Quote from earlyexit:
By no means do I think TOS is the greatest thing in the world. It has its problems. And it can seem to bog down at times. But, largely, I like it much better than anything else I've used.
I am primarily an equity trader that has loved using Quotetracker with the Level-1 quote feed coming from DTN's "IQ-Feed". The only problem is that DTN does not really support the equity trader all that much given that they refuse to offer Nasdaq Total View and NYSE Level-2 quotes. They say that they will be building a data-center in New Jersey in order to eventually offer these quotes sometime at the end of this year, or early next year... but these quotes will only be offered for their $500 per month NxCore product.
That having been said, I took a serious look at ToS recently, and unfortunately couldn't believe how slow their data-feed was. It was literally the same kind of a "snap-shot" feed that Ameritrade's "streamer" is. Not good.
About two weeks ago I ran Schwab's Street Smart Pro platform ( the old CyberTrader ) against Quotetracker with DTN quotes, vs ToS.
Low and behold, the Schwab platform was clicking away at the SAME exact speed as my Level-1 quotes from DTN's "IQ-Feed" that were coming through my Quotetracker platform. Even more impressive was the fact that the data-feed of the Schwab platform was also keeping up with the professional ToS platform called ThinkPipes.
Interestingly enough, Schwab is reportedly about to beta-test an "in-house" trading platform that they hope to debut sometime in Q4 of this year. Apparently, they are tired of integrating their newer software applications ( back office stuff, etc. ) into Street Smart Pro (cybertrader) and are committed to developing a brand new platform from the ground up!
Given my complaints to ToS ( which is now under the Ameritrade umbrella ) about how slow their data-feed is on their ThinkorSwim platform, their IT guys have told me that they are about to release a new version ( version 16.22 ) that will speed up the equity quotes to a level similar to that of ThinkPipes, while leaving the options quotes the same, if not throttling them back a tad given that they do not need to update as much. With options, you are just talking about huge amounts of data, but not nearly as many "updates" compared to equities.
Look for this new version of ToS to come out by the middle of June.
