Trading platforms vs operating systems

[Aquarians]

Another parallel with computing: a trading platform is to finance what an operating system is to computing.

There's no lack of (failed) trading platforms, I also include here software to research and develop trading strategies, like there's no lack of (failed) operating systems.

I worked quite a lot on such an R&D tool and always think of the lessons of launching an operating system: it's useless without applications. It wasn't always only Windows and MacOS and Linux, there were many attempts and the easiest way to fail is to launch an OS and wait for apps to write themselves: "write one (operating system) and they (the apps) will come". Apparently a huge factor in the success of Windows was an application that was written almost by accident (as a hobby by a few developers) and bundled at the last moment just to have something to show: Paint.

So when launching a trading platform I guess it helps to bundle some appealing strategies with it

 

[MarkBrown]

So when launching a trading platform I guess it helps to bundle some appealing strategies with it

so you are describing ndr platform which 15 years ago was 250k a yr.

don't know what other platform out there has algo's with it "that actually work"?

 

[Trader200K]

Rant On/

I was just fantasizing the other day about buying a stable, ‘fully dedicated’ trading platform w/o the need for a commercial OS.

Yeah stupid crazy uneconomic impractical I know, but Bulgarian basement hackers, 17 companies on 4 different continents hauling off private data (that view individual users no better than a pork belly harvest) and OS vendor that takes paying customers completely out of the system control loop ... leaves me uncomfortable at best.

As For MSoft, the last three auto upgrades of Win10 hosed my TradesStation10 (which I have been in up to my eyeballs for over a year developing indicators/strategies).

I set W10 to do upgrades on weekends, but I have walked away during active sessions and returned with “upgrades installed” ... where every app I had open summarily was killed and data lost. Yesterday it had TS10 so hosed it had to be reinstalled from scratch ... and the previous day’s TS backup for workspaces was corrupted and half my charts were gone.

That’s when I also discovered that the number of backup archives defaults to just one. Having multiple days’ backup recovery archive files is better in case one is corrupted. I set it to backup twice daily w five archives deep. My fault for not digging deeper.

Losing a full day of trading, having to close positions on the phone app and rebuild 40 chart windows from scratch was a effing sub optimal day.

MS isn’t the only one at fault here. I do love TS for their advanced brokerage, speed, farm reliability, good fills and EL programming. It’s great ... after you overlook the numerous annoyances created by TS10 programmers that don’t personally use the client software to trade.

Finding seemingly inactive charts with candles running off the right side of the window is almost as annoying as charts being left justified when tweaking the time base ... with their disappearing, coarse, chart controls feature. Having to click on ‘Reset Scaling’ to spread bars across a chart again because they are all squashed to the left is annoying. The crazy part is that this “Reset Scaling” menu selection only becomes available when the scaling is out of whack. My Q to the coders ... if you know the scaling is off, why not just go ahead and rescale automatically, rather than make the user waste time clicking through a chart menu to do it manually?

And don’t get me started about price indicators like a simple MA that is not locked to the price scale. Somebody explain to me what trading technique needs a MA that doesn’t plot to the penny?

TS10 client has a whole bunch going for it, but it needs some ergonomic work directed by a trader that uses charts heads down for 6hr/day.

Rant Off/

 

[MarkBrown]

most people who know only run 9.5 tradestation - i am so glad to get rid of them and went to multicharts which has problems also but much more a traders platform.

ts = 32 bit pos

 

[Trader200K]

Mark,

You're right. I should have snooped harder in the search process. On the positive side, I rarely run over 50 charts so 32bit isn't a limitation for my base need.

BUT ... I unquestionably have way more opportunity cost in TS10 problem hours than the MCharts $1500 lifetime sub cost ... before I add opportunity costs. Unfortunately the MC demo didn't assuage my concern that its headaches would be significantly lower. Might have been.

Do you have any specific criticisms of the TS brokerage side?

 

[MarkBrown]

Do you have any specific criticisms of the TS brokerage side?

using ts brokerage with ts version 9.5 is not a bad thing but they are not commission and margin aggressive for today's competitive environment. ts focuses on glitz and glamor more than function and efficiency.