Multicharts Vs Ensign As Answer to Tradestations Faults

[Frank]

I used to love Tradestation. However, its pretty clear to me that Tradestation as a trading platform is seriously flawed. It started when they told me their architecture doesn't support the vertical axis functionality needed to do good Market Profile. Ok, but the straw that broke camels back is the apparent delay in data that occurs using Tradestation. I have many trader opinions who agree that they receive quotes faster on other platforms than they do on Tradestation. Clearly, trading with delayed data is major problem -- even if the delay is relatively small. (not to mention the outages that seemed to have been worked out by TS until this year).

This brings me to my question; after investigating the marketplace, I see 2 solid options: Multicharts and Ensign.
Ensign is a problem because I would effectively have to learn all the small tricks of EL programming I have figured out --- ie, tons of new syntax to learn. Multicharts sounds like great option as it says it can run EasyLanguage and apparently has an architecture that supports Market Profile.

My fear with Multicharts is that it goes the way of Tradestation --- slows down and or there are problems in translating EL to MC. However, if it works -- my existing EasyLanguage skillset could be utilized.

I see no real big cost difference.

If anyone has done a thorough competitive analysis of Ensign vs Multicharts, maybe you can chime in with which way I should lean and which direction to head as a trial.

A related question, what is fastest way to learn Ensign programming? --- I am not aware of a book on Ensign -- which is how I got started in EasyLanguage originally.

thx

[brownsfan019]

I would suggest using MC since most, if not all, of your TS things should transfer over. I was an avid user of MC prior to moving to Open ECry and found MC to be a pretty good option for charting. Who knows what the future may hold, so I would not factor that into my decision as Ensign could change things or have the same issues down the road as well. Just pure speculation at that point.

[Frank]

why did you leave MC once you learned to use it? sounds like you liked it.

I have found EasyLanguage to be very powerful --- its just that TS has some serious baggage. I cannot compare EL to Ensign because I have never learned Ensign --- Ensign might be even more powerful than EL and I just don't know it.

I was wondering if you just weren't using the EL functionality (in MC) or if there was some other reason why you would recommend MC but aren't using it now...

on a side note, I noticed you get free data if you use Multicharts through Open Ecry -- maybe I should do that? Open account with Open Ecry and run Multicharts through it...

I am playing around with Ensign ESPL - their programming language - and it does look interesting -- its just that without a good text on it -- could be a lot of work and frustration for something that end of day is not better than EL.

[brownsfan019]

For me Frank, I did not need the extras that MC offers vs. just using OEC's platform. My setup is pretty simple so OEC has what I need.

When I was using MC, I also plugged OEC data into that to save some data costs. That's a good way to go. Just keep in mind that OEC historical data is very limited currently so if you need a lot of historical data, you will still need another data source.

[OAC]

	Quote:	Frank
	I am playing around with Ensign ESPL - their programming language - and it does look interesting -- its just that without a good text on it -- could be a lot of work and frustration for something that end of day is not better than EL.

Have you tried Ensign's chatroom ? http://ensign.editme.com/chat
They have quite a community of traders and also their support staff there. May be you want to pick their brains.
I have never seen Ensign ESPL being discussed in this forum.

[nickm001]

I took long time for TS to acknowledge the Data issue problem. They finally did month ago or so.. and they have done some changes that have improved the data feed/charting. If you are still experiencing issues with latest release 8.3, build 1631 and updated orchart.exe, then something else might be the cause of it. I agree with you that TS had problem, but I have not seen any issues in last 2-3 weeks.

[Frank]

well nick, all of the savvy traders I interact with agree, while EL is an excellent software-analysis tool -- Tradestation is not a good platform for day-trading. at any given moment, it may be acting admirably -- but over time, it has proven to be an inadequate trading platform.

[brownsfan019]

I would never trade through TS. Great charting, backtesting, etc. but I would never risk money on that platform. I was on TS quite awhile ago and the platform to trade on is very unreliable and has not changed much as evidenced by this thread and many others out there.

[momentom]

I'm an MC fan because its EL compatoble and because it supports multi time frame data - you can mix minutes with volume with range etc

There's also a long list of other reasons including data time stamping.
Ensign is a great charting platform for non programmers but its architecture is also very old.

[Kiwi]

If you are considering ensign you should also consider SierraChart.

Originally I was a tradestation user although I've used Metastock, TS, Ensign, SierraChart, IBChart, Multicharts, Ninja and probably a few I've forgotten in my explorations.

I was an ensign user for about 3 months after being a SC user. After 3 months I went back to SierraChart because ensign's espl language is interpretted and very slow compared with SC, Ensign has a lot of eye candy but it tends to be buggy (SierraChart is more reliable and almost totally so if you stay use the release versions not the prerelease versions).