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Some of you will remember that last year I embarked upon a journey away from
what I considered to be poor quality, poorly supported Omega products. I
thought I'd found something better in TradeLab but it was repeatedly delayed
and in due course, with the millennium approaching, I moved on to evaluate
other products. In the course of that journey I tried internet based data
feeds and software and found them wanting (to be charitable). I also tried
quite a bit of software I'd never looked at before. In due course, I settled
on DTN satellite and Ensign, however my HOA forced me to get rid of the DTN
dish and then my cable company dropped CSPAN2 which carried DTN cable.
Having considerable confidence in Ensign and quite a large body of custom
Ensign trading code, I looked around for an Ensign compatible data feed and
my only remaining choice was Signal On-Line real-time. Not only was SOL
considerably more expensive than DTN satellite/cable, but I found the
customer service to be atrocious and no delayed quotes are provided for any
exchanges for which I do not hold real-time exchange agreements (over $200
month for all futures exchanges). Ensign/SOL does provide 3 days of tick
data which can be used to fill in gaps or initialize a chart, however this
is not enough to get a 40 or 60 minute chart up to speed and historical data
beyond the 3 days is not available.
Through a combination of circumstances, I recently looked at quote.com's
QCharts/QFeed service. I was really turned off by no response to several
questions I e-mailed to quote.com "support" but several users kept saying
how great the service is so, I persevered and signed up for the $80 month
QCharts service. The internet data feed (called QFeed) includes real-time
indexes and delayed feeds from all major exchanges. Wanting to get the best
possible feel for the future of this kind of service, I decided to try the
QCharts 2.1 beta software in lieu of using the existing 1.0 version - the
beta software version is available to all subscribers.
WOW! Imagine a data feed where you never have to worry about the data - all
data for all symbols in all time periods is available on demand. When the
charting software (QCharts or any QFeed compatible software) asks for a set
of bars, the QFeed servers deliver them on demand in sufficient quantity to
fill the chart from left to right and scrolling left delivers more bars. For
example, my "Indexes" layout includes charts for several different symbols
across 1/2/9/45 minute and daily time frames all updating in real-time as
each bar is completed as well as a quote page with the latest prices. Tick
charts are available, however multi-tick charts e.g. 20 tick bars are not
(yet) available. The QC status bar shows which QF server is being used and
the delay to hundredths of seconds in receiving quotes. If one QF server
has trouble or the connection degrades, QF is programmed to switch to
alternate QF servers. If you lose your ISP connection, you will get a fresh
set of charts when you log back into QF. The QCharts software I'm using is
not browser based, is extremely well-designed, and is very easy to use.
Although it still lacks a few features (drawing tools and custom studies)
which many traders will want; I would expect to see these features in the
not too distant future. The QFeed included with QCharts provides the ability
to access the data feed directly from many development languages including
VB and the QLink utility enables Excel to use the data feed for real-time
calculations.
As an indication of performance, I have a currencies layout which includes a
quote page with front and next contracts for the major currencies, 5 minute
chart, 40 minute chart and daily chart. With the June DMark displayed,
clicking on the June Yen in the quote page reloads the bars in all 3 charts
with data for the Yen in about 7 seconds. Switching from my Currencies
layout to Indexes layout which includes two quote pages, June S&P 2/9/45 and
daily charts, June E-Mini 1 minute chart, and premium chart, required about
15 seconds before all charts were loaded with bars. I've got a full load of
apps open on my "ancient" p133 with 128 meg running WinNT 4: SOL Data
Manager (7 meg, 2% CPU), Ensign32 (18meg 8% CPU), QCharts (29meg, 8% CPU) +
other apps including TextPad, Ecco, Outlook Express, and SuperCharts 4 EOD.
The memory and CPU usage shown for the real-time apps are for comparable
index layouts. Task manager is consistently showing 75% CPU idle and 80 meg
of unused physical memory.
Is QCharts/QFeed the be all and end all? Not yet, anyway, but it certainly
shows where the future is going in trading software and data feeds. And that
future is not in data feeds costing $2000-4000 annually (without data
refresh or exchange fees) or in high priced stand-alone software behemoths
requiring the fastest available processors and prodigious amounts of memory.
Based on the improvements I've seen in internet data feeds and software
during the past 12 months, I would expect to see several extremely powerful
internet based datafeed/software combinations available within 6 months at
very modest monthly cost. I would not look for these products from the major
established data feed and software vendors.
Earl
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