Sterling Platform Performance

mnx · Mar 27, 2008

i find sterling to be decent. the biggest problems I have with it are limitations of their api.

I've never really seen slow orders like many of you have mentioned unless my internet connection or the backbone between myself and sterling was having issues. I've had problems with cogent a couple times now, I believe twice I had about an hour where I couldn't really trade because I had 50%+ packet loss.

The only other issue I see with sterling is slow/crossed book quotes... EDGX/EDGA are the worst followed by arca... I know lots of other trading platforms have those problems and I don't trade manually much so it's not that big an issue for me...

- mnx

NYTrader777 · Mar 27, 2008

I checked into an equity trading firm a while ago that uses this program and was wondering why their were offering me such a low rate, after testing sterling I see why. Not to pleased will stick with Anvil and rather pay higher fees

monstercat · Mar 27, 2008

nytrader is correct. many of the other traders obviously haven't used an anvil or lightspeed as the difference is massive. i'll be kind and leave it at that.

Bootsie · Mar 27, 2008

Quote from mnx:

i find sterling to be decent. the biggest problems I have with it are limitations of their api.

I've never really seen slow orders like many of you have mentioned unless my internet connection or the backbone between myself and sterling was having issues. I've had problems with cogent a couple times now, I believe twice I had about an hour where I couldn't really trade because I had 50%+ packet loss.

The only other issue I see with sterling is slow/crossed book quotes... EDGX/EDGA are the worst followed by arca... I know lots of other trading platforms have those problems and I don't trade manually much so it's not that big an issue for me...

- mnx

SLOW quotes today... at around 3:45pm. Orders would not execute. I happened to be at the office and everyone was experiencing the same problem.

Like I said, it's Ok when it's smooth sailing, but when you need it most... be careful.

B

Shreddog · Mar 27, 2008

Quote from bespoke:

I don't even bother showing EdgeX/A cause they always get stuck. BATS too. ARCA not as often. But problems seem to be getting worse and worse.

You'll have problems during any big news event but I kind of expect that from any trading platform. I have to be on the sidelines during those times. Takes at least several minutes before you begin trading again unless you don't mind some seriously delayed quotes. I have to send out 'test orders' of 100 shares to see where I get filled to know if I can begin trading again.

Also, the API leaves me yearning for more. And I'm sure anyone who has used the API has seen this message many a time:

Pathetic isn't it?

One thing I've discovered that's drastically cut down on the number of crashes is when you shut down your app do the following:

1) for every quote I log the time in a variable, like "LastQuoteTime".
2) when you start shutting down your app first deregister all quotes but don't shut down yet.
3) run a timer and shut down after it's been more than a second or two since the last quote.

It seems like sterling has some sort of quote buffer that isn't being handled correctly if the client shuts down while there are quotes in the buffer.

Szeven · Mar 27, 2008

Quote from Bootsie:

SLOW quotes today... at around 3:45pm. Orders would not execute. I happened to be at the office and everyone was experiencing the same problem.

Like I said, it's Ok when it's smooth sailing, but when you need it most... be careful.

B

Your right, thats another strange and bad thing about sterling. My whole office was fine during this time.. I believe mnx was fine too. When sterling has an issue, a lot of the time its 1 server (maybe some of them are on Win 95 PII 333mhz?!) that blows up.

syswizard · Mar 27, 2008

I must admit that after reading all of these responses and having reviewed both the Sterling platform and API docs, and knowing the monthly fees garnished for the use of the platform, I am amazed. Sterling appears to be making very few enhancements to the basic platform and none to the API. They appear to be simply raking in the licensing fees.

Mr Guest · Mar 27, 2008

Anyone else subscribe to the DJ Broadtape news feed via Sterling?

What a disaster. It will lag more than 10 minutes behind sometimes. Most days, I'm lucky if it makes it to 3:30pm before completely locking. If it were not for the spread charts, I'd probably dump Sterling. I like the look and feel, but like others said, it tends to really bog down when you need it most.

bespoke · Mar 27, 2008

Quote from Shreddog:

Pathetic isn't it?

One thing I've discovered that's drastically cut down on the number of crashes is when you shut down your app do the following:

1) for every quote I log the time in a variable, like "LastQuoteTime".
2) when you start shutting down your app first deregister all quotes but don't shut down yet.
3) run a timer and shut down after it's been more than a second or two since the last quote.

It seems like sterling has some sort of quote buffer that isn't being handled correctly if the client shuts down while there are quotes in the buffer.

I've actually been doing that for a while now. I put a 2 second timer after I deregister the quotes before I close the application and that seems to do the trick.

Now, can anyone get a decent API feed using any .NET language??

Shreddog · Mar 28, 2008

Quote from bespoke:

I've actually been doing that for a while now. I put a 2 second timer after I deregister the quotes before I close the application and that seems to do the trick.

Now, can anyone get a decent API feed using any .NET language??

DTN's IQ feed seems decent. I'm still in the experimental stage with it but the API documentation and support has been excellent. Can't beat the price either.