4Jays,
A charting program is something personal I think. However there are some very basic things and very important too which MUST be considered.
- data feed reliability.
QCharts is one of the good charting, and RavenQuote is much better but they both use the QFeed technology. This data feed is a total disaster. It is lagging the market and very often does not even work !
So the data feed must be reliable and you must be able to trust the data you see is reasonably tracking the market.
- indicators must be fully customizable.
- and price reasonable of course.
You might want interesting extras like DDE connection so you can use Excel or other programs and manipulate the quotes.
But the real killer is this :
- Advanced programming
People trading against you [there are on the other side] other have very powerful software, formulas or trading system assistant. I know I do.
And that makes a great deal of a difference. Ravenquote is a very good example of that, with your own formulas or plug in you buy for it.
I use AIQ which is working slightly in a different way.
The idea with AIQ is to explain precisely your trading system to the software. But unlike TradeStation or RavenQuote [or others] you define each rule really separately. However, rules may refer to each other. And the artificial intelligence engine is capable of checking all YOUR trading rules at each quote and give you precise alert information [it can even talk depending on the alert you setup].
So it is more than a trading system with AIQ, you really try to explain and teach the software your ideal way of trading [or someone succesful way of trading]. It does not trade for you so you still have to work out a lot the psychology etc.. But at least, you can rest assured ALL your rules are checked and an objective opinion is given.
Because it is rule based, you can define easily exceptions in such a system. In other systems you can do it too, but it ends up in complicated programming. With AIQ, once you understand the way to describe things, it is much easier than other programs.
But again, maybe it is just because it suits me. Maybe you will prefer something else.
AIQ uses the dial/data, mytrack data feed. The data feed is $79 including AIQ EOD and Realtime. Extra options available for more money.
It is a good quality feed, very reliable and timely. I don't use Level II so I won't judge that way of using it. But level I real time is good. But the real value is in the analysis platform, that's for sure.
For my kind of Day Trading this is perfect [I mostly trade the index]. Other types of day traders might miss some things but I can't talk for them.
For EOD, core and swing trading, AIQ is the best I know. It can scan, test strategies on the entire market, you can create indices and benchmark, basket of stocks etc...
Obviously this is a software for institutions-like core trading and anyone swing trading.
But that's the nice thing with AIQ, it is very flexible, you can do many types of trading as long as it is trading !
vpiNeo