Tradestation charts slow

[lwlee]

Do yourself a favor and move to DasTrader Pro. Platform/data fees are about $180 on Cobra. Software fee $120 is refunded if you trade more than 250k shrs/mth.

I'm not yet a scalper but wanted excellent execution. I had opened accounts with TradeStation, TD, IBKR. Also Fidelity but mainly for IRAs. For day trading and getting in/out of positions quickly, IBKR > TradeStation > TD. Both TradeStation and TD (free commissions) suffer from PFOP so you are at the mercy of how they want to execute your orders to their best advantage. I went from IBKR Lite to Pro (fixed commission 0.05/shr) so I didn't have to deal with PFOP. IBKR is really good but DasTrader Pro is even better for execution and datafeed accuracy. DAS uses their own servers located at the exchanges to provide data. I find the price movement and execution more precise than IBKR. DAS platform consumes only 7.1MB versus over 1GB for IBKR TWS.

But DAS is not perfect. Besides the commission/data feeds, they are bare bones. Cobra Trading wanted $100 for DJ news, $30 for Das Mobile app, $15 for Das replay. For now, I'm using IBKR news (free, decent feed) to supplement my trading. Das is mainly for order execution only.

DAS can be subscribed to, with IBKR or TD as backend broker. I chose Cobra for their short locates, plus they gave me 0.003 commission/shr.

Other alternatives I considered besides DAS. Lightspeed Trader ($100), proprietary platform and the software fee is partially/fully rebated. Trade $100 commissions/mth, software is free. Trade $30 comm, software costs $70. I decided the lower commission rate 0.003 (LS = 0.0045 for <250k shares), better locates was better for me long term with Cobra. Plus learning one popular common platform which is supported by most of the brokers mean I can switch to other brokers, Guardian, CenterPoint, etc in the future was more convenient.

Guardian is hungry for traders right now and offered an insane 0.0015 shr for any size. Plus they seem to have a more generous rebate offer for their software AND data feeds (no one rebates data). But when I talked with Don/Craig, VPs of sales, it was a bit sketchy. They couldn't or didn't want to explain in detail how the software discount works. To their credit, lots of guys who went to them are giving them the thumbs up. I will check back with them in a few months to see how they are doing but for now, staying away.

What platforms/brokers would you recommend for scalping?

 

[Azo47]

Do yourself a favor and move to DasTrader Pro. Platform/data fees are about $180 on Cobra. Software fee $120 is refunded if you trade more than 250k shrs/mth.

I'm not yet a scalper but wanted excellent execution. I had opened accounts with TradeStation, TD, IBKR. Also Fidelity but mainly for IRAs. For day trading and getting in/out of positions quickly, IBKR > TradeStation > TD. Both TradeStation and TD (free commissions) suffer from PFOP so you are at the mercy of how they want to execute your orders to their best advantage. I went from IBKR Lite to Pro (fixed commission 0.05/shr) so I didn't have to deal with PFOP. IBKR is really good but DasTrader Pro is even better for execution and datafeed accuracy. DAS uses their own servers located at the exchanges to provide data. I find the price movement and execution more precise than IBKR. DAS platform consumes only 7.1MB versus over 1GB for IBKR TWS.

But DAS is not perfect. Besides the commission/data feeds, they are bare bones. Cobra Trading wanted $100 for DJ news, $30 for Das Mobile app, $15 for Das replay. For now, I'm using IBKR news (free, decent feed) to supplement my trading. Das is mainly for order execution only.

DAS can be subscribed to, with IBKR or TD as backend broker. I chose Cobra for their short locates, plus they gave me 0.003 commission/shr.

Other alternatives I considered besides DAS. Lightspeed Trader ($100), proprietary platform and the software fee is partially/fully rebated. Trade $100 commissions/mth, software is free. Trade $30 comm, software costs $70. I decided the lower commission rate 0.003 (LS = 0.0045 for <250k shares), better locates was better for me long term with Cobra. Plus learning one popular common platform which is supported by most of the brokers mean I can switch to other brokers, Guardian, CenterPoint, etc in the future was more convenient.

Guardian is hungry for traders right now and offered an insane 0.0015 shr for any size. Plus they seem to have a more generous rebate offer for their software AND data feeds (no one rebates data). But when I talked with Don/Craig, VPs of sales, it was a bit sketchy. They couldn't or didn't want to explain in detail how the software discount works. To their credit, lots of guys who went to them are giving them the thumbs up. I will check back with them in a few months to see how they are doing but for now, staying away.

Thanks for the reply. My issue is I average ~15-20m shares a month. So if I switch to a commission based broker, I’ll be paying like $200k/year in commissions at most brokers. So I’m not sure avoiding payment for order flow would be worth it.

 

[lwlee]

Woah, 15-20m a month??? Seriously? If you avg 0.02c a share, you would be making $3.6mil/yr. 0.01c, it would be $1.8mil. And you worried about $200k/year commissions?

These brokers always stipulate to call them for over 2m shr/mth. So the commission is much lower for the size you talk about. You pushing around major size and yet you seemed not to have even given the brokers that catered to professional daytraders a try.

Something not adding up here...

Thanks for the reply. My issue is I average ~15-20m shares a month. So if I switch to a commission based broker, I’ll be paying like $200k/year in commissions at most brokers. So I’m not sure avoiding payment for order flow would be worth it.

 

[Azo47]

Woah, 15-20m a month??? Seriously? If you avg 0.02c a share, you would be making $3.6mil/yr. 0.01c, it would be $1.8mil. And you worried about $200k/year commissions?

These brokers always stipulate to call them for over 2m shr/mth. So the commission is much lower for the size you talk about. You pushing around major size and yet you seemed not to have even given the brokers that catered to professional daytraders a try.

Something not adding up here...

Yeah, I don’t average $0.02 a share. I take a lot of “paper cuts”. Basically lots of small losses and a couple big trades a day.

Other issue is liquidity. I market in and out all day. Not sure I would have the liquidity I need going direct access.

 

[lwlee]

This statement is completely opposite of what I understand. Direct access is supposed to give you the liquidity and the execution. How does a free commission broker give you more liquidity?

Other issue is liquidity. I market in and out all day. Not sure I would have the liquidity I need going direct access.

 

[Azo47]

This statement is completely opposite of what I understand. Direct access is supposed to give you the liquidity and the execution. How does a free commission broker give you more liquidity?

Happy to be corrected here, but my understanding is that the market makers paying for my order flow provide a tremendous amount of liquidity. What I *think* this means for me, is if I market in and out of a large position, that will displace the price less than if I were to go direct to an exchange (and take their liquidity). And because I would be taking liquidity I would be paying routing fees on top of commissions.

 

[traider]

Happy to be corrected here, but my understanding is that the market makers paying for my order flow provide a tremendous amount of liquidity. What I *think* this means for me, is if I market in and out of a large position, that will displace the price less than if I were to go direct to an exchange (and take their liquidity). And because I would be taking liquidity I would be paying routing fees on top of commissions.

Get a data feed that is separate from what your broker provides and a fast graphing solution that displays it. Usually broker lag is either due to software or data issues. Very hard to get them to improve.
Send your orders using hotkeys on your broker's platform.

 

[terr]

Without recording it and timing it, I would guess TOS is half a second and Tradestation is ~1.5 seconds. But that’s my setup, which I’m hoping I can change to get it faster.

Ok... I tried timing switching in my MT.

Intraday chart, 1 min, 40 days of data. Seven indicators (Ichimoku, Darvas Boxes, Regression channels - fairly complex ones). Switching takes about 0.3 - 1.5 seconds (depending on how liquid the stock is - that is, how many data points there are to calculate candles from. We don't keep all 40 days in tick form but last few days, configurable, are tick data).

Changing it to 10 days showing makes it 0.1-1 seconds. (AMC, which has an insane # of trades, is the longest to recalculate, at about 2 seconds).

If all the data is backfilled OHLC data, switching for 40 days 1-min charts should take something closer to 0.1-0.2 seconds max. We also run spike-filtering on the data before displaying it, if it is turned off it improves the speed by about 30-40%.

So there is quite a bit of variability depending on what data is there, how it is stored, and how the program calculates it.

The question is (and as I said, I never ran Tradestation before) - does Tradestation store tick data for the symbols and charts it by recalculating candles from that, or does it store only OHLC 1-min values? Does it store/cache data at all or does it backfill it from the server every time a chart is brought up? And if it does tick storing, can you force it to consolidate the data - thus making the calc of candles a lot faster?

 

[heispark]

What platforms/brokers would you recommend for scalping?

Rithmic is the best. Much better than CQG. Rithmic supporting brokers are all fine. Personally, I use AMP Futures. If you want bigger ones, try Advantage Futures.

 

[SunTrader]

I'm a long time TradeStation user and when I click on 1 tick or 1 minute from a higher intraday or daily chart setting there is a momentary flash, like a camera shutter clicking, before lower timeframe chart reappears.

Memory and connection speed are key areas to focus and spend the money on. Also make sure AV is not getting in the way somehow. Best to post a query over on TS forum for other things to "tune-up".