[flyingdutchmen]

@bakrob99

thank you

i have heared that the tradestation forum is one of the best.

what is holding me back is the story's about wide spread
huge slippage and bad costumer servive (if one is not a new member); but you do not share this experience, that is good.

how realistic is this simulator they offer and what exactly can it do?

i believe it is not possible to trade an IB account directly with ts software
and IB's API but one would need a third party software like ninja

[Charlton]

Originally Posted by flyingdutchmen »

@bakrob99

thank you

i have heared that the tradestation forum is one of the best.

what is holding me back is the story's about wide spread
huge slippage and bad costumer servive (if one is not a new member); but you do not share this experience, that is good.

how realistic is this simulator they offer and what exactly can it do?

i believe it is not possible to trade an IB account directly with ts software
and IB's API but one would need a third party software like ninja

I have accounts with both IB and TS. I trade US stocks and have had no real issues with slippage, spread or data. Spread on US stocks is generally 0.01.

Sometimes there are data disconnections, but these seem to be related to how long the pc is left idle and as soon as it is no longer idle the automatic reconnection kicks in.

I have only used customer service once I think to ask a question, so in my experience it has never been needed.

The simulator runs real-time data and simulates the live account exactly, although you can adjust the account size. All of the strategies, windows setup etc are duplicated in the simulator, so I would say it is very realistic. It can be used to back-test strategies and to produce performance reports on that basis. There are certain advanced things where it acts slightly differently, where you are using advanced programming functions, but for most people it mimics the real world in all its functionality, data and the way trades would be treated.

You are correct that you cannot trade directly with the IB broker but through an API. In fact if you did this you would need to pay the monthly platform cost of around $90, which is only free if you do a certain number of trades via the TS broker.

If you wanted to stick with IB I would recommend that you look at Amibroker. This is quite a cheap one-off price of around $200 and has a fairly strong programming language similar in grammar to TS. You can download their manuals and programming guide directly from their site to see. They also have an API already set up for IB.

As for the TS forum it is indeed very good and there is a thriving and active user base that share code on the forum and elsewhere in other sites

Charlton

[bakrob99]

Originally Posted by flyingdutchmen »

@bakrob99



how realistic is this simulator they offer and what exactly can it do?

i believe it is not possible to trade an IB account directly with ts software
and IB's API but one would need a third party software like ninja

The simulator is a real time feed which matches the market tick for tick. Fills are not intended to be "realistic" but are filled if the price is hit. It is useful for checking autotraded strategies and debugging code. You can also determine if the market traded through your price and enter.

One thing is: TS has an option to enter at Market if your price is hit on a limit order after xxx seconds.... so you can alwyas get filled but maybe not at your desired price. This is useful for me for EXITS but not entries.

Trading is tough enough without trying to make software work through API's etc... I would not go that route.

[flyingdutchmen]

thank you very much Charlton
this is exactly the information i am looking for
its very much apreciated

a .01 spread is for the high liqued stocks i guess.
sounds good.

i do not nesecarely want to stick with IB but from what
i have read about tradestation is that most user do the
bare minimum amount of trades enough to cover the software
fee and then switch over to IB or any other broker,
but then again those are future traders.

i would prefere to do all trades at tradestation, not last because
90% is automated.

that is what made me wundering if there would be a difference
between future's and trading stocks at tradestation.

the bad costumer service i was refering to where rumors from
people that had connection problems or problems with the
synchronisation between the software and their account;
they claimed TS was unreachable over phone to close the trades

thx again

[Charlton]

AAPL 10 Min 0.03
AMZN 10 Min 0.01
APOL 10 Min 0.02
BA 10 Min 0.01
BBBY 10 Min 0.01
BIG 10 Min 0.02
BBY 10 Min 0.01
BIIB 10 Min 0.01
BNI 10 Min 0.03
CAT 10 Min 0.01
CELG 10 Min 0.02
CNX 10 Min 0.02
COF 10 Min 0.01
COH 10 Min 0.01
COST 10 Min 0.01
CSCO 10 Min 0.01
DD 10 Min 0.01
EOG 10 Min 0.02
ESI 10 Min 0.04
EXM 10 Min 0.01
FDX 10 Min 0.02
GD 10 Min 0.02
GILD 10 Min 0.01
HIG 10 Min 0.01
HPQ 10 Min 0.01
IBM 10 Min 0.03
JNJ 10 Min 0.01
JOYG 10 Min 0.02
LVS 10 Min 0.01
NSC 10 Min 0.03
NYX 10 Min 0.01
RIG 10 Min 0.02
RIMM 10 Min 0.02
RRC 10 Min 0.01
TGT 10 Min 0.01
UTX 10 Min 0.01
WFR 10 Min 0.01
WHR 10 Min 0.01
WLP 10 Min 0.01
WMT 10 Min 0.01
YHOO 10 Min 0.01
RIG 10 Min 0.02


Here's a list taken straight off my screen showing the spread. If you want to know what it is for certain stocks then let me have the symbols

Charlton

[flyingdutchmen]

thank you Bakrob

i am aware of that "fill-at-market"option, i also have this future
in my current software

so the simulator seems realistic, that the fills cant be 100% identical
seems logical as there are no trades routed to any exchange.
fill-if-hit seems fair for any simulator

[flyingdutchmen]

thank you Charlton !

looks like a very fair spread to me

one question though.. where does the 10 minutes stand for ?

[flyingdutchmen]

seems that tradestation is "THE" software for the mass public/
retail trader
those spreads looks good.