API specific fees in some situations.
NOTE: for IB setup, refer to the following page for instructions:
https://medvedtrader.com/ib
As for AMP, MT does integrate with AMP, but only for Rithmic accounts, not CQG.