First Alert's Data Feed

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Hi All,

I've been using Neovest's First Alert software for a little over a month now. I am reasonably happy with the software its self (great stock scanning capability), but the data stream that works with it (also provided by Neovest, called IdeaSteam) seems to leave a tad to desire. Quite often it will broadcast completely erroneous data (trades that quite obviously never occurred: .03 for stocks such as MSFT). When I say "quite often", I mean perhaps twice a day.

Also, I have noticed that my volumes never match up to published amounts. Neovest's datastream sends every trade for every listed stock (which is why it is able to perform such useful stock scans), and I believe it totals up the days volume, and arrives at the number that way. If this is the case, a lower volume than published reports would suggest I am missing data. On some stocks, the volume can differ by up to 50%. That is a lot of data to be missing. :eek:

So my question is two fold:

For those who have used or are using First Alert, are you experiencing the same thing?

And second, for all, are these issues a common occurance in other software packages you have used, or are they independant to Neovest's datastream?

Cheers. :)
 
many data vendors suffer from bad ticks. Also sometimes it is not the vendors fault as the trade was misreported. Some vendors scrub better than others.

As far a first alert is concerned do you have a problem with scans reporting false postitives. In other words when you go throughtthe list, lets say a Jeff Cooper scan, do some of the stocks not match the crieria?
 
Originally posted by jem
many data vendors suffer from bad ticks. Also sometimes it is not the vendors fault as the trade was misreported. Some vendors scrub better than others.
More...

It seems that every vendor has a problem at one time or another. I do know one thing though, when data is "scrubbed", that takes time and it will slow down the data feed to you. So the question you have to ask is which is more important, squeaky clean data or data that has a few bad ticks in it, but gets there a 1/4 sec to a sec sooner?

If you're using a system that generates real-time signals, I'd think you'd want the delay so that you wouldn't have false signals. If you're doing serious tic-by-tick tape watching, you as the signal generator should easily recognize a bad tick and would be more interested in the speed.

All vendors just re-distribute what comes to them from SIAC and the other exchanges ticker plants. The difference is in the cleaning, how they transmit them, and in the case of the internet, what they do about re-transmit requests.

Regarding FirstAlert, I personally think that they have the best real-time filtering product that I've seen. However, from personal experience I know that there have been problems with both their own internet feed and with S&P Comstock's satellite feed.
 
Thanks for the heads up. The bad ticks are not really much of an issue. Though they do produce faulty scan signals, I can easily over look that, and quickly determine which are realistic, and which are not.

My larger concern is the missing volume. In a large traffic stock it is not much of an issue due to the fact that most ticks are just duplicates, but for the smaller stocks (under 500k in volume), I am a bit concerned. Lossing half of the ticks, I am concerned I am missing half of the story.

Is this common with other data feeds, to miss up to half the ticks?

Cheers.
 
unfortunately, unless you pay for a satellite hook up or a direct t-1 line via hyperfeed, then ideastream is your only choice. we tested it about a month ago and the quotes were 3 seconds slow.
 
When I traded at my old company we used First Alert with Hyper Feed. Some times, not more than 1 time a week the system would stop especially on the increased volume day.
Now I am using First Alert with S&P Comstock data feed and that is complete nightmare. Frankly I do not know what these problems should be attributed to. The quotes are always delayed compared with REDIPlus, sometimes it stalls for a minute or two. The tech person from Neovest blames the network and the S&P Comstock feed, I do not know what it is but the fact is that nobody can fix it. Also, I never had problems with daily tick chart until recently. Now in the morning the chart does not show the yesterday data unless you change 1 day for 2. The tech changed the time on the chart and now I see on the chart two days data from 6 AM to 4 PM. They call it a work around.
 
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