MBAGearhead

They were doing so well for quite a stretch there and now 2 days of outages. Very frustrating and very little communication. Their chat notice today says it is a problem with a 3rd party vendor affecting primarily CME and ICE prices/orders.

Here's a few I check out daily. I generally like blogs that report actual daily results to show what's possible day in and day out... My blog is first one: MBAGearhead Trading Journey coiledmarkets.com Don Miller's S&P Trading Tank Forex Intraday Trading Trading The Mini's Scalp And Swing Jules The Deucalion Viewpoint

ChrisM at OEC said the brief disconnect was caused by too much load on the server. They have allocated additional resources to that server to greatly minimize, when a disconnection does occur, the amount of time it takes for the server to catch up on all of the data requests. He agreed that improved communication to OEC customers when problems occur would be helpful and is passing along this concern. That's all I know for now. Until next time...

Thanks but this thread is about OEC not about other options. Quotes and DOMs were down briefly too so unless your $25/mo. backup can transfer my trading capital in seconds to another broker and I can place the same orders there, your point is moot. Of course every broker has problems from time to time but that doesn't mean we have to accept that as a fact of retail trading. We must continue to push our brokers to develop software, redundancies, and infrastructure that virtually NEVER fails.

OEC (live platform) had a reconnect just after 9:30 CDT. They said just after it happened that cause was unknown. Quotes and DOMs work but I have mostly blank charts so cannot trade. They are slowly repopulating as every client is likely maxing out their server's output to download chart data. Hopefully this only caused me to miss LOSING soybean trades... UPDATE: 10:03 CDT - all my charts are finally back up. Now that I can see soybean charts - I missed a soybean short signal that I would have made $1600 on and a long that I would have lost $600. Thanks OEC for costing me $1000! I will let this forum know if/when they report what caused this outage and what they are doing to prevent it from happening again.

Quotes and DOMs were out today for less than a minute (just my guesstimate) but charts did not work for 30-45 min. after that. They slowly came back and began to populate. I called and they said they lost chart data for just a blip but with all client's trading software calling for data all at the same time after the blip, the servers were bogged down and it would take time to repopulate all the chart data. This also happened a month or two ago as I recall. Overall not bad considering DOMs worked, orders worked, etc. I agree with Trader4 that it would be nice if they sent out an alert to notify clients of issues!

eSignal's definition from the Exchange Newsletter -- An Information Source for eSignal Subscribers "Range Bars -- The Range Bar chart creates new bars once a tick comes through that is outside the defined range. For example, in a 2-point range bar on the E-mini S&P 500 futures, if the price range is 1473 - 1475 for the current bar, the very next trade that is outside of that will generate a new bar." I do hope OEC's solution does not incorporate phantom prices for all options of range or momentum bars. Having gaps on range bars is preferred when price jumps more than a tick above or below the high or low of the current bar once it has traded it's full range, imho.

Brownsfan, I just wanted to correct you to help you understand better. In an example I had with Chris at OEC a month ago, I sent him the attached. Only 11% of the incorrectly printed bars in the example were for the reason you state. The rest were the case, to use your example, high 80.10, price trades to 80.01 and the bar ENDS (at 9 ticks length) and the next bar begins with the next print of 80.00. It's perfectly acceptable for a range bar to print short for the reason you state. But that is not what is causing the vast majority of OEC range bars to not go the full range. There is no logic to what their program is doing - it almost seems random. The example attached is live data (not sim) from an OEC 5pip GCL chart. RangeMBA.xls

Daedalus you are correct. I've been after OEC for months to fix this. Last I heard from Chris at OEC was, "I am still working with our development team and project manager to see if we can implement the same functionality as eSignal and Sierra Chart. I do not see this being implemented in the immediate future as this project needs approval first." If more people make OEC aware of this, maybe it will get fixed sooner. The beauty of range bars is you know exactly where the opening tick of the next bar will be once current bar has traded it's full range (next tick above current bar high or next tick below current bar low will start the next bar). But with this bug, you have no idea if current bar will end a tick short or go the specified range. :crap: A couple months ago in early communications, OEC said that according to the development team, this is not a bug. The range bars in the OEC platform can have varying lengths. I then asked if the developers could explain the logic to me how bars are currently created but I've not heard back on this. Attached are a couple examples of OEC vs. eSignal charts I have sent them. The best one has 4 charts in 1 picture showing a 1-min and 4-tick range chart side by side with eSignal data.

I trade it sometimes. Also, ES, ZS, 6E, 6B, 6J, CL... Here's a current look at mini-Russ. Could break either way (or just die into the close). Note: I'm just watching this.

Been following along for awhile and thought I should throw up a chart so I'm not just a lurker! I didn't trade this but the 1-2-3's were picture perfect on both the long and short side in the mini-Russell today. I enjoy your thread Thales! Keep up the good work!