Commodity spread trading platform/analytics

A

AlexP

I trade commodity futures spreads, both ones that have an actual order book (time spreads, energy cracks), and also "synthetic ones" (for example, 3 corn vs 1 soybeans).

I am looking for a platform that is well-suited for trading/analyzing these, with not too high fees, and ideally also has some analytical capacity such as backtesting spreads, or identifying seasonality. I have looked at IB (very laborious to find/construct a spread) and Generic (limited analytics).

Does anyone have experience with this/any suggestions? I am beginning to view that commodity spread trading is sort of below the radar for most platforms, but if there is an exception I'd be happy to be corrected.
 
@bone built a analytics platform, but he charges $5000-$6000 for it (along with general training on spreads). He also can recommend you more "spread friendly" brokers and trading platforms.

EDIT: From my research, CTS T4 is a reasonably-priced spread-friendly trading platform (with a new autospreader) and Advantage, Crossland, RCG (and their Introducing Brokers) seem to play well with spreads. Moore Research Center provides a lot of good seasonal analysis of both outrights and spreads.
 
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I use Seasonalgo for spread analytics. It's great. Backtesting + historical curves...

Also if you want to chart more obscure spreads( delivery point basis, OTC stuff...), long historical datas and fundamentals, have a look at DTN ProphetX. I really liked it.
 
AlexP said:
I trade commodity futures spreads, both ones that have an actual order book (time spreads, energy cracks), and also "synthetic ones" (for example, 3 corn vs 1 soybeans).

I am looking for a platform that is well-suited for trading/analyzing these, with not too high fees, and ideally also has some analytical capacity such as backtesting spreads, or identifying seasonality. I have looked at IB (very laborious to find/construct a spread) and Generic (limited analytics).

Does anyone have experience with this/any suggestions? I am beginning to view that commodity spread trading is sort of below the radar for most platforms, but if there is an exception I'd be happy to be corrected.
More...

T4 works. Has access to all exchange traded spreads, historical data easily exported to excel and has a sniper add on that allows you to construct synthetic spreads.
 
Personally, I don't like the spread analytics capability and the historical database on CTS or XTrader - at least what I've seen and have had clients try out up to this point in time. From 1997-2010 I personally used TT X-Trader for execution and CQG for analytics.

These days, I recommend eSignal or CQG for analytics and according to the client's situation one of three execution options: leasing TT or CTS on a transactional basis, or using a certain very limited list of tier 1 FCM's 24 hour execution desks.

For low price points eSignal is workable but for a higher price point and more capability CQG is the other alternative.

I have a handful of special clients who have had my custom analytics package programmed onto their Bloomberg terminals.

But yes, I have engineered analytics and execution alternatives for different clients with different capitalizations. I've got independent specs with $20K accounts, I've got big specs with eight figure New Edge accounts, and I've got CTA's with Wall Street IB accounts. Like I said, I have to have workable analytics and execution for a broad spectrum of traders.
 
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