Tasuki

syswizard, Wow, thanks for the excellent review. One question: what does "re-mapping" mean? I suppose I should know, but the term's unfamiliar to me. Oops, another question: what is a "broker profile"? If you have MC and DTN IQ, what more does IB do for you? Thanks, Tasuki

Hello all, Just a simple question: how does Multicharts stack up against other platforms such as Tradestation, Thinkorswim, Ninjatrader, Metastock, etc? Multicharts has a year-end deal: a thousand bucks for Lifetime License (and another discount for TWO licenses---why would you need two? does a single license only work on one computer???)---just wondering if it's worth it. Right now, I'm using Tradestation, but it might be nice, and potentially helpful) to have an alternate. Now, Tradestation is both a software platform and a broker, but isn't Multicharts just software, like Ninjatrader, so you'd need to pay for a broker as well to actually use Multicharts--have I got that right? Anyway, any help much appreciated here. Thanks, Tasuki

Hello, I was very happy to find Blu-Ray's Squeeze indicator, but when I put it on my Tradestation (version 9.5) chart, the all-important color bars in the middle were so tiny you can hardly see them. Attached are two pix to demonstrate. Does anybody have a clue how to fix this, so those bars are large enough to see? I've played with every setting I can find on Tradestation, but no luck so far. Do I just need to find a different version of the Squeeze? Any help gratefully received! Thanks in advance, Tasuki

Hello all, With Caesar declaring that all Windows users must be taxed, I mean upgraded to version 10, I've been wondering if it ain't time to jump ship and get a computer with Linux as the operating system instead of Windows. Trouble is, I don't know a single trading platform that runs on Linux. Simple question: is there a (good) trading platform, complete with good charts and order entry dome, that runs on Linux? Thanks, Tasuki

Yeesh, I'm so sorry I didn't answer this earlier. Not sure how I missed it. See attached pic. Hope this helps. To answer your question, yes, if price bounces off a median line, then you expect that buyers were there. The question always is, which buyers, the strong hands, or the weak ones? That's why we don't trade with just one indicator or tool, but rather we look at the whole gestalt of the market before placing a trade. Tasuki

(insert smirk and sarcastic grin)---Steve, you have to be kidding me, right? Why on EARTH would I contact the vendor for references? Golly gee whiz, Mr. Wizard, don't ya think those references might be hand-picked to make the vendor look good? Criminy, talk about a stunning lack of intelligence. So, why *would* I ask the Traders Lab folks about this vendor? Well, let's use an analogy: Let's say you want to buy a car, but you're not sure if model XYZ is the right one for you. Do you go to the dealership and ask them for references? No, of course not, you go ask people you know who've bought one and whose opinions you trust. Well, this community of traders constitutes my family, my trading family. I have learned over years and years of belonging to this forum to trust the opinions of my trading family here at Traders Lab. I hope this makes sense to you (and to everyone).

Tradingwizzard, If there are indeed people taking the course, that may or may not mean there's any value in it. After all, "'there's a sucker born every minute !" Anyway, thanks for the reply, and confirmation of my first impressions. Tasuki

Hi folks, Long time since I've posted here. Someone told me about a former floor trader who's offering a course on trading, except it sounds kinda airy-fairy: "Intuitive Development Training". I'm afraid there will be sandalwood and incense and hippies chanting OM while you place your trades. Has anybody on Trader's Lab actually shelled out the money and taken his course? If so, I'd greatly appreciate some feedback. Some red flags: 1) Here is a quote from what appears to be his website. Describing his "Foundation" course, he says, "Traders and Business Professionals take away the understanding, knowledge, and tools needed to more fully develop the key components necessary to support Intuitive Function." "Support intuitive function"??? Am I the only one who thinks that this sounds absurdly vague? (there are no explanations on the website that I can find). 2) Taking a step back and looking at the history, this fellow was apparently a floor trader in Chicago, and to be honest, these guys had a hard time, a very hard time, adjusting to electronic trading. Many of them couldn't cut it, and at least some of them realized that they could cash in on their reputation as floor traders and developed trading courses to support themselves because they couldn't electronically trade worth a damn. So, any floor trader offering a course, especially one with such nebulous terminology as"inuitive function", should be taken with more than one grain of salt. 3) His website, if I've got the right one, is unbelievably bad. There is no substance to it whatever. Mostly just an advertisement. Just check it out and see for yourself: http://www.intuitiveperformance.com/ 4) The title of the course itself is suspect: Intuitive Development TRAINING, not TRADING. So, who among you would fork over hundreds of dollars to a former floor trader to teach you about developing your intuition? How about a professional psychologist or a licensed therapist? Them, maybe, an ex-floor trader, not likely! Sorry if I sound skeptical, but really, where's this guy's credentials in the inutition department? Really does sound lke a pathetic attempt to carve out a new career as a motivational speaker once the electronic trading went bust. At least, that's what it looks like. 5) Finally, a Google search turns up very little of value, a couple of articles on trading but they have no substance to them whatsoever. Again, somewhat fishy. Most good trading educators have a long list of published articles providing real value. Anyway, just a heads up, fellow Lab rats, and if anybody does have more info, I'd be grateful. Tasuki

Jillion, I think you've got it backwards. Timothy Morge, one of the largest traders in the world, makes it very clear in his webinars that the "big boys" do NOT buy at resistance. True, they do accumulate on downmoves, but these are usually engineered down moves which are calculated to scare weak longs and to initiate fresh short-selling. Hence, they will sell at support, but just enough to scare the pants off smaller traders. Then, they come in and buy many times more than they just sold, sopping up the liquidity created by those who are forced to puke their positions. This is known as the classic "wash and rinse" and it has become the bread and butter of big traders, even more nowadays than it was in years and decades past. So, no, they do not accumulate at resistance, that would be foolhardy. If you want a more thorough understanding, you should check out Morge's free webinars at the website of Interactive Brokers. Here's the link: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/?f=%2Fen%2Fgeneral%2Feducation%2FpriorWebinars.php#top When you get to the page, click on the "Industry Sponsored" link in the middle of the page, and scroll down until you see the webinars offered by Tim Morge, Market Geometry. In order to see just the webinars given by Tim, you can filter out the others by clicking on the "All Speakers" tab and selecting Tim Morge from the list (the other speakers aren't anywhere near as good as Tim). To be honest, you will get no better education anywhere on the web, unless you want to shell out the money to join his website, but before you spend money, watch all of his free webinars at this link, and then you can go to MarketGeometry.com and get more free stuff, and if that's not enough for you, you can go to his other website, medianline.com, and there's even more free stuff. Hope this helps, Tasuki

That's mostly how I use the TICK myself. If I suspect that a new trend is starting but the TICK remains bearish, I won't attempt a long. This is why I was so surprised to see the TICK not rising as price rose (see my chart). However, as wrbtrader pointed out, the TICK did spend most of its time above zero---I was just expecting it to rise along with price (it does, sometimes), and as Bluehorseshoe noted, the correlation between the ES and the TICK is weak at best, so I was expecting too close of a correlation. Thanks to everyone for your fine critiques of my query. Tasuki

This is a painfully simple question---price rises, TICK (advancing issues minues declining issues) remains flat. How do they do this? If price is going up, you'd think there would be more buyers than sellers, which you'd thnk (well, I would think) would mean that there were more advancing issues than declining issues, so the $TICK should go up as price goes up. But it doesn't always work that way, strangely. So, how come price is rising but there are no more buyers than sellers? The more general way of stating this question would be---why does the $TICK sometimes give false signals? Thanks, Tasuki

Xiao, you're such a joker. A friend of mine was using IB (in defiance of his friends' warnings) and his connection to the IB servers crashed while he was in a position. He called IB's customer service to ask them to get him out of his position. Their customer service kept him on the phone for 45 minutes, passing him from one person to another without ever addressing his need to get out of his position. His Tradestation feed was still working, and he watched the position go against him more and more, and he got more and more desperate, but no matter how he pleaded, the IB support didn't get around to actually listening to his request for three quarters of an hour. Finally, they got him out, but he swore that they were taunting him the entire time. Needless to say, he took his money (what was left of it) out of IB the next day. The funny thing is, you hear these stories about IB all the time, and yet some people, including one of the people in our trading group, have had only good luck with IB's customer service. I guess it just depends on whether you want to take the risk of losing your shirt, so to speak, in order to get the low commissions. Tasuki

Electron, I'm sure you know this, but not all data providers are equal. Some friends of mine and I did a test on live data from three sources, Interactive Brokers, eSignal and Tradestation. What we found, briefly, was that IB had the poorest quality data, eSignal the best, and Tradestation was in between. This was not unexpected. Historically, eSignal started as a data provider, TS as a charting package and IB as a bargain basement broker. Personally, I wouldn't trust IB to wash my underwear, but I know they're very popular because they're cheap. As for DTNIQ, there are rumors that they had a big shakeup some time ago, and that the quality of their data suffered after the company re-organized. Reputations change very slowly in t his business, and so, from what I've heard, DTNIQ's data is still considered high quality. All I'm saying is, do your own homework to see whether there is any truth to this or not. Tasuki

Thanks, Xiao, I had no idea that Ninjatrader was such a racket! There is, of course, another racket, and that is the business of hacking protected code. I've heard of at least one place that will crack Tradestation's protected code, and there is no doubt in my mind that some bright guy or gal will get the same idea for Ninjatrader, especially if the pickins' are good. I like the idea that maybe there is a rise in generic code, but I suspect that Ninja will do everything in its power to protect its investment. Do you remember the big hassle we had going from NT version 6.5 to version 7.0? That whole thing was designed to protect the coders. They'll probably try something like that again if they need to do so. Finally I would like to respectfully suggest that the day of the discretionary trader is anything but coming to a close. Exactly the opposite is true. Tasuki

Xiao, This is off-topic, but it'd be great if you could explain for us what this "license agreement" with Ninjatrader is and how it hurts the trader. I have used Ninjatrader (free version, Kinetick EOD data only, no coding) since it first came out, and I don't know anything about this license agreement problem. I think it would be generally helpful to members of Traders Lab if you could explain the problem. Thanks, Tasuki

aston, Thanks very much for the pix. Much appreciated. As far as brokers are concerned, I have had very good luck with Infinity, so I'll just stay with them. But it would be nice with Multicharts to try out a different data feed. Still hoping someone can suggest a data feed that works especially well with Multicharts. Any MC users that swear by a particular data feed? Thanks, Tasuki

Aston, Any chance you could post a side-by-side comparison of the graphics of TS and eSignal? I'd give my eye teeth to see what you're talking about. BTW, isn't the Multicharts graphics similar to that of Tradestation? Just curious. Thanks, Tasuki

EL, Finally, somebody who likes MC steps up to the plate. Many thanks for your contribution to the thread. May I ask, what data feed do you recommend for Multicharts?Thanks again! Tasuki

smmatrix, While I'm not familiar with Multicharts, the other charting packages you mentioned are just about the bottom of the barrel. No surprise that TS is better. However, had you tried Ninjatrader, Ensign, Neoticker, Realtick, or InvestorRT, you might have had a better experience. In all those cases, however, the move from TS would require a complete re-write of all my indicators, which is why I was inquiring in this thread about Multicharts. If you're a stat trader, you should maybe check out Neoticker. It's not for people like me, but it might be right up your alley. If you listen to them, their backtesting totally beats the hell out of TS, but I can't speak from personal experience. But seriously, you should check out Neoticker.

Thanks, smmatrix, Now this is news I can use. Sadly, I was hoping to make the move to Multicharts seamlessly, but now I'll have to investigate Multicharts more carefully. Drat it, but thanks for the heads up. With all the negative feedback I've heard about Tradestation from my trader friends who are users (and mostly former users), I am extremely surprised by the positive comments that we've seen in this thread. Almost makes me wonder if the glowing reviews aren't being posted by TS employees or moles within Traders Lab. Sorry guys if this sounds offensive, but honestly, in my 13+ years of trading I have never heard so many people praise Tradestation so unequivocally. Just a bit odd, and it makes me scratch my head in wonder. Tasuki

Onesmith, if it's so good, how come their tech support is (according to them) inundated with crash reports on 9.1?

Thanks, Tams. Sounds "do-able". My indicators are just the basic ones, slightly tweaked but not re-programmed. The best part of Tradestation (and the reason I've stayed with them this long) is because their architecture of charts within workspaces within desktops, is miles ahead of other charting packages. *Does Multicharts have a similar architecture?* Tx, Tasuki

UB, The problem with the newer versions of TS is that they try to be all things to all people. There's a stock scanner which I don't need, and an options platform I don't need, and a Forex platform I don't need, and even an order entry form I don't need [smart scalpers never use TS for order entry], and heaven knows what other crap they've tacked onto their already-massive program. With all of these "appendages" to their charting software, it's quite understandable that their charting software crashes alot. Admittedly, with 12 monitors, 15 workspaces, dozens of charts and more than a hundred indicators, I do push Tradestation more than most people. So, if TS works for you, then great---you're not pushing it, but the older version, 8.7, works just fine, no matter how hard you push it. I'm not the only one---lots of people have complained about the later versions of Tradestation. Here's a link: https://community.tradestation.com/Discussions/Topic.aspx?Topic_ID=98851&PAGE=3򔫺 Not sure if you can use that link, but if you can, it takes you to a thread within Tradestation's forum in which users are complaining about TS 8.8 (and 9.0 and 9.1) crashing so hard that it locks up their computer. As a result, Tradestation engineers created a "killscript" (a batch file) to manually shut down Tradestation. That is a stupid way to put a bandaid over the problem (and the killscript doesn't actually work, either). What they SHOULD have done is to take the advice of many users (myself included) and create multiple versions of the software, including one version for futures traders which is "stripped down", meaning that the scanner, the options garbage, the forex garbage and all that nonsense is removed. If Tradestation were really on the ball, they'd create customized versions for options traders, forex traders, stock traders, and futures traders, but they're not that bright, apparently. So, the bottom line is that the newer versions, anything beyond 8.7, suck because they crash, and crash hard. When 9.1 came out, I thought maybe they'd finally gotten their act together, so I installed it, only to find that it crashed hard (froze my computer) within 2 days of using it. I called tech support, and the poor, exhausted tech on the phone said that he'd received so many complaints about 9.1 that he recommended just deleting it and going back to 8.7. I did so, and about a week later I got this message that Tradestation was discontinuing 8.7, hence my desire to find a different charting package. For the record, multi-threading would be a good thing if they could actually get it to work. For the record, computer programming in general is a gimic that is useful only for people who don't know how to trade. It will waste your time and it won't help you make money if you don't already know how to trade. It will, however, provide thousands of hours of programming fun, if that's what you really like to do. Tasuki

Tradestation has given me notice that they won't be supporting my favorite version of their software, the old version 8.7 (later versions suck). So, I'm considering where to go, and I heard somewhere that I might be able to import my Tradestation indicators into Multicharts. Is this true? If anyone knows, please gimme some advice here. How similar is Multicharts to Tradestation? Are there any major disadvantages to Multicharts? Thanks, Tasuki

Thanks, zdo, your analysis is most helpful! To answer your question, I dropped out of Traders Lab during the conflict that erupted a couple of years ago regarding VSA. There were alot of childish posts at that time, and I just got fed up with the nonsense. Recently, I've been keeping up with my VSA through the free weekly emails done by Todd Krueger. Pretty good stuff. Todd also brings in Wyckoff, which is helpful, and adds some new elements from his own trading. Wyckoff is ancient, of course, and some of what he talks about doesn't work any more. The very best stuff I've found, however, is on Tim Morge's Market Geometry website. Tim's not a very nice fellow, but if I were carrying around as many diseases as he has, my mood would be far fouler, I'm pretty sure. But he and Shane, his partner, have the best educational stuff on the markets. IMHO. They're all into structure, which is very cool stuff, because it works in tandem with VSA and/or indicators. The fact that they can make money without indicators, or even volume, on their charts, is a testament to their skills at reading the "flow of price" based solely on the structures they see in the market. If you haven't checked it out, I'd recommend it. They have lots of free stuff on their site. Anyway, thanks again for your thoughtful reply! Happy trade-hunting to you! Tasuki