1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?
Off and on since 2008

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?
Market/Volume Profile, chart-based trading, Trading DOM, Licensing, SC Support, Customization, Numbers Bars (reg and calculated)

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?
Mostly the stuff listed in 2)

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?
Both

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?
Discretionary. The way Sierra helps me is by letting me completely customize my market view. It removes any excuses when it comes to building charts the way I want.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?
I think this will be pretty subjective for most. Is there a learning curve? Sure. Of course, I've never seen charting software that didn't take some getting used to. Once you get used to the layout logic specific to Sierra, it's as easy as anything else to learn.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?
Excellent. Very accommodating and very responsive. The Sierra Chart you see today was hugely influenced by user-submitted ideas, suggestions, and contributions.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?
Yes. To the point of ridiculousness.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?
Awesome. In fact, it's often the community that ends up handling many issues that might normally clog a support channel. Very positive vibes, too.

One quick side note regarding SC support. Their primary means of support is their forum. And I think it is easy to lose sight of that fact. Their forum isn't designed to be a Kumbaya type platform for users to hold hands and talk about their feelings. So it isn't uncommon to see someone start a thread about an issue or question and SC Support to reply with a "We'll look into it" or "No" or something similar. They're acknowleding the topic and continuing to work on building the sickest charting package humanly possible. Works for me. For others, it may come off as terse. Again, if taken within context, it really isn't.

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?
About 6 mos. Previously used NT and Multicharts.

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?
Small footprint and reliability.

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?
Really like the chart trading.

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?
Primarily live.

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?
Discretionary.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?
I'd say medium difficult. Its not exactly straight forward, but having waded through IB Trader Workstation it could be worse.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?
I've never used it, though I search the user forum frequently for answers. It does seem some of the replys from support to questions are rather brusk.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?
Very competitively priced for a powerful program.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?
User input in the support forum seems top notch.

Don

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?

Although not using it at the moment, I used it interchangeably with IRT for about 6 months.

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?

TPO, Volume by Price, Footprint charts.

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?

TPO, Volume by Price, Footprint charts.

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?

Never traded live with it. Never trusted that DOM to go live, although in SIM mode never had any problem with it. I didn't use Sierra for trading. Charts only.

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?

Discretionary. Again, TPO, Volume by Price, Footprint charts. All tools that helped my strategy.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?

Very difficult. Not very user friendly but like everything, after awhile you get use to it.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?

Not very good in terms of manners. The way they answer... sometimes it gets a bit offensive.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?

Very. The tools they offer, at that price, you cannot be better served.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?

Their support board is really the best place to find answers. Many users are available to help others.
I advise to do a search before asking since you can see the same question asked over and over and over again. This way you do not need to wait for someone to answer you.

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?
About a year now, I started the trial version around this time last year. I was using TradeGuider before that.

2) What are your favourite features of Sierra Chart?

There were two reasons I changed to Sierra. 1. it's Volume feed is excellent. Almost identical to eSignal and a fraction of the price. 2. after extensively searching for Point and Figure implementation I came across them and decided to give it a go, but this led to further problems.

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?

The customisability (is that even a word?! ) Being able to change everything from the tool bar to the options that appear in the right click menu. And a recently added feature I like is custom keyboard short cuts.

Tick data back to December 2007 is fantastic as well, this provides me with volume data back to that time which has been very useful for back testing etc.

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?

Sim only, use it for my analysis and place the trades elsewhere.

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?

Discretionary. All the tools I need.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?

To start with I found it a little difficult, due to the vast amount of customisation there are a lot of options to trawl through at the start to get it looking how you like. But as the saying goes, it's easy once you know how. The website is good for a quick search on how to do something.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?

Personally speaking I think the customer service is quite poor. I've had quite a few reasons to go to the forums and each time I felt as though I was bothering them and was treated rudely.

Their own point and figure implementation is wrong as per literature I have on the subject, I raised this point and was told after a bit of toing and froing to essentially get with the times and stop living in the past. I let it be and got an outside programmer to make me a Study to my own liking.

For quite some time the volume feeds kept repainting and changing as they had conflicting feeds from FXCM. As I trade using volume this was very problematic and took a long time to be resolved. It appears to be ok now though.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?

Yes, very much so, this was another reason I changed. I'm on service package 3 which is $26 a month. They also offer a 2% discount for every month bought over 1 month. With these reductions a year subscription comes to $243.36 instead of $312 (12 x 26). Compared to eSignal this was a no brainer for me.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?

The forum itself is quite good with other members willing to help if they can. But as this is the main point of contact for SC Support, I tend to avoid it if at all possible.

A lot of people have a lot of good things to say about Sierra Charts and a lot of people seem to use it specifically as a charting program. That's what I am looking for. I am looking for a charting program that handles multiple monitors and multiple chats in multiple windows in multiple monitors.

Say you have four monitors. You'd like to compare a pair on instruments. In this view what you'd do is put four charts in each monitor. Then looking across the four monitors you'd have two rows of charts. The top row would be one instrument in eight times frames and the bottom row would be a different single instrument viewed in the same time frame. And from there of course it would be a nice step if you could just change the instruments on all the monitors or single monitor with a change of workspace or tab or similar idea.

Would that be something that Sierra Charts could display?

I use he free Java applet from NetDania for viewing silver and gold and have it configured like that. Just love it. Only problem is it can't cross monitors and NetDania doesn't supply a feed for New York equities.


Forex Charts | Currency Charts

Big Mike 

Let's try to keep the thread on-topic, focusing on why you use the platform and leave all other discussion to other more appropriate threads.

Mike

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?
Six months

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?
The ability to have drawings copied into other charts. Price/Study overlay. Low memory footprint. Low CPU usage. Most things can be done without programming, so it's pretty flexible and full-featured "out of the box".

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?
Speed, stability, flexibility. Market replay.

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?
SIM and Live

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?
Discretionary. It is stable, it is fast.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?
When I first used it I hated it. I couldn't find the features I wanted. The developers seem to ignore all good principals of software engineering and user interface design. It took me a long time to learn to like it, and I only tried it because it was cheap and stable and was an alternative to the horribly unstable and resource intensive Ninja Trader. Once I got used to it and appreciated the stability, speed and flexibility, I started to actually like it.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?
They are prompt with queries they are interested in. They seem to be short on support staff. Their responses can be lightning quick, and amazingly good, or you can just get ignored. So, I'd say it's variable.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?
It is great value.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?
It's thin, but growing.

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?
About 4 years

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?
Ease and flexibility of getting it to read data.......has been very easy to set up; intuitive to use; excellent graphic output with low cpu load; organization of tabs and chartbooks; customization of features and graphic look

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?
ease of data; customization; stability; flexibility; running multiple copies

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?
analysis on SC......place trades through broker software

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?
discretionary.........use multiple charts across multiple monitors

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?
I find it very intuitive to use........things are easy to find and I rarely have to go to help to figure it out.....but the web site help is quite detailed on how to do things.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?
I have gotten quick responses to any questions or requests I have had on the support board. SC will add user recommended features if it enhances it for most.......which is understandable. The program is updated very frequently as they continue to improve it.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?
Absolutely

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?
The only place I have found support is on the SC board and it has been very positive and quick.

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?

First version I recall using was 39 or somewhere there abouts, current version is 909 or 910 - 10+ yrs

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?

Extremely flexible, very customizable

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?

Not really sure been using it so long there is nothing I can really compare it to, to think it might need. I would say trading from the chart has become very important to me and would not like to back not having it.

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?

Live and sim mode bothe

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?

Discretionary - I can't say this particular chart software is why I trade the way I do.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?

I find it very easy to use - there are many ways to do a particular function, occasionally I find something buried and have to look around.

7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?

Support is great, both from the support team and the community.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?

Most certainly.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?

Community support via their support board is great. Someone will always have an answer.

1) How long have you been using Sierra Chart?
2 months, since 880ish

2) What are your favorite features of Sierra Chart?
It's fast, reliable, and is logically implemented

3) What are some must-have deal breaker features in Sierra Chart that you could not do without?
DOM, fast 40ms updating of charts/DOM/etc.

4) Do you use Sierra Chart in simulation mode only, or do you place live trades with it?
Live and sim

5) Are you a discretionary trader or an algorithmic trader? How does Sierra Chart help you with this?
Discretionary. Sierra has simple, clean drawing tools that always just work right. This makes charts easy to mark up. My former software program had drawing tool issues that would very often cause certain drawings to disappear, for example. This type of thing is not acceptable and with Sierra everything always just works.

6) How easy/hard was it for you to learn to use Sierra Chart?
It was challenging at first, but I think this is expected after using NT for so long. It's not harder than anything else to learn, all things considered. Within 2 weeks of extensive usage, I had covered at least 85% of what I needed to know to use it on a daily basis.


7) How do you rate Sierra Chart's customer service/support, assuming you have needed to use it?
Overall very good. They will actually give attention to your problem, if they see that it is indeed worthy of their time, which is understandably valuable and limited. If they aren't going to fix/change what you are talking about, it's refreshing to actually hear the truth, instead of hearing "we will consider this for future development" with no real intention of ever doing it. I have found several sierra bugs which were fixed in between 12 and 72 hours in most all cases. They are very fast.

8) Do you believe Sierra Chart is competitively priced?
Yes, I only wish I could buy a lifetime license.

9) How do you rate the community support that exists for Sierra Chart?
Pretty good. Due to their pricing structure, there are no lifelong freeloaders, so the base is smaller than some others, but the support that is out there is quite solid and helpful.

More comments:
At the top of my memory usage list of programs, is Chrome (274MB), iTunes (199MB), Chrome (again, 192MB, and again, 140MB), more Chrome, a few other programs, and way down the list is Sierra running all my charts at 76MB. My former program frequently used between 200MB and 500MB. Sierra is fast, fast, fast, efficient, and fast. Enough said!