Tradestation 8.0 - what a disapointment

[AC3]

Recently TS rolled out their Cash FX platform. This was indeed a dissapointment, and thats coming from a diehard TS fan. I bought into the TS for the automation and this is a let down but not nearly as big as the lack of a "Universal Account"

IF you go forward and with the FX account you cant get cross margining thru the two platforms. You literally have to wire money back and forth 2 cover margin if your not juiced up in both accounts. This shud b a seamless structure where 1 account covers all trading since it appears that TS wants 2 become a trading supermarket. And the web site trading is a throwback 2 the 90's........ come on. TS is better then this and they need to prove it by really putting something together.

The next move for them seems 2 b "Cash Bonds" (I have no information on this just seems to be a natural progression) I wont fall victim 2 opening a third account within the same firm so I can trade those.........

 

[abogdan]

Quote from MichaelD:


Better synchronization between strategy trades and real-world trades -

TradeStation 8 now gives you the option of having a strategy report a non-historical trade as filled only if that trade was filled in the real-world. This will greatly reduce instances where your strategy order is shown as filled on the chart but the order was never filled in the real-world.

Don't insult ET member's intelligence! Your "Better synchronization between strategy trades and real-world trades" is a joke! There is no way to back test reliably other then verify Inside Bid/Ask/BidSize/AskSize records versus strategy limit orders! Rather than feed us with your marketing bullshit get off your FAT ASS and fix it!

 

[range]

So far, TS does allow their clients to access intraday charts for futures unless they subscribe to real-time data. (All TS clients can get daily charts.) I would like to see TS allow their clients to access intraday futures charts on a delayed basis for those futures exchanges to which they have not subscribed. That would be useful to traders who focus on stocks but want to get an idea what futures have been doing.

You can get free delayed charts (and even some free real-time charts) for futures on the web. Why not allow TS customers -- who pay for the platform -- to get delayed futures charts on TS?

 

[maxpi]

Quote from ddog:

YOU CAN NOT DO DICK WITHOUT AN ABILITY TO WRITE STRATEGIES THAT USE BID AND ASK (PRICES AND SIZES)

What would it take for TRAD to have this ability? Is it just the masssive amount of data which would be required that makes it prohibitive for them? Or they just don't care?

Does anyone know of any software that presently offers backtesting with this ability?

Backtesting and autotrading with dynaorder with both esignal, and TS2000 with esignal data, maybe others.

Max

 

[maxpi]

Quote from nitro:

Huh?

AFAIK, TS has never had access to the Bid/Ask.

nitro

Not so. You have to have all of that data in Global Server of course, easy to get with the esignal active x plug in and esignal data.

Max

 

[rtstrading]

Quote from MichaelD:

ddog,

In addition to the improvements listed in the press release you quoted, we made several improvements to the Strategy Automation Engine in TradeStation 8. These improvements were designed to improve synchronization between strategy trades and real-world trades.

Below is a list of the improvements:

Better synchronization between strategy trades and real-world trades -

TradeStation 8 now gives you the option of having a strategy report a non-historical trade as filled only if that trade was filled in the real-world. This will greatly reduce instances where your strategy order is shown as filled on the chart but the order was never filled in the real-world.

Enhancements to Convert Limit to Market' Setting -

The setting that allows you to convert unfilled limit orders to market orders can now be enabled on an individual chart basis. In addition, you can have a different setting for your entry and exit orders.

Enhancement for Futures Traders-

When reversing a position your strategy no longer waits to exit the original position before initiating the new position. Since both orders are sent at the same time your position can be reversed more quickly and slippage may be reduced.

It's now possible to automate multiple strategies on multiple charts using the same futures symbol without needing to trade each chart in a different account.

Enhancements for Options Traders-

We now support automation on equity options and index options.

Other Enhancements -

When replacing limit entry orders we now wait for the original order to be canceled before sending the new order. This helps to prevent the replacement order from being rejected due to buying power constraints.

Improved handling of internet disruptions that were causing automation to become disabled.

There are many other enhancements not listed in the press release. For a complete list of new features in TradeStation 8 please visit http://www.tradestationsupport.com/whats_new

Thanks Michael for the update on TS8. These are very welcomed improvements and my automated systems will benefit nicely from the changes.

Bob

 

[ddog]

From the link MichaelD provided:

Better Synchronization Between Strategy Trades and Real-World Trades
TradeStation 8 now gives you the option of having a strategy report a non-historical trade as filled only if that trade was filled in the real-world.

By "non-historical trade" does this mean that if we are trading a system in real time, the strategy fills on a chart will now be synchronized with the trade manager?

 

[maxpi]

Quote from hanseng1:

I think you guys are being a little overly-harsh on Tradestation. Tradestation has some shortcomings, but so does WLD.

However, for my money, Tradestation is a much better tool. The workspace is less cluttered with Tradestation. The drawing tools are more useful.

The biggest difference is the programming language. While WLD may offer more power, it is a pain in the ass to use. I picked up Easylanguage in about a week; I spent a month with WLD and was barely able to make a simple MA crossover system.

I wish I could do portfolio testing in TS, but I also understand RINA Systems (as well as many others) has a strong business as a TS third party developer, so this will probably never happen. But even so, I'll still stay with TS, because I want to learn the markets, not some programming language.

As a side note, I'm a swing/position trader, not a daytrader; consequently I don't really care about B/A strategy capabilities.

Agreed, TS is stable enough for autotrading, the workspaces are beautiful, the data is rock solid (I found one instance of bad data in a month) and Easy Language is great. I have not really found the great need for portfolio testing that everybody seems to think they need.

Traderssoft.com also has some portfolio tools for Tradestation, probably a lot cheaper than RINA. I really could use the B/A capabilities however, but for the meantime I am very happy.

Max

 

[MichaelD]

Quote from ddog:


By "non-historical trade" does this mean that if we are trading a system in real time, the strategy fills on a chart will now be synchronized with the trade manager?

Yes. There is a new tab in the strategy properties dialog named "Automation" and in that tab there is a setting where you can select how the strategy determines when a live ("non-historical") order should be filled. You can have the strategy fill orders based simply on price activity (this is the way that strategies fill in versions 7.2 and prior, basically when a tick comes in at your stop or limit price the strategy fills the order) or you can have the strategy fill the order only if it's been filled in the real-world (i.e. the strategy doesn't try and determine if the the order should be filled, but waits for confirmation from the TradeManager that the order was filled).


I've noticed that several persons in this thread have commented on the availability of bid and ask data. While it is true that we don't currently allow you to access this historically from a chart we do have two functions, CurrentBid and CurrentAsk, that will return the inside bid and inside ask when your strategy is evaluating on a real-time bar. In addition there is a "Strategy Automation" function category that contains several functions that allow you to place your strategy orders into the market using the same advanced features that are available on TradeStation's Order Bar. You can have your strategy limit order "pegged" to the inside or you can send them using a price discretion are just a couple of examples. These functions are available in 7.1 and 7.2.

 

[nitro]

Quote from MichaelD:

...I've noticed that several persons in this thread have commented on the availability of bid and ask data. While it is true that we don't currently allow you to access this historically from a chart we do have two functions, CurrentBid and CurrentAsk, that will return the inside bid and inside ask when your strategy is evaluating on a real-time bar. In addition there is a "Strategy Automation" function category that contains several functions that allow you to place your strategy orders into the market using the same advanced features that are available on TradeStation's Order Bar. You can have your strategy limit order "pegged" to the inside or you can send them using a price discretion are just a couple of examples. These functions are available in 7.1 and 7.2.

That is a good beginning, but here is my [still] problem with this. It renders backtesting suspect when done on data with no bid/ask. The fact that you have added this for realtime purposes clearly says that you find it of importance, or that your customers are demanding it. The fact however that you are not storing bids and asks in your data warehouse means that, at least at this point, you do not want to explode the amount of disk space and computing overhead involved, to say nothing of the extra bandwidth required to send the extra data over the Internet.

I can think of more reasons why you would not store bid and ask and make it available in a system test, but those are probably not them, so I will keep them to myself at this time.

All in all, congratulations on moving TradeStation in the right direction...

nitro