J-Trader $4.80 Round Turn

FX-Trader,

I opened the AF/GHCO account in August. Not a long time, true, but long enough to give me some sense of the reliability of the software and support level of the IB/FCM. Tech/customer support is straight to the GHCO desk. They have 800 numbers for customer support, functional support and emergency support. They answer on first or second ring. Daily/monthly reports are sent by email in PDF format. There is good risk control on the account which I like. You cannot accidentally take on too many contracts and your positions are closed if you lose more than your daily allocated dollar risk.

Good luck getting similar customer support from IB for 4.80/rt and no monthly fees.

As for the question about RCG, I have not dealt with them. I believe they deal with smaller accounts (typically) and their risk parameters are a bit looser. I have no idea how well their pats systems perform on the backend or how good their tech support is. Maybe someone who trades with them can report here.

weewilly
 
Quote from weewilly:

FX-Trader,

I opened the AF/GHCO account in August. Not a long time, true, but long enough to give me some sense of the reliability of the software and support level of the IB/FCM.
More...
RCG use the same software. So there should be no complaints
about "lost trades", if the software were indeed reliable.

Good luck & good trades !
 
I am with RCG (IB: eLocal) for more than a year now using J-Trader but mainly a self written trading frontend. As my application uses the same Patssystems API as J-Trader my experiences should be the same as for JTrader users. Until now I never noticed any lost fills / orders. But I do not trade every day so perhaps I was just lucky not to trade on one of the problematic days.

Order status changes and fills are fast (normally less than one second).

RCG sends me a pdf with the trades of the previous day per eMail and every month a printed statement which I use for tax purposes (I am paying my taxes in Germany). I am very satisfied with this solution.

What actually causes me some trouble is that the host and the price server connection get lost approximately one to three times a day. As the computer my application is running on is directly connected to the internet (it is located in a data center) I am very sure that this connection problems are not on my side. Does any one else experience such connection losses? Perhaps it is better with GHCO?

Hope this information is useful for someone else...

Regards
Markus
 
Quote from mhoev:

I am with RCG (IB: eLocal) for more than a year now using J-Trader but mainly a self written trading frontend. As my application uses the same Patssystems API as J-Trader my experiences should be the same as for JTrader users. Until now I never noticed any lost fills / orders. But I do not trade every day so perhaps I was just lucky not to trade on one of the problematic days.

Order status changes and fills are fast (normally less than one second).

RCG sends me a pdf with the trades of the previous day per eMail and every month a printed statement which I use for tax purposes (I am paying my taxes in Germany). I am very satisfied with this solution.

What actually causes me some trouble is that the host and the price server connection get lost approximately one to three times a day. As the computer my application is running on is directly connected to the internet (it is located in a data center) I am very sure that this connection problems are not on my side. Does any one else experience such connection losses? Perhaps it is better with GHCO?

Hope this information is useful for someone else...

Regards
Markus
More...

Markus,

Very interesting. Can you tell us a bit more about your experience writing your program to the Patsystems API? How did you get started and how did you test your system before going life? As most of us only know API's from the information on the IB website, it would be very interesting if you could tell us a bit about the way to practically get going with the J-Trader API.

Thank you,

nononsense
 
Quote from nononsense:


Very interesting. Can you tell us a bit more about your experience writing your program to the Patsystems API? How did you get started and how did you test your system before going life? As most of us only know API's from the information on the IB website, it would be very interesting if you could tell us a bit about the way to practically get going with the J-Trader API.
onsense
More...

Well, I do not know that much about other API's, so I will concentrate on the PATS API. Sorry for not going into to much details - the API is distributed under a NDA.

The API offers all options the J-Trader front end does, e.g. receiving real time depth of Market information, placing, amending and cancelling orders (OCO is possible if supported by the exchange) and so on. As the API is deleviered as a Windows DLL-File (of course together with a good documentation) you have to write a program to use this API. For writing programs you will use a multi-thread environment like Microsoft Visual Studio .NET or Delphi.

Communication with the API then goes over function calls and registrated callbacks which are activated by the API on certain events, e.g. on order status changes, fills, new price information, connection status changes and important messages. If you have some use in programming it is not that hard to write your own trading application.

To receive the API you have to contact Patssystems (see there web site). They will charge you 1.000 USD for the API including one conformance test. If your application passes this test you will receive a license string which you will pass on to your broker. He than can allow your application to connect to his systems.

So if you are just looking for some Excel integration this is of course not the appropriate way of doing so. If you want to have Tradstation signals automatically executed you should look for some applications linking TradeStation to the PATS API (have a look at www.patssystems.com for that).

Regards
Markus
 
Quote from mhoev:



[...]
To receive the API you have to contact Patssystems (see there web site). They will charge you 1.000 USD for the API including one conformance test. If your application passes this test you will receive a license string which you will pass on to your broker. He than can allow your application to connect to his systems.

[...]
ww.patssystems.com[/url] for that).

Regards
Markus
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Hi Markus,

Thank you for your description.
After you got your dll from Patssystems, how did you do to test your program prior to submitting it to this conformance test? I suppose you did not sunmit this blindly. Do they have some kind of online testing facility for developers?

What was your experience with this subsequent conformance test? What happens if you change this program in the future. Will another conformance test be required?

Thank you again Markus, as far is I know, you are the first person on ET to communicate something sensible about this.

Be good,

nononsense
 
Quote from nononsense:


After you got your dll from Patssystems, how did you do to test your program prior to submitting it to this conformance test? I suppose you did not sunmit this blindly. Do they have some kind of online testing facility for developers?

What was your experience with this subsequent conformance test? What happens if you change this program in the future. Will another conformance test be required?
More...

You get two versions of the API - a live version and a demo version. You develope against the demo version. If you do not book (and pay) additional test server time the conformance test is the first time the application is connected to a server. The test follows a test procedere which is well documented so that you know what will happen and what is expected from your apllication.

To my knowledge a new conformance test is necessary if the application's functionality is changed, but not for bug fixes or smaller changes.

Happy programming
Markus
 
Quote from DT-waw (6-Nov-03) :

I'll have to ask again :mad:
WHY AF doesn't advertise commission rates for Eurex & LIFFE futures on the website? Is there any particular reason?
More...

Congratulations AF! Very quick response.
 
and suddenly Patsystems provides all a programmer would like, to develop connectivity to those systems. A demo platform, a live platform, documentation, and the like.

Hmm, I just wonder what causes some wanna-be experts on APIs to bash Patsystems and TT Tech. for their supposed lack of service in regards to providing API support/connectivity/documentation. Could it be that those guys have not done their homework and now need to ask users of J-Trader and X-Trader basic questions like 2nd graders? I guess the only morale of this story is to slow it down and really research facts before drawing wrong conclusions. Maybe they should change their handle to noSENSE or NONESENSE, cause many of their attacks on other users who have actually done their research are nonesense.

When I as a trader disseminate information about a broker I researched I better be right. Likewise, the same should be expected of a developer.
 
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