Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Hi. After more than a decade of not trading, I'm getting back into it. I need help on choosing the right charting/analysis/execution software for swing trading using IB. I hope you folks can give me some guidance about Multicharts in general and the two versions - MC/EasyLanguage or MC.NET - in particular.
My strategies may be somewhat unusual and should involve database scanning. I.e. for speed, not not a chart or a watchlist. In general, the process would require scanning from a large universe of instruments filtered down to maybe 200-400 per day (probably using something like FinViz). From there, these symbols would be imported into MC, scanned for certain short term price/volume divergences over the last 20 days or so, and loaded to another watchlist - maybe 10-20 symbols per week. A second round of scrubbing and analysis would reduce these down to a very few instruments for high-probability trades. Finally, manual or auto-execution on these final symbols would place trades that met certain criteria. Eventually these criteria would be more sophisticated than price targets.
MC seems to fit my needs. However, my specific concerns are about which version would be better to implement these strategies - MC/EasyLanguage or MC.NET? Each version has pluses and minuses. MC/EasyLanguage seems easier to program than MC.NET and has a lot of code available on the Internet. And a common complaint about MC.NET is coding in VB or C#. Since I'm a professional C# and database programmer, programming MC.NET should not be an issue. And using Visual Studio to write and debug code is a HUGE plus.
Originally, I leaned toward MC/EasyLanguage. That is, until I found two interesting posts in the Ampfutures forum comparing MC/EasyLanguage and MC.NET. Unlike other posts about the differences, these posts listed specific MC.NET features that are NOT available in MC/EasyLanguage. From that list:
Access to all information in Order and Position Tracker from scripts
Access all data from Scripts for instruments that are not even charted
Access to the list of symbols in the database from studies
Ability to use the third-party databases like SQL Server and Mongo DB
Access to the status of orders, positions, accounts, logs from the script
Implementing my strategies should involve a lot of batch database work. I.e. charting analysis should be limited to the final scrubbing step. Based on the list above, my concern is that MC/EasyLanguage would not have the necessary horsepower and MC.NET would.
Please help me. Is that list correct? Does only MC.NET have these features? Are there workarounds in MC/EasyLanguage? Am I missing something? Any overall advice?
Thanks and regards,
Dan.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Information from the Order and Position Tracker is accessible to scripts, but don't know for certain if it's literally everything. You might want to check that with someone else. In MultiCharts PowerLanguage, accessing information from the Order and Position Tracker is not possible at all.
Yes, that's possible with the DataLoader. This is not possible in MultiCharts PowerLanguage.
Yes, that's possible with SymbolStorage. This is not possible in MultiCharts PowerLanguage.
Well yes of course, because that's something that C# can already do. For MultiCharts PowerLanguage, you'll need to use an unmanaged DLL for that.
Yes, there are different collections for that. This is not possible in MultiCharts PowerLanguage.
If you're already a professional C# programmer, I wouldn't even bother with the PowerLanguage version because that would be a huge step back for you - like no debugger and no OOP, and having to compile everything in unmanaged DLLs for features that are not supported by MultiCharts PowerLanguage.
Many thanks for your excellent feedback. When trying to understand what's best for my specific needs, it's extremely difficult to wade through the marketing hyperbole and detailed technical documentation. Having someone point out, "go here and and look at that" is extremely helpful. And A to B comparison makes it simple for me - MC.NET for sure.
There is one possible exception, however - IQBroker. A fellow on another forum pointed this out to me yesterday. After downloading the IQBroker software, it looks pretty decent. It has a portfolio perspective (working on a batch of instruments), which may fit my needs better. But, and it's a BIG but...
The company looks like a one-man shop. No phone support, not even sales support. As of yesterday, there were 22 posts in the support forum and most of those were by the forum admin, who happens to be the founder of the company. Software looks good and their website looks professional. Very strange. It's probably not an alternative for me, but I'll need to check further.
