Trade Station is far worse than IB

ronblack · Nov 11, 2007

Quote from DonKee:

Almost all of the freeze problems relate to active e-mini traders. When the ticks start blowin' in like a hurricane, the charts and order entry functions freeze up. BTW, during these periods, my quotes come in fine, it's just the charts get stuck because of the updating of the indicators and I guess that, also, freezes the order entry.

It sounds like this is a problem with your graphics card. You probably need a high performance card. Try that first to see what happens.

Ron

le140 · Nov 11, 2007

At $140 per graphics card, I thought this is getting stupid to upgrade consider that fact that I got like 5 pcs sitting around the house now.

Again I dont know about other users, but after I upgraded to a faster pc which I thought was overkill for trading, FOMC or any openning chart had'nt frozen my futures setup at all.

ZRA · Nov 11, 2007

Quote from ronblack:

It sounds like this is a problem with your graphics card. You probably need a high performance card. Try that first to see what happens.

Ron

I don't think you need a good graphic card to trade. Charting is not equal to gaming.

Aok · Nov 11, 2007

Quote from larrybf:

question for tradestation users..........it sounds like TS problems relate to futures trading.... for stock trading , isnt the free platform for doing 5000 shares per month (2500 buy + 2500 sell ) worth it ??? i would like to get an account at TS for their intraday stock charts ??? thanks in advance

25,000 shares Larry.

Surinotes suggestion is especially valid if you have older computer. Just set your RadarScreen to update at the end of the interval you're scanning.

However, this is unrelated to if youre just trading one emini.

I have had no problems with stock execution. I dont know how TS has their business model structured but their futures and stocks clearing firms are separate. Maybe they're server farms are too. Futures has always been more headache prone. Beware Fed days.

syswizard · Nov 12, 2007

Quote from le140:

Again I dont know about other users, but after I upgraded to a faster pc which I thought was overkill for trading, FOMC or any openning chart had'nt frozen my futures setup at all.

This makes sense and the high variance in the set-ups of each user's workstation probably explains the variance in the experience. Since it appears that Tradestation does NOT send a sampled tick data stream like ThinkorSwim and Interactive Brokers, it would seem that a less-than-worthy workstation would freeze-up during explosive emini moves.
If Tradestation Securities was on the "up and up", they should be warning all new futures users that a minimal set-up is required to trade eminis without freezing at times.

syswizard · Nov 12, 2007

THIS SAYS IT ALL:
https://www.tradestation.com/Discus...=62906&SearchTerm=windows 2000&txtExactMatch=

It's not the HARDWARE, It's the Operating System.
Win/XP far worse than imagined.

I will gladly smear egg on my face if I am wrong on this issue. In fact I hope I am wrong. By now, Iâm sure I have spent 80-100 hours investigating this one issue. It all began when I upgraded my Windows 2000 to XP a few weeks ago. I was running a Pentium IV 3.2 with 2 gig of memory, and my CPU use typically ran 10-25% with 10-12 charts and one or two matrix windows. The first thing I noticed upon upgrading to XP was that CPU use was much, much higher. Adding a matrix with low to average market activity added 25% to cpu use. One thing led to another. Frankly, I thought I had screwed up something. I ended up replacing every single component on my PC. I rebuilt workspaces and desktops from scratch. The problem remained. So please, show me I am wrong. Show me how to fix it. Failing that, the following is what I have found.

detective · Nov 12, 2007

Tradestation gives you 1.1% interest on your cash balance, and that's on the amount over $10,000! It's stone cold thievery, but people are stupid, and will part with all that interest (over $1000 per year on a balance over $30,000. ) compared to money market rates of 4%+ that you get at most other brokers.

DonKee · Nov 13, 2007

just to update:

1) Went back to 8.2

2) Took matrix order entry off

Yesterday during high tick period (last 30 minutes), I did not have a freeze.

Seeing the above reference in the TS forums regarding "matrix" order entry, I have concluded that both 8.3 and using "matrix" is a cpu "hog".

Okay, so far, so good. We'll see how it goes.

If you are having problems, I urge you to link to the previous posters' reference to the TS forum. It was an extensive analysis of the problem and please, note the date it was posted. Also, note, nothing has really been done to remedy it, that I could find.

syswizard · Nov 13, 2007

Quote from DonKee:

just to update:

1) Went back to 8.2
2) Took matrix order entry off
Yesterday during high tick period (last 30 minutes), I did not have a freeze.

Since you did TWO things at once, how do you know the problem is really the 8.3 version vs. the matrix ?
For instance, if you removed the matrix from 8.3, would the freezing also have stopped ?

DonKee · Nov 13, 2007

Quote from syswizard:

Since you did TWO things at once, how do you know the problem is really the 8.3 version vs. the matrix ?
For instance, if you removed the matrix from 8.3, would the freezing also have stopped ?

you are correct, but i have seen so many forum complaints regarding 8.3 being "buggy" that i went back to 8.2.

you are correct, i don't know if it was an 8.3 problem.