[kellih]

Hi SoulTrader,

I read your article "NYSE TICK's and TICK Strategies" about a month ago, and it has been a tremendously helpful addition to my current strategy! Thank you so much.

Out of curiosity, do you know why tradestation's feed is one of the few, if not only, to calculate and display the NYSE Tick in real-time?

I currently use tradestation, but was shopping for another service. I've checked eSignal and DTN's IQ Feed and others, but the Update Frequency is 3-6 seconds.

You and Hubert Senters are the only traders that I have come across that mention the Tick "Hook". Just wondering if either one of you got tradestation to get that calculating quickly?

Also, if anyone else knows of a data feed that is doing what TS does with the $TICKS, I'd appreciate a shout.

Thanks.

[darthtrader]

That is interesting. I've never used TS and figured everything just reported TICK in 5 second intervals. Did you see at all if DTN/Esignal was just adding them all togather vs TS? If TS reports 100, 100, 0 -100, -100, DTN/Esignal reports 0?
I'm not sure how big of a deal this really is but it does kind of suck to not have the optimal setup with a dedicated feed.(I use DTN, its 5 second intervals if you look at the tape)
Linda Raschke mentions tick hook like patterns at +400/-400 in Street Smarts. I also love the pattern and would highly recommend getting hold of a cummulative tick indicator to go along with it. It really helps to put the hook in context. The danger is without cummulative tick you don't know if your trying to fade an over reaction or if your trying to fade the market even though things are being tipped in the direction of the hook overall at the bid/ask. Its especially bad if your trying to fade the top of a range with a hook but cummulative tick is going in the direction of the hook, good chance you get caught on the wrong side of a breakout.

[kellih]

There really is no correlation between readings in eSignal/DTN vs tradestation. My DTN trail has expired, but in eSignal I can see that the reads are in the same range, eSignal just updates every 6 seconds.

I scalp trade, holding anywhere from 15 secs or so up to 2minutes. I've found TS $Ticks to be very helpful with the other indicators I am using. No way could I get the same info using another data feed, though.


I contacted both eSignal and DTN over the last couple weeks. Here is their response.

DTN:
"...we have a request in to get it calculated faster. You are the first customer ever to request our TICK values to be calculated faster so that is interesting. We are currently calculating it faster than everyone BUT tradestation. "


eSignal:
" Unfortuantely, there is no way to increase the speed of updates for $TICK indicator. This is the interval at which the data is provided to us. It is possible tradestation calculates this data themselves and is the reason for the difference in updates. "

So at least DTN is working on it. The customer service guy told me he would update me when they have it calculating faster.


If you are interested, here is a link from Sierra Chart where quite a few traders had some input. Apparently, the issue is known as "tick bundling" and most data feeds display that way.
http://supportboard.sierrachart.com/...ad.php?t=14783


I'm not familiar with the cumulative tick indicator, but in the TS forums, there is info about what's available -- NYSE Total volume, Advancing and Declining Issues.
It seems there are a group of traders really interested in getting even more indicators for market internals. I'm not sure if you can access TS forums without being a customer, though.

Re fading the top of the range, I have found that to be more difficult to predict. As Soultrader said in his article, once you begin trading with the $TICK, you can begin to develop your own strategies. I'm finding that I can spot some good opportunities as the $TICK goes from positive to negative and vice versa.