I have been evaluating StockWatchPro the last week. The newly released 2.3.1 appears to have fixed the crashes I was having; The program has been running without crashes for the past 8 hours. I have been using QCharts for the past 3 years, and for a stretch I used RavenQuote (RQ), until it became ErlangerQuote (EQ) and the price shot up from $40/month to $80/month (with no change in features).
SWP and EQ's biggest features over QCharts are formulas, screener/scanners, and SWP has backtesting.
I reallly like SWP's screener and the new integration with IB. However, for my purposes, I find that SWP is lacking some of the polish of qcharts, and seriously lacking when compared to the useability of ErlangerQuote. SWP has improved alot though, since I last reviewed it some months ago. The author is definately working to improve the software.
A quick note about my use of the product: I am mainly focused on shortterm daytrading, so most of the screener and backtesting features are not appealling to me. I am more interested in the chart, L1, qfeed hotlist, L2 features.
GENERAL
+ Most places, I don't want to see 4 decimal places.. I would like to see 2 decimals on snapshot and chart axis. Is there some way to set this?
+ Ability to hide the title bar on charts,L1, L2. I usually have about 20-30 small charts and 1 big chart in my workspace. Once I have setup the charts, I don't need the titlebar. If you add up the screenspace for the titlebars on 20 charts, 3-4 L1, and 1 L2, it is a signficant waste of space.
+ I added 'Symbol' to the snapshot, by it just shows 'Smb: n/a'. Looks like a bug.
+ no way to select a particular sym/inv color, have to cycle through them. (EQ supports this)
LEVEL 1
+ Can't insert spaces in level 1. (qcharts, EQ support this) The only way to insert a new symbol inbetween some existing symbols is to add it to the end, then drag n drop it between the symbols. Also can't see cursor on a blank row. (qcharts, EQ support this)
+ Each L1 has its own selection. If you click on another L1 A, row 1, and then click on L1 B, row 1, both rows are selected. If I then go back and click on L1 A, row 1, there is no SYM event broadcast, because it is already selected. Qcharts and EQ don't work that. Only one L1/row has the foucs.
+ Need a sort lock on level1. (QC, EQ have this)
+ After I accidentally sorted a L1, I tried to turn the sort off by clicking the arrow to reverse, then clicking again to make the arrow disappear but it still kept sorting base don reverse sort.
HOTLISTS
+ ON hotlist how do I get a rank column, so I can sort by highest trade rate,
higest short term down/up. (QC, EQ support this)
By default, it is sorted by rank, but if I temporarily sort on another column,
there is no way to revert back to sort on rank.
+ In addition to missing rank on hotlists, I also don't see the 'Short Term'
down % that QCharts displays ,e.g.
Symbol, ShortTerm, Rank
AMEX:SEV, -24.33%, 1
+ Hotlists update by blanking out first, not very pretty. QCharts and EQ don't
do this (aesthetics) EQ also has additional control over the update time of the Hotlist.
So, if you are reviewing the symbols on the list, you can turn update off temporarily.
CHARTS
*** No way to adjust spacing of candlesticks.
(QC and EQ support this).
This is a major problem. Am I missing something here?
+ Is it possible to manually adjust the vertical axis bar. INTC just had a bad tick. In qcharts, I can click and drag on the axis to swtich from autoscale to manual-adjusted scale. In SWP, I turned autoscale off, but click and draggin in the axis space just moved the chart up/down. (In qcharts you click/drag on the chart body to move up/down/left/right.)
I tried CTRL+drag and SHIFT+drag, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I would suggest you follow qcharts because it was pretty intuitive.
+ chart default layout doesn't remember size of chart (EQ does, QC doesn't)
+ Chart title "Chart - QUALCOMM" gets cut off when you use a small chart. (qcharts shows "Qualcomm", EQ allows choice of symbol, e.g. "QCOM", or company name, e.g. "QUALCOMM") Would just like "QUALCOMM" or choice of short name, full name. Actually, if you supported hiding the titlbar, and adding Symbol to the snapshot, I would be happy. If you think about it, "Chart - " prefix is unnecessary; I don't think anyone needs to be told it's a chart!
+ Qcharts supports drag n drop from Level1 to Charts. This is very handy for changing the symbol on a minichart. Often I see a new symbol on a hotlist that I want to track, so I would drag it to a minichart. To do that in SWP, I have to play with the SYM button, and make sure I don't accidentally reset other charts at the same time.
+ I would really like it if SWP could use less space in the price axis. If you look at the minicharts, there is a significant amount of white space. Eg. 64.7600 ". I don't need 4 decimals of precision on the axis, so I would prefer 64.76 rather than 64.7600. On NYSE stocks, e.g. IBM, there is even more whitespace, e.g. "70.02 " I guess because there is only 2 decimals of precision.
+ Snapshot High low easier to read in qcharts. In SWP High is black on grey and low is black on red. Qcharts shows both black on white which is more readable.
You can configure colors somewhat, but there appears to be some inconsistency. I managed to get H to be shown black on white, but L is still black on red.
qcharts does a better job with abbreviates form of O <n> H <n> L <n> T <n> N <n> It uses color (by using grey bg for the labels) rather than colons. Then showing the numbers in white (except for Trade and Net) really helps set off the numbers better than SWP. (Compare the pictures. It is a little hard to explain.)
SCREENER
+ Can I add a screener without a symbol list? When I try to add a screener, there is a symbol list already set, and it isn't clear how you turn this off. (EQ supports this)
