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On March 28, we heard from Melody Blais about the changes aimed at
getting more of us to upgrade to TradeStation 6.
<http://www.tradestation.com/aboutus/letter.shtm>
At that time I asked the list what it would take for them to switch
from TradeStation 4 and 2000i to TradeStation 6 and got lots of
good replies replies, both on the list and privately.
It is pretty apparent that these users will eventually have to move
to something someday. Let's face the facts, it would be a lot less
effort for everybody if this could be a new version of TradeStation.
Needless to say, it is clear that TRAD could use the revenues and
would like to get rid of the need to support the older products. So
it seems obvious that the best course of action for all is to get a
viable upgrade path for old customers.
I am not referring to the brokerage part of the issue - that is a
separate matter. I am just referring to an upgrade path for customer
who use other brokerages for trading. After customers have migrated
to a new version, they may be more receptive to trying the brokerage
services, too.
I thought I would summarize what I think I heard would be the MINIMUM
requirements (not the entire wish list).
Perceived Management Philosophies
---------------------------------
Existing customers feel they have been treated very poorly in the
past by the Omega management. A few quotes:
They have a lot of repair work to do before they
get me back as a client."
I am no longer willing to commit my time to developing
systems for an application that is badly supported, if
at all, by a company with what can only be described as
an extreme lack of credibility.
Having once been VP of a financial software company for
10 years, I know how difficult it is to design and
maintain good, solid, state of the art software.
I'm willing to give TS the benefit of the doubt on
the technical issues. What I cannot deal with are
the simple people ones -- like having someone promise
to call me back, and then not do it.
But I have heard form some people privately that they seem to be
trying harder now so maybe things are improving. Clearly they have a
lot of fence mending to do...
Quality
--------------------------------
A major issue for most users. The level of bugs in TS2000i and the
initial versions of TS 6 were very bad. The recent problems with the
daylight savings time issue seems to give the impression that there
is still no alpha of beta testing of new releases to customers. The
development process still seems pretty weak. A couple of quotes:
I worked in software for many years. It's not impossible to deliver
decent-quality products. It just takes competent management. Study
after study has shown that fixing faulty software *after release* is
**FAR** more expensive than doing it right the first time, but it's
"easier" in the short run to shove it out the door and worry about
bugs later. It ALWAYS comes back to bite you.
I use many commercial apps on my systems, and NONE of them are
anywhere near as buggy or unreliable as TS2k. And none of
them are as mission-critical as TS.
But I did have private messages that said the quality of TS 6 is now
far better than TS2000i every was so perhaps there is progress.
Research Machine
--------------------------------
Most people need a research machine as well as an on-line machine.
The new offering does not go far enough. We need to be able to handle
intraday data and, since there is no long-term history of tick data
available, it would at least have to read ASCII files of tick and
1-minute data as TS2000i can today. I see two possible solutions:
> A research version of TS6 that will accept ASCII intraday data.
> A new version of TS2000i that is 100% compatible with TS6 with bugs fixed.
Local Data Storage
--------------------------------
With an off-line research machine we would need some way to export
recent data from the on-line machine to the Research Machine to keep
the off-line historical ASCII data up to date. Otherwise we would
still need a data supplier for historical data. Data-on-demand is a
great concept but unless there is years of something like tick-data
available on demand, we will need to use our present data and would
need a way to keep it current.
Data Feed Reliability
--------------------------------
For trading we all need a reliable real-time and end-of-day data
source. There are mixed reviews of the TRAD data feed but it seems to
be about as good as any Internet feed (all of which have problems).
It may be satisfactory but lots of people would not upgrade unless
there were some way to access a more reliable satellite feed. This is
a problem since TS6 does not have a server but perhaps there is a 3rd
party solution.
That is about it as I read the messages - not a very big list for the
MINIMUM requirement. It doesn't seem to me to be all that hard to do.
Perhaps TRAD could respond...
Bob Fulks
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