Tradestation: The good, the bad or the ugly?

[Pamela]

Just a bit of input.......I have been told by TS employees four times that they would call me back with info and have never gotten a return call......I attended 2 of their seminars; the first one was rated as appropriate for beginners, which turned out to be untrue. "Mike" was at the first one and was very responsive and professional. Stanley Dash, one of their 2 trainers, later held the seminar for beginners. I told him that I had come specifically to find out about using Radar, (yes, I watched the explanation online) and I was told that I was the only person in the room who did not already know how to use it; thus, he refused to cover it; then I went around and asked about 12 men there if they would mind explaining it to me and they each said they did not know how to use it. Also, I went to San Francisco for them, and while presenting, Stanley made several homo-phobic remarks, which I found highly unprofessional.

[jjthetrader]

I closed my TS brokerage account today. The platform is unreliable with it's data. If the markets gets active, the TS matrix locks up. My charts were actually 15min delayed one day when it was calm. Go figure.

Don't get me started on slippage. 2 ES points slippage? Come on TS! I was up 2 points on my trade and put in my order to exit and ended up negative 1 tick from my entry! I'm not impressed.

As a professional you can't rely on tradestation. If this is a hobby you might be able to get by with them, maybe.

[MC]

	Quote:	jjthetrader
	I closed my TS brokerage account today. The platform is unreliable with it's data. If the markets gets active, the TS matrix locks up. My charts were actually 15min delayed one day when it was calm. Go figure. Don't get me started on slippage. 2 ES points slippage? Come on TS! I was up 2 points on my trade and put in my order to exit and ended up negative 1 tick from my entry! I'm not impressed. As a professional you can't rely on tradestation. If this is a hobby you might be able to get by with them, maybe.

Not that I like to see others have slippage but I'm glad someone else brought this up...I was getting annoyed thinking they only sucked for me.

I've had 7 point YM slippage several times off 8 second stop market fills, just unacceptable!

What broker are you going with now?

[jjthetrader]

	Quote:	mcichocki_
	Not that I like to see others have slippage but I'm glad someone else brought this up...I was getting annoyed thinking they only sucked for me. I've had 7 point YM slippage several times off 8 second stop market fills, just unacceptable! What broker are you going with now?

Infinity for sure.

TS called me to try and get me to stay offering free platform for 3 months but I make enough trades that I wasn't paying anyway. They said the new build will be more stable with data. Who knows what's true. I still don't feel safe letting a screwy program manage my money.

[MC]

	Quote:	jjthetrader
	Infinity for sure. TS called me to try and get me to stay offering free platform for 3 months but I make enough trades that I wasn't paying anyway. They said the new build will be more stable with data. Who knows what's true. I still don't feel safe letting a screwy program manage my money.

They offered me the same thing.
3 more months of slippage...no thanks. I was well over 10 per month so the platform was free for me also but the slippage cost me more than the software would.

Good luck with Infinity...I'm going with Think Or Swim for now with their platform and intend to open an AT account also to use their dom ladder, leverage and great executions along with TOS.

[jjthetrader]

I've got charting with TradeGuider so I'm good to go with the AT platform at my side.

[Tasuki]

It's not just the slippage on trades. The Tradestation platform is starting to exhibit problems again, just like it did about this time last year. Here's a message that pops up when you enter the platform:

"Information regarding gaps in some historical index data in TradeStation---
Certain indices, such as $ADV, $TVOL, $TICK, and other statistical indices, do not currently have complete historical data in TradeStation. We are working to fill any gaps that may exist in these symbols and will send a notification once this process is complete."

Yesterday if you called them on the phone the first thing you heard was that Options data was not up to date, and today, my ES charts crashed twice on Tradestation (the data just stopped coming in), and my friend on the east coast had the same thing happen--but at different times during the day.

I'm starting to look very carefully at the possibility of re-coding all my beautiful Tradestation indicators (which I've hand-crafted over many years) into eSignal or Ninjatrader. I hate to leave Tradestation because of all the work I've put into my indicators, and workspaces and desktops. Yeesh, it would be a complete drag to move, but unreliable data is just no acceptable.

[jjthetrader]

	Quote:	Tasuki
	It's not just the slippage on trades. The Tradestation platform is starting to exhibit problems again, just like it did about this time last year. Here's a message that pops up when you enter the platform: "Information regarding gaps in some historical index data in TradeStation--- Certain indices, such as $ADV, $TVOL, $TICK, and other statistical indices, do not currently have complete historical data in TradeStation. We are working to fill any gaps that may exist in these symbols and will send a notification once this process is complete." Yesterday if you called them on the phone the first thing you heard was that Options data was not up to date, and today, my ES charts crashed twice on Tradestation (the data just stopped coming in), and my friend on the east coast had the same thing happen--but at different times during the day. I'm starting to look very carefully at the possibility of re-coding all my beautiful Tradestation indicators (which I've hand-crafted over many years) into eSignal or Ninjatrader. I hate to leave Tradestation because of all the work I've put into my indicators, and workspaces and desktops. Yeesh, it would be a complete drag to move, but unreliable data is just no acceptable.

I hear ya bro. I had to make a big decission to lose all my indicators but I've now switched and am getting way better trades. Infinity rules! Lightning fast execution. I didn't even realize how crappy TS was until I started using Infinity.
Good bye and Good riddance TS.
It shouldn't be too hard to recode into eSignal.
Good luck with your decission.

[Tasuki]

https://www.tradestation.com/Discuss...Topic_ID=73175

[edit: damn this link's not working---if you go to the main forum page:
https://www.tradestation.com/Discuss...x?Forum_ID=213
you should be able to find my thread under:
category: order execution
Type: possible bug
version: 8.02.3896

Hope that'll get you through (you still have to be logged in to the TS forums to access it).


For those of you who subscribe to Tradestation World, I've started a thread to address the issue of slow fill time on TS matrix. Please add comments there if you care to do so--they'll be seen by Tradestation management (I presume).

[Tasuki]

Here is a post from someone named casey on the Tradestation World forum. Unfortunately, it's written in Geek, so I can't really understand it, but his bottom line is worth noting for those of you who like to trade with the Matrix:

"Matrix definitely has issues. It appears the data transfer to the window involves the message queue and a simple price print with no bids or asks can generate 12 messages in addition to the normal wm_paint message. Jiggle the mouse and for each incriment of movement you get the same flood. -

At any rate, the matrix window message queue is being flooded with TS programatically generated messages when it is designed by MS to facilitate user input. Message handling is an expensive operation and i suspect this is causing most of the issues with the matrix window type.

The chart windows operate normally - probably since their data is transfered differently and their message queue is used in a more standard MFC fashion.

So at any rate, not much you can do, but would suggest that you only let the mouse enter the Matrix window when you intend to do something right then. Or be carefull not to touch it until you are ready to click."