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there is only a couple of avenues for a trading platform company
to survive:
- you gotta get on the professionals level, such as bloomberg
- you gotta have order execution built in
the platform will most likely fail if it's just a charting/system writing
application, the revenues must be drawn from either brokerage fees
or from the institutional fees with wide range of data/features available.
offering unique features is also important.
TS is surviving for the above reasons:
- data on demand on all equities
- brokerage fees
- still unique feature which is system writing capability
it's a small niche but it works marginally well.
they are surviving.
there will be better platforms that will match the above and more
that will imitate TS business model and more...
TS is the best platform at this time but for high tech / hi-fi / rocket science
system trading it's already relatively
outdated based on some lacking advanced features.
let's say that TS is a basic minimum of what a systems trader needs at this time.
and i am thankful to them for providing such a platform. but if something better
comes our way, we have no alternative but to switch and evolve.
bilo.
>
> >There is a lot of companies feel that this is the time to pop up.
> >There will be many new trading programs at the spring, which will grow
> >like mushrooms after the rain.
> >
> >I believe that there is a NEW ERA in trading software developing is
> >comming up.
>
> The market for such software is too small to justify a major product
> development such as a TradeStation replacement would be. Lots of
> smart people have looked at this. You just cannot make enough money
> selling the software to justify the development cost.
>
> The number of serious traders is not that large and the percentage of
> those who can write programs is even smaller. Vendors have tried the
> "drag and drop together signals to make a trading system" approach
> but we all know that never works.
>
> Omega made it by enticing newbies to part with their money with slick
> TV ads and monthly payment plans, figuring that their customers would
> wake up after a year or so and put the software on the shelf and not
> bother them anymore. Unfortunately, the original software was clever
> enough so that some professional traders kept using it and kept
> bothering Omega for support and enhancements. Omega maintained their
> "don't feed them and maybe they will go away" attitude anyway.
>
> There are several good "small" programs such as Ensign, etc., from
> basically one-man companies but they are not in the same class as
> TradeStation.
>
> But there clearly is a vacuum now that Omega has moved on to
> whatever. It is clear that they are now in the "milk the cash cow"
> mode and the cow is getting pretty old... (Perhaps they will wake up
> and come back to their roots.)
>
> I would suspect that the successor will be some tie-in to a service
> such as a data provider.
>
> Data-on-demand is a great concept but it requires more than just
> gluing together old stuff. It is a paradigm shift - a transition in
> the market. I can think of lots of things.
>
> Picture being able to send your stock selection filter to the
> provider and and having them search through thousands of symbols and
> send you only those that meet your criteria.
>
> Picture a system that would give you high-relative strength stocks,
> stocks with analysts upgrades, stocks breaking above their 50-day
> moving average - and all the ratings you can find in Investor's
> Business Daily or any combination or weighting of them.
>
> Maybe they could sell it bundled with data, and a trading system that
> REALLY WORKED. Just add the user and he starts making money. Think
> that would sell? It should be really easy using daily bars and could
> let ma and pa manage their IRA more scientifically. Just thinking of
> all of my retired friends who listened to the brokerage hype and
> watched their retirement money disappear during the recent melt-down
> really distresses me.
>
> If they really want to get fancy they could even include some
> intelligent asset allocation algorithms that would at least give
> the buy/hold investor a fighting chance.
>
> How about historical back-testing with good tick-level continuous
> contract data on demand.
>
> How about a clean consistent symbol naming convention to standardize
> the mess we have today on all the exchanges.
>
> How about some time resolution between one-minute data and tick data.
> One minute seem like an eternity now days but who needs 400 ticks per
> minute on symbols such as QQQ, ES, CSCO. Having 0.1 minute would be
> OK or one-second would be overkill. Come-on guys, this isn't rocket
> science...
>
> I think people would pay a reasonable monthly fee for lots of these
> capabilities.
>
> The software will be the "razor" you get for free but the services
> will be the "blades" where they make all the money.
>
> Ah... We can dream...
>
> Bob Fulks
>
>
>
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