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I've used TS several times through the years, most recently 6 months ago or so.
Had significant data problems a few years ago and dumped them. No data problems at all 6 months ago.
Pluses:
- my favorite charting package and access to historical data, of anyone I've ever tried and there's been a bunch
- easy/good backtesting if you're in to that, built-in indicators, strategies
- big and experienced user community
- good commissions
- solid fills/executions for me -- lately anyway -- but I'm not a 'scalper'
- their DOM is decent
Minuses:
- hack you with fees such as charging $20 for wires out
- charge you full amount for all exchange fees, no rebates available, such as Kinetick offers
- I'm a little 'nervous' about their # of customers, which is not large and has shrunk and therefore, their 'financial position', but that just might be unfounded 2011 paranoia. They were bought out by Toyko-based Monex this year; don't know if that is good or bad.
I especially don't like paying full price for the exchange fees but maybe that's negotiable - I didn't try.
Once I was done using their back testing/data, I put the account on inactive because of the minuses. Still conflicted about retaining them for charting -- paying the e-mini CME fee only -- and a backup brokerage. I think they could have a lot more customers than they do if they comp'ed some of the exchange and misc fees.
BTW, if you're not a scalper (or even if you are and can use a trading interface like Buttontrader), IB might be a good way to go if you don't care that much about the trading platform, especially the charting available via the brokerage, because IB's charting is still inferior.
They are always up, have great commissions and executions, provide unlimited access to all exchanges with virtually no extra charges and have even improved their previously very weak customer support. And they seemingly have a strong business with little to no exposure to squirrely 'investments' and have all the usual insurance plus, they have been increasing their customer base though they are dependent on volumes for their profitability. They have their own data feed which is limited in historical data -- slightly more than two years -- and does not have tick data but otherwise works fine for me.
Dabootor,
I have to let you know I have been an advocate for tradestation in the past but not anymore. I love their charts, but they are not a good futures brokerage. Today I had a stop order in on an ES trade that went against me and I took 7 ticks of slippage. The market traded over 1000 transactions before my market order was filled. I am leaving and going to switch to some other platform.
I moved to MC and Interactive Brokers about 6 months ago after experiencing the same issue: I think it was nearer 10 ticks of slippage, basically my ES stop order was not filled until about a 20 second delay elapsed. Stops are held on TS servers so it isn't about internet latency. I can only assume the TS servers had become overloaded. Of course they said the fill was almost instant but not true and similar things had happened before (I traded ES with TS for nearly 3 years). I can truly say IB is a different world and I haven't notice any real discernable slippage even in a very fast market.
I especially like the NT scaling, so simple, but IB/NT/IQFeed is so many vendors just to place a trade, so many links to go wrong.
If you get MC through IB, does it function like it's part of IB rather than 3rd party?
Is it seamlessly linked to IB or do you still have to link MC to IB, just as with NT?
"Of course they said the fill was almost instant but not true ..." I too have experienced that attitude problem with Tradestation. If pressed, they sort themselves out, but of course they are never going to undo a trade for you. That attitude really concerns me as frequency and size increase.
