I am a RealTick customer, who for the most part (except for their big outage day last year !) is satisfied with service. I am not, however, satisfied with their price. I tried eSignal 7.3 last year, and found these 4 problems, and decided at the time, not to go with them. Can anyone verify whether or not these 4 problems have been remedied or not in 7.5 ?
1) I have built elaborate spreadsheets using RealTick's DDE API
interface, based on their Level I data. I use these
spreadsheets as my screening tool. eSignal has an equivalent
DDE interface, so I converted my spreadsheets over to use
them. Lo and behold, on eSignal, I found many
instances where the Level I data (Best bids/offers) were not
in synch with their Level II market depth data - only for illiquid
stocks. This drove me crazy, and happened many times.
2) Which leads me to problem # 2. The telephone support was
very bad. Had to wait on hold for almost 40 minutes once \
during the trading day, and when I finally got through to
someone to complain about specific instances where the data
was out of sync (problem above), the guy on the phone new
nothing at all. Very poor customer support. Contrast that
with RealTick - I never seem to wait on hold more than 15-20
seconds, and a good number of their staff is knowledgeable.
3) I have dual internet lines at home (broadband and a backup
dialup line), both of which are always active. If my primary line
fails, RealTick always detects that, and automatically
transitions over to my secondary line, whose route becomes
active. With eSignal, if my primary line went down, the
application would attempt to re-connect on my other line (via
my alternate route), and I would get a "DUPLICATE ID"
error, that would prevent my connection. I had to exit the app,
and re-start to get it working. Hence, eSignal's failover
algorithms are inferior to that of RealTick's.
4) You may think this is stupid, but RealTick has an audible
indicator that can be invoked, any time the book changes on
the market maker screen. I have become totally reliant on
this indicator to alert me to a change in the books.
eSignal does not have this - I requested it as a feature
improvement. I found it very hard not to have this indicator
around. Does eSignal now support this on their Montage
screens and their NYSE Open Book screen ?
Thanks in advance, to anyone who can confirm/deny the above problems for me.
1) I have built elaborate spreadsheets using RealTick's DDE API
interface, based on their Level I data. I use these
spreadsheets as my screening tool. eSignal has an equivalent
DDE interface, so I converted my spreadsheets over to use
them. Lo and behold, on eSignal, I found many
instances where the Level I data (Best bids/offers) were not
in synch with their Level II market depth data - only for illiquid
stocks. This drove me crazy, and happened many times.
2) Which leads me to problem # 2. The telephone support was
very bad. Had to wait on hold for almost 40 minutes once \
during the trading day, and when I finally got through to
someone to complain about specific instances where the data
was out of sync (problem above), the guy on the phone new
nothing at all. Very poor customer support. Contrast that
with RealTick - I never seem to wait on hold more than 15-20
seconds, and a good number of their staff is knowledgeable.
3) I have dual internet lines at home (broadband and a backup
dialup line), both of which are always active. If my primary line
fails, RealTick always detects that, and automatically
transitions over to my secondary line, whose route becomes
active. With eSignal, if my primary line went down, the
application would attempt to re-connect on my other line (via
my alternate route), and I would get a "DUPLICATE ID"
error, that would prevent my connection. I had to exit the app,
and re-start to get it working. Hence, eSignal's failover
algorithms are inferior to that of RealTick's.
4) You may think this is stupid, but RealTick has an audible
indicator that can be invoked, any time the book changes on
the market maker screen. I have become totally reliant on
this indicator to alert me to a change in the books.
eSignal does not have this - I requested it as a feature
improvement. I found it very hard not to have this indicator
around. Does eSignal now support this on their Montage
screens and their NYSE Open Book screen ?
Thanks in advance, to anyone who can confirm/deny the above problems for me.