Getting set up with TS in U.S. ...

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BrooksRimes

I used to own TS 4.0 before it became a brokerage. Did a lot of development in EL. Since then I've developed in Amibroker, Technifilter Plus (may be OOB) and most recently in Ninja Trader. I stayed away from TS brokerage, preferring the commissions and lack of (or reduced) exchange fees with IB.

Continued reading reminds of how much a standard EL is and its not always easy moving code from one platform to another. Another advantage with TS these days is that I understand they have all the data set for your backtesting which saves time and trouble.

I understand there is a non-brokerage version of TS but you must be outside the U.S. and probably provide your own data.

In the U.S. if you generate enough commissions, its free. I'm in research mode, so I won't for a while. So, what's the most economical way to get set up? Must you pay fees for historical data?

Advice is appreciated.

Brooks
 
Stay away from tradestation! The charts and matrix always locks up. I have called tradestation and they don't care. This has been an issue fopr a week. I called to ask them to give me a commission rebate or something and they laughed. They seriously read me the agreement over the phone that states they aren't responsible for anything. Basically I said hey I wouldn't be calling and complaining if it were a data isuse from the CME or the internet was down but this is your servers and it's been ongoing for a week. They don't care. So Tradestation is the only Company in the free world that can charge you without providing a service. Rather ironic that they are a brokerage and their primary source of income seems to be the people they could care less about. Been trading for ovr a decade and Tradestation is by far the worst and most callous platform/brokerage I have ever dealt with. Even Refco was fair and didn't intentionally screw you.
 
Tradestation financials - lower revenue, lower net income by almost half and a 24% reduction in # of trades as same time last year with an increase in employee compensation. Funny how poor customer service is viewable in financials.
 
i didnt pull the other brokers, but i would assume most of them will read the same way this year. i use ts and am happy with them.
 
It is my understanding you can get a TS subscription which allows you to use the software without an account for something like $250 per month. I don't think it is limited to non-US, but maybe I am wrong. It drops to $99 (or free, depending on activity) if you have a brokerage account. Lots of people open an account with the minimum to get the reduced platform fee but never place any trades.

The good: Historical data is free, extensive and of reasonable quality.

The bad: They kill you on real time exchange fees. If you are used to getting everything for free (or $10) thru IB, you wil be rudely awakened. As far as I can tell TS treats real time data fees as a revenue stream, not just a pass thru of exchange fees.
 
Why are their fees considered high? I pay $1.00 per option contract, and $1 per 100 shares of a stock, with a 8 dollar max charge.

is this high?

Think or swim is $5 minimum per trade.
 
Quote from ebaronjr:

Why are their fees considered high? I pay $1.00 per option contract, and $1 per 100 shares of a stock, with a 8 dollar max charge.

is this high?

Think or swim is $5 minimum per trade.
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We are talking about the (real time) market data fees.

And yes, all the historical data is included free with the base fee.
 
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