Trying to consolidate charts, scanner, paper trading, etc.

J

jbee123

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to streamline my routines and consolidate my software and expenses.
I'm currently using at least 4 different modules - TC2000 Charting, DAS paper trading, TOS premarket scanning (which i haven't been able to get to work properly), Finviz for news, chatroom scanners premarket and intraday.

I'm a manual,momo trend equities trader

Recently tested and eliminated all of the following: equityfeed, multicharts, motivewave, medved, sierra charts

Still considering: tradingview, tradestation.
Have not yet tried: esignal (SO expensive after all the data fees)

Any input appreciated. thanks!!

I'd love to have 1 or 2 programs and keep my monthly cost at/under $225:
Scanning
PREMARKET: must be able to scan for stocks gapping up premarket
Intraday: be able to scan for reversals,
News :see the news related to the stocks i'm filtering through
Charting: Need tabbed workspaces (or similar), click & drag charts (like tradingview and TOS)
Paper trading: Need a decent paper trading platform with L2 and preferably montage type order entry.

Things i've tried, and why i hate them:

Scanning:
-Chatroom TradeIdeas scanner - not ideal because if the moderator has a chart covering the scanner, i obviously can't see/use it. Would like something built into my charting software - Premarket gap scanning is a must (not available on TC2000)
-TC2000 scanning - does not offer scanning of premarket dataThen i go to finviz.com to check the news. Would really love to have the news in the same software as the scanning.
Finviz elite offers PM scanning, but not much in the way of intraday scanning unless you're just scanning for volume & price.

Charting:
TC2000- $50/month - TC2000 seems to have a lot of fake/incorrect wicking happening - not only sucks for shaking me out of a trade, but really screws up the ability to expand the chart on the y axis. Prev close line does not work properly with aftermarket/premarket data turned on. No ability to scan premarket data.

Thinkorswim- its ok, but laggy and clunky. Every time i look at a new stock, i have to rezoom and reposition all charts - a real pain in the butt when you're trying to analyze trades quickly on multiple time frames.

Tradestation - currently trying this , as it seemed to be able to do everything i need it to, but the chart zoom is not great, and it's really difficult to figure out how to do anything in this software.

Paper trading:
DAS $150/month - great for trading, but expensive for just executing fake orders. charts are ok, but cannot manipulate y axis enough to be able to use them as main charting tool.

-Jamie
 
Platform:
I'm not sure you'll find a better platform for paper trading than Das Trader Pro. They're expensive, but you have to pay for live L2 data, even if you're just paper trading. Sometimes a broker will allow you to set up a secondary paper trading account with live data if you fund an account for real trading.

Charting:
I've always used the built-in charting software in my trading platform. I really like Tradingview's charts though as an inexpensive secondary option though.

Scanning:
Most platforms have built-in scanners. Das Trader Pro has a built-in scanner that can scan for premarket gap and gap from open. Trade Ideas is an excellent option for scanning, but they're expensive. Tradingview has a scanner with a ton of options. I use Tradingview when I want to scan for something more complex than gap up or down.

News feed:
Most platforms will offer a news feed. If yours doesn't, check out Tradingview. Their news feed is excellent. Sometimes they pick up stories earlier than the built-in news feed in my trading platform.

Check out Tradingview. They offer a lot of what you're looking for at a low price point. A lot of this stuff comes down to preference. You just have to find out what you like. Hope this helps.
 
%%Mainly, buy like ,a college rule notebook;
record weekly charts, 200 day moving average, 52 week HI-lo, + plenty of handwritten goodies.

Its NOT rocket science, not long TSLA:D:D, :D:D:D:D:D:D:D
 
Just curious where you ended up.

I don't trade like you do (I'm a macro theme swing trader for the most part) but use a combination of TradeStation and TC2000. As you know, there are pros and cons to any software. I was a bit intimidated with TradeStation at first but gradually figured things out.
 
I ended up buying a gaming desktop that could run TOS pretty well (it’s still not perfect but much better than my laptop was). So I just use TOS ($free) for vetting and multi time frame analysis and DAS ($150) for execution.


formikatrading said:
Just curious where you ended up.

I don't trade like you do (I'm a macro theme swing trader for the most part) but use a combination of TradeStation and TC2000. As you know, there are pros and cons to any software. I was a bit intimidated with TradeStation at first but gradually figured things out.
More...
 
Good deal. Lots of RAM and a solid state drive are critical to running trading software! I assume you have that in your computer.

I actually used to use TOS but haven't in a while. But I recent did a RAM upgrade so I may take another look at it.

Best wishes!

jbee123 said:
I ended up buying a gaming desktop that could run TOS pretty well (it’s still not perfect but much better than my laptop was). So I just use TOS ($free) for vetting and multi time frame analysis and DAS ($150) for execution.
More...
 
So I gave TOS another try, invested numerous hours in getting familiar, customizing my workspaces, coding indicators, etc. I actually like it quite a bit now and am pleasantly surprised about its capabilities.

Did you change your TOS memory settings on your login screen? That seems to have helped some issues I was having with it crashing.
 
At one time I liked Tradestations' grid app for scanning. I experimented with Excel and scanner add-ins from various sources, never quite happy with that...

It can be a whole lot of work to find all the stuff that is available let alone find out what it's good for. In the late '90's I made one very competent app in Excel; I read news headlines from a news app from a brokerage out of Chicago, can't recall their name. I then typed the symbol into excel and I had all the pre-existing applicable financial data [annual sales, etc] leading to an up/down vote on buying the news. It wouldn't work nowadays, news reactions are just too fast for much manual work.
 
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