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I did some trading with Cyber-X and I saw our instructor do some live
trading with CyberTrader when I was at the online trading academy boot
camp. In both cases, typical time between hitting the button to send off
the trade and when you get a confirmation that the trade has gone through
is less than 1 s for high volume stocks like MSFT or DELL. For slower
trading stocks, it depends on how long it takes for the ECN computers to
get a buy/sell order in at the appropriate price but typically it is less
than 10s. Of course, if you're trading stocks whose total daily volume
is less than about 400000 shares, you can sometimes wait 30 seconds or more
before someone takes your offer or sells you their shares. That is not the
fault of the software, though.
For Cyber Smart Market or Smart Limit orders where Cyber-X or CyberTrader
looks around for you and takes the best deal it can find, the time to
confirmation is about 3 seconds typically. Of course, if you're trying to
short something that is dropping like a rock, you can be prevented from
getting short by the uptick rule, and if you direct an order to a
particular market maker, they can, and will, if it is to their advantage,
ignore your order. They are legally allowed to ignore you for 10 seconds,
but I've seen them do it for much longer. I've asked about this and the
concensus seems to be that there is not much that you can do as an
individual investor about such shenanigans. If you complain, the market
maker will say he just got too busy and the SEC folks will let it go at
that. A rule of thumb, I've learned is to cancel your order and put in
another one if you don't get a fill within 10s. It doesn't cost you
anything to put in an order unless it gets filled. In the trading course,
they tell you to look for ECNs (particularly ISLD) on the other side of
your trade so you have a quick way to get out of a trade if it goes against
you and to be very hesitant to get into a trade where there are only Market
Makers on the level II screen.
I'm on a cable modem through @home. My typical download rate during
business hours is about 40kbytes/s. I've seen it go to as high as 97
kbytes/second. At night when all the internet game players get going,
things slow down considerably (7 to 8 kbytes/second)
Regards,
Ullrich
At 07:42 PM 1/14/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Ulrich,
>
>Thanks for the info. I called and they don't quite have what i'm looking
>for but they do seem to have software that I might be able to automate.
>It's sort of a hacked solution but right now it's all i got. you mentioned
>demo mode, have you actually placed a trade through them. if so, how fast
>was your fill. what's your DSL connection speed? I mean was it like press
>the button, and 1 second later you get your fill type of thing. my big
>concern is order entry. they didn't include that part in the demo. i liked
>they ability to enter fractions as small as 1/256. didn't like their 9%
>margin rate but i guess if you break it down on a per day basis the
>difference is only like a few bucks.
>
>keep us posted. let us know what you think about them down the road.
>
>regards,
>brian.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ullrich Fischer [mailto:uf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2000 7:55 PM
> > To: Brooks Jealous
> > Cc: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: Stock broker API...
> >
> >
> > Hi, Brooks.
> >
> > I had lots of stability problems with CT 2.06 and 2.07 on WIN2000
> > RC2, but
> > after I bit the bullet and spent a weekend hacking my way back to NT 4 SP
> > 6a, (Microsoft really makes it a challenge to downgrade), I've
> > not had any
> > problems. I gave up on WIN 98 for any serious work after my experiences
> > with TS 2Ki. NT evidently handles memory much more reliably than do its
> > predecessors. I've been keeping CT 2.07 up for about 9 hours
> > each day. I
> > shut it down about 3pm PST each day. It has been working without any
> > crashes (just the odd server disconnections which are quickly fixed by
> > disconnecting and reconnecting the effected server). I'm still in the
> > process of learning to use the CT interface, so I'm probably not
> > hammering
> > it as steadily as a more experienced trader might, but as far as
> > I can tell
> > with about 150 orders a day in demo mode, it is quite solid.
> >
> > I've also moved my eSignal based alerts and market health monitoring
> > spreadsheets to a 2nd PC, so all I'm running with CT 2.07 on my
> > primary PC
> > is CT 2.07, IE5.1 browser, Eudora email, and Online Trading
> > Academy's "Hear
> > Me" based remote mentoring program. I've also moved mIRC (connected to
> > Cybercorp's #cyberchat virtual trading room) to my secondary PC. I did
> > all this after a few days of running NT 4 SP6a with everything
> > listed above
> > on my main PC, so I don't think my crashes in WIN2K were just because it
> > was overloaded with all those apps. I moved the apps over mainly
> > to ensure
> > that I was getting the best possible performance out of my primary PC
> > during the trading day. So far, it all works quite well. The two PCs
> > are on their own little LAN with my cable modem.
> >
> > My primary PC has an AMD K6-2 400 CPU with 256 MB of RAM running WINNT 4
> > SP6a. The secondary PC has a P-233 MMX CPU with 64 MB of RAM
> > running WIN98
> > SP1. My internet connection is Rogers@xxxx cable modem.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ullrich
> >
> > At 08:21 PM 1/12/00 -0500, you wrote:
> > >Ullrich,
> > >
> > >I use CT as well and think they generally have a great product. Question
> > >for you - are you having any stability problems w/ 2.06 or 2.07? Seems
> > >like a lot of memory leaks and after using the s/w for a while I
> > get fatal
> > >errors, resulting in a blue screen...
> > >
> > >TIA,
> > >
> > >Brooks
> > >
> > >At 09:11 AM 1/11/2000 -0800, you wrote:
> > >>www.cybercorp.com Software works great. Great customer
> > >>service. Instant executions. Many execution methods available.
> > >>
> > >>At 07:15 AM 1/12/00 -0800, you wrote:
> > >>>I need a stock broker that offers a direct PC connection through an API
> > >>>interface to place orders.
> > >>>
> > >>>Any recommendations?
> >
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