Recent post from another forum about ESignal's latest product Advanced Get:
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The majority of my trading is in index futures, bond futures, and currency futures so the quality of support for futures is as important as support for stocks. I am a long time futures/stocks/options customer with Interactive Brokers. My target trading time frame is to position trade for days/weeks, however I generally use 15/60 minute charts for timing entries. I've used Advanced Get EOD for years and for real-time data I subscribe to QCharts. I don't need fancy charts, just price bars, volume bars, and basic drawing tools for lines, fibs, and forks. I've been using IB's Interactive Charts more and more because they have proven to be reliable. IB's Charts are rudimentary and I decided to take a look to see if there are any packages which combine IB's real-time data with historical backfill.
Advanced Get Charts (AGC) from eSignal is one such package and I've been running it for about two weeks now. I thought I'd pass along my comments.
Name: Advanced Get Charts. It shares some of the UI and some of the studies with Advanced Get, however the similarities end there. There is no EW, MOB, elipses, False Bar Stochasticss, and other tools for which Advanced Get is well known.
Datafeed: IB for real-time (100 symbol limit) and eSignal for historical backfill. Support for several other broker data feeds is offered with other plugins. The integraton is pretty straightforward. For each symbol you want to use, you enter both the eSignal symbol and IB symbol into the Plug-in Manager. I have successfully entered both futures and stocks. The eSignal side for futures can be specified as a continuous contract and one need only change the IB symbol on roll-over. The continuous contract feature is nice because weekly and monthly charts show years of major pivots.
There are some bugs in symbol recognition. Index symbols refuse to work and eSignal has not been of help in resolving the problem. I was unable to pull up the continuous charts on a Sunday evening during the Globex session however this worked fine early the following morning. You won't get any charts during the hours that IB's servers are shut down. Japenese Yen futures from eSignal are 4 decimals (.9123) and from IB are 6 decimals (.009123) and never the twain shall meet so forget about following JY using AGC. They do not permit toggling between RTH and ETH for ECBOT bonds whether all sessions is checked or not checked.
Charting: Similar to QCharts and Advanced Get in terms of studies and basic drawing tools. Studies can be stacked into a single tabbed window which can save space. There are no symbol or interval settings, one of the more handy features in QCharts. Toggling all sessions on/off is possible but less convenient.
Quote Sheet: Rudimentary. You can choose from among 17 basic fields. There are basic font and color settings for the sheet itself but not for individual rows. The Symbol column is non descriptive unless you know what the trading symbol means and there is no way to assign a user description. Ditto for user comments. The Open Interest field for futures reports nothing.
Workspace: You can combine charts and quote sheets to build a workspace which is referred to as a "Page". Pages are saved in "Folders". Once you have loaded any page in a folder, you can rotate very easily among pages wwithin that folder. You use a dialog box to change folders. I've used this combination in Advanced Get and it makes it easy to handle a large variety of workspaces. You can have only one instance of AGC open per account.
Alerts: None. AGC won't be ready for prime time without alerts.
Documentation: Virtually non-existant. There are a few video clips, however those are for an older version and there have been many changes since. Little in way of web based help. Application Help is basic stuff copied from the Advanced Get help system, little if anything unique to AGC. There are no manuals which can be read online or downloaded. There are a couple of very sketchy knowledge base articles if you know how to find them.
Support: Virtually non-existant. eSignal clearly states that this low-cost product will get no support except through a web based forum in where there are only a few postings per day. Given the virtually non-existant documentation, you will be paying to use the product while undergoing a learning curve with very little help. Try sending an email to customer service and you will be presented with a search of Knowledge Base articles with no way to complete the email.
Cost: AGC's strong point ... $29 monthly and no exchange fees because the real-time data is pulled from your broker.
Competitors: My understanding is that AGC and Ensign are the only packages which support smooth integration of real-time data from Inteeractive Brokers with historical data. I plan to give Ensign ($39 monthly including historical backfill) a workout in the near week or two.
Overall: Thumbs down for me. A very basic charting and quote package for very little money. An experienced stock trader, who has worked with a variety of trading platforms, might be able to get this working on his/her own with some effort and help on the web forum. AGC is not ready for futures traders.
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The majority of my trading is in index futures, bond futures, and currency futures so the quality of support for futures is as important as support for stocks. I am a long time futures/stocks/options customer with Interactive Brokers. My target trading time frame is to position trade for days/weeks, however I generally use 15/60 minute charts for timing entries. I've used Advanced Get EOD for years and for real-time data I subscribe to QCharts. I don't need fancy charts, just price bars, volume bars, and basic drawing tools for lines, fibs, and forks. I've been using IB's Interactive Charts more and more because they have proven to be reliable. IB's Charts are rudimentary and I decided to take a look to see if there are any packages which combine IB's real-time data with historical backfill.
Advanced Get Charts (AGC) from eSignal is one such package and I've been running it for about two weeks now. I thought I'd pass along my comments.
Name: Advanced Get Charts. It shares some of the UI and some of the studies with Advanced Get, however the similarities end there. There is no EW, MOB, elipses, False Bar Stochasticss, and other tools for which Advanced Get is well known.
Datafeed: IB for real-time (100 symbol limit) and eSignal for historical backfill. Support for several other broker data feeds is offered with other plugins. The integraton is pretty straightforward. For each symbol you want to use, you enter both the eSignal symbol and IB symbol into the Plug-in Manager. I have successfully entered both futures and stocks. The eSignal side for futures can be specified as a continuous contract and one need only change the IB symbol on roll-over. The continuous contract feature is nice because weekly and monthly charts show years of major pivots.
There are some bugs in symbol recognition. Index symbols refuse to work and eSignal has not been of help in resolving the problem. I was unable to pull up the continuous charts on a Sunday evening during the Globex session however this worked fine early the following morning. You won't get any charts during the hours that IB's servers are shut down. Japenese Yen futures from eSignal are 4 decimals (.9123) and from IB are 6 decimals (.009123) and never the twain shall meet so forget about following JY using AGC. They do not permit toggling between RTH and ETH for ECBOT bonds whether all sessions is checked or not checked.
Charting: Similar to QCharts and Advanced Get in terms of studies and basic drawing tools. Studies can be stacked into a single tabbed window which can save space. There are no symbol or interval settings, one of the more handy features in QCharts. Toggling all sessions on/off is possible but less convenient.
Quote Sheet: Rudimentary. You can choose from among 17 basic fields. There are basic font and color settings for the sheet itself but not for individual rows. The Symbol column is non descriptive unless you know what the trading symbol means and there is no way to assign a user description. Ditto for user comments. The Open Interest field for futures reports nothing.
Workspace: You can combine charts and quote sheets to build a workspace which is referred to as a "Page". Pages are saved in "Folders". Once you have loaded any page in a folder, you can rotate very easily among pages wwithin that folder. You use a dialog box to change folders. I've used this combination in Advanced Get and it makes it easy to handle a large variety of workspaces. You can have only one instance of AGC open per account.
Alerts: None. AGC won't be ready for prime time without alerts.
Documentation: Virtually non-existant. There are a few video clips, however those are for an older version and there have been many changes since. Little in way of web based help. Application Help is basic stuff copied from the Advanced Get help system, little if anything unique to AGC. There are no manuals which can be read online or downloaded. There are a couple of very sketchy knowledge base articles if you know how to find them.
Support: Virtually non-existant. eSignal clearly states that this low-cost product will get no support except through a web based forum in where there are only a few postings per day. Given the virtually non-existant documentation, you will be paying to use the product while undergoing a learning curve with very little help. Try sending an email to customer service and you will be presented with a search of Knowledge Base articles with no way to complete the email.
Cost: AGC's strong point ... $29 monthly and no exchange fees because the real-time data is pulled from your broker.
Competitors: My understanding is that AGC and Ensign are the only packages which support smooth integration of real-time data from Inteeractive Brokers with historical data. I plan to give Ensign ($39 monthly including historical backfill) a workout in the near week or two.
Overall: Thumbs down for me. A very basic charting and quote package for very little money. An experienced stock trader, who has worked with a variety of trading platforms, might be able to get this working on his/her own with some effort and help on the web forum. AGC is not ready for futures traders.
