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I have been using their futures brokerage for probably a year and was just
experimenting with automated trading last week.
Fills are typically within a second or two on market orders with little
slippage. I have not measured the data delay but it is not apparent using a
high-speed cable modem Internet connection. Occasionally I see a several
second delay, then rapid catch-up but not very often.
Data integrity seems very good and I almost never see bad ticks.
Service is very good. There is a toll-free number and they answer the phone.
The trade desk responds quickly and is very cooperative in fixing my
mistakes (trades in the wrong account, etc.). The software support number
often has a few minute's wait but nothing out of the ordinary. I have gotten
calls back as promised on complicated questions.
They are good at handling the simple questions by the less skilled people
and accelerating the harder questions to the more experienced experts.
The on-line support forum is useful but it is still hard to find what you
are looking for. Someone recently added a FAQ section with links that helps
a lot. This can be improved.
The TS8 platform seem very stable to me - much better than any version since
TS4.
The data-on-demand is wonderful. Almost all the effort of maintaining data
is gone. Just type in a symbol and the chart appears.
I say "almost" because I still have to get mutual fund data from Dial Data
since the TradeStation mutual fund data is not adjusted for distributions,
which makes it essentially useless.
There are lots of options for automating trades. I was using one-minute
charts with a one-contract reversal system as a test. It was closing the
long position, waiting for confirmation then entering the short position,
which was slow causing me to miss trades. I called them and found out about
the other options.
The default case (no extra coding required) is to check that the local
system and your account are always in sync, which makes sense for most cases
but can be slow for fast trading. But TS8 does allow you to simply enter the
orders from the system without checking. This is very fast but the local
system and the account can then get out of sync.
They do provide functions to check the account state and if they get out of
sync, you can code in extra orders to fix the discrepancy. (This is tricky
since it has to be done invisibly to the system running using order entry
macros but they walked me through how to do it on the phone.)
They also provide automatic ways to convert limit orders to market orders
after a specified time.
System orders and actual fills show up as different symbols on the screen,
making it easy to check.
Be sure to read all the posts on the support web site:
All Forums>
All TradeStation Security Forums>
TradeStation and EasyLanguage Support>
Order Execution:Automation.
In summary, it looks as if it well thought out so I plan to try it for a
while.
Bob Fulks
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At 02:58 AM 9/26/2004, Sudhir Menon wrote:
>My trading style is more of scalping and I want to
>trade E- minis SP on 2 min. bar. Since its very
>difficult to do this manually for 8-9 hours I am
>thinking of automation of trade execution. For this I
>am planning to open brokerage account with
>Tradestation. Can anybody already using this will
>guide me on following ;
>
>1. How much is the delay in the real time data that
>Tradestation provides (i.e. CME to TS then TS to my
>computer ) . Is it few seconds only or considerable.
>in that case is two min. timeframe reasonable or
>should I try to increase it ?
>
>2. How is the quality of service by Tradestation. Is
>the service stable without any hiccups ? Does there
>server hang quite often ?
>
>3. How is the TS8 platform for stability ? What system
>configuration is suggested for this ?
>
>Thanks in advance.
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