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Why do you use Sierra Chart?


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Why do you use Sierra Chart?

  #51 (permalink)
 
Oysteryx's Avatar
 Oysteryx 
New York, NY
 
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jonc View Post
I was really surprised at how much features (particularly the studies) are available in SC when I started exploring it few months ago after having used Ninjatrader for so many years. It made me felt I was handicapped using NT all these years.

Having said that, I took a look at Investor RT, it seems to have a statistic studies which looks interesting. I don't think SC have this though.

Yes, forgot to mention the statistical analysis tool of iRT. Truly envy those.

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  #52 (permalink)
 
Oysteryx's Avatar
 Oysteryx 
New York, NY
 
Experience: Master
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Trading: Everything that moves
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Neo1 View Post
I'm curious, what is multi time frame support within a chart? And what is a top of the line alerts board? Are you talking about the front end here? Becos you can always create spreadsheet study's for your alerts, or create custom studies in ACSIL. Are you sure Investor RT has more "configurable indicator alerts"? I think it's more that "alerts" are easier to configure in investor RT- plus they are better at marketing. I would have thought the biggest difference would be the easy language. Also, Investor RT has no footprint charts, while SC has good Footprint functionality, comparable to Market Delta, perhaps better...This is a major selling point. Along with SC's one click dynamic market profiles + anchored vwaps from anywhere on the chart. NT users can only dream about things like that coming as standard features.

I enjoy the bluntness of SC support, it must be annoying dealing with idiots all day, and I'm probably one of those idiots. If something is actually of value to more than a couple of people, then SC are pretty good at implementing it. Look at how feature rich the platform has become without having to purchase any 3rd party BS.


Do not mean to make a thorough review of one vs the other, but will address your two points briefly.
- top of the line alerts board = customizable built in standalone alerts board to sum up all alerts, for all symbols. SC could maybe replicate this through a spreadsheet running as a study within a specific chart. Not even remotely the same.
- configurable indicator alerts = through Easy Language. Can customize way beyond SC's abilities. In SC one needs to go into coding and creating custom indicators through C++/ACSIL to achieve the same.

Then on to the next two points:
- bluntness of SC support = good for you if you enjoy it. Your argument starts from the premise that SC deals with idiots all day. Interesting way to portray the userbase. I'm certainly not an idiot and do not appreciate being treated like an idiot. I make my living through trading, and have quite a good track record, both in trading, sell-side trading, and academically. My questions are well thought and structured.
- "SC are pretty good at implementing it" = not true anymore, they are backlogged, and have even asked users to not make any more feature requests any more as their to-do-list spans two years.

Summing up:
Sierra's platform is outstanding. The customer support absolutely dismal and often purposely unhelpful (and it matters; back in the day I chose Sierra I reasoned it would not matter to me). And Investor RT costs three times what Sierra does for very good reasons. This is a heads up to potential NEW USERS in a relevant thread. Do not mean to discuss with current users pros and cons, and have no interest in discussing the validity of the blunt aggressive/defensive "we are always right, you are wrong" "users are idiots" and "we do not care about you" attitude of Sierra's customer support. It is what it is. Potential new users feel free to PM me if you want help in weighting the pros/cons. But decision should be fairly simple: should be a matter of budget.

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  #53 (permalink)
 
mattz's Avatar
 mattz   is a Vendor
 
Posts: 2,493 since Sep 2010
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@Oysteryx

It must be very frustrating to experience what you went through, and on top you seem like a competent trader with good credentials as a trader. But, I am going to tell you a few things, and this is just to balance things out for the readers here. This is not a rebuttal of any sort.

I have started paying serious attention to Sierra after these posts: and
The rest is history….Sierra addressed a team that decided they know to create data feeds, and created one of the largest F ups in trading. A whole brokerage that failed because of their experimentation with data feeds. ONLY sierra came out publically and said, “NO”.

After this, I have realized that Sierra has a value system oriented around quality, where customers do matter above all. Their refusal to implement things that do not work, and every feature out there, will be the hopefully the recipe for their futures success.

I think their cost structure allows both small and large customers to have a stable platform implemented with good data feeds. Small team, no sales, no promos, just engineers growing a platform organically without all the flashy ads. When our customers had issues, they have been very responsive. I think that your brokerage should be the first line of support for platform. But, I sure hope that SC also reads this, and makes things for the better.

Again, I do not belittle your experience, and happy you moved on to something that works for you (Bill and Chad from IRT are great guys!) and I had only good experience with them.
Thank you for reading this.

Matt Z
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  #54 (permalink)
 
Oysteryx's Avatar
 Oysteryx 
New York, NY
 
Experience: Master
Platform: Various
Trading: Everything that moves
Posts: 217 since Feb 2014
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No belittling at all. It is fantastic platform at a fantastic price, with a serious attitude problem that would likely require a new management team or cost/benefit quantification via hiring a consulting firm before any change takes place, if that ever happens.

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  #55 (permalink)
 
Neo1's Avatar
 Neo1 
Christchurch, New Zealand
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: SC
Broker: IB, BC, Dx Feed
Trading: US Equities
Posts: 428 since Jul 2014
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Oysteryx View Post
Do not mean to make a thorough review of one vs the other, but will address your two points briefly.
- top of the line alerts board = customizable built in standalone alerts board to sum up all alerts, for all symbols. SC could maybe replicate this through a spreadsheet running as a study within a specific chart. Not even remotely the same.

Fair enough, you could still create an alert based spread spreadsheet study based on custom parameters, and then duplicate it inside a chart book for each underline. You could also create a separate parameters sheet in a table format so you could see each charts settings in one place.


Oysteryx View Post
configurable indicator alerts = through Easy Language. Can customize way beyond SC's abilities. In SC one needs to go into coding and creating custom indicators through C++/ACSIL to achieve the same.

I agree, SC is limited in terms of creating custom indicators via Easy L. If you can't already code then you will find it more difficult to implement your indicators & condition based alerts than you would in other platforms.


Oysteryx View Post
Then on to the next two points:
- the bluntness of SC support = good for you if you enjoy it. Your argument starts from the premise that SC deals with idiots all day. Interesting way to portray the userbase. I'm certainly not an idiot and do not appreciate being treated like an idiot. I make my living through trading, and have quite a good track record, both in trading, sell-side trading, and academically. My questions are well thought and structured.
- "SC are pretty good at implementing it" = not true anymore, they are backlogged, and have even asked users to not make any more feature requests any more as their to-do-list spans two years.

My premise is that every trader starts off as an idiot. I look back at what I was doing even a couple of years ago and feel like an idiot- Even though I made money. I'm sure you can agree that a lot of the stuff support has to deal with is already explained in the documentation/ or in another previous post, or it's broker/ data feed related, or it's about help creating x custom study( which you can't really expect support to deal with), or creating x indicator because some user has seen it promoted in another platform. My experience has been if you're asking unique questions, can produce a good enough argument/ support into why something should be implemented, highlight a genuine flaw, or prove SC wrong- Then they won't treat you like an idiot and will resolve the issue or look into your request in a timely manner.


Oysteryx View Post
Summing up:
Sierra's platform is outstanding. The customer support absolutely dismal and often purposely unhelpful (and it matters; back in the day I chose Sierra I reasoned it would not matter to me). And Investor RT costs three times what Sierra does for very good reasons. This is a heads up to potential NEW USERS in a relevant thread. Do not mean to discuss with current users pros and cons, and have no interest in discussing the validity of the blunt aggressive/defensive "we are always right, you are wrong" "users are idiots" and "we do not care about you" attitude of Sierra's customer support. It is what it is. Potential new users feel free to PM me if you want help in weighting the pros/cons. But decision should be fairly simple: should be a matter of budget.


In line with the topic of this thread, I don't think it should be a simple matter of budget. I use Sierra chart because of the built in functionality and rich features that come with it. Particularly the numbers bar/ footprint study + the bid/ask stats( I had previously used MD). I also like their volume based study's + their implementation of VWAP/ Vol Profile, and the ability to have fairly complex alerts configured via a spreadsheet study. It's by no means a complete solution for me, however, it offers more in one single platform than any other single platform I've used.

If you make a living as a "Trader" and can't programme exactly what you want in SC, then pay someone who makes a living as a "developer" to do it for you- Study and System Programmers - Sierra Chart

If what you want can't be implemented in some way inside the platform, then look elsewhere. It sounds like Investor RT/ Tradestation might suit you better.

"Free markets work because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or incentives for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can"
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  #56 (permalink)
 
Oysteryx's Avatar
 Oysteryx 
New York, NY
 
Experience: Master
Platform: Various
Trading: Everything that moves
Posts: 217 since Feb 2014
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Neo1 View Post
Fair enough, you could still create an alert based spread spreadsheet study based on custom parameters, and then duplicate it inside a chart book for each underline. You could also create a separate parameters sheet in a table format so you could see each charts settings in one place.



I agree, SC is limited in terms of creating custom indicators via Easy L. If you can't already code then you will find it more difficult to implement your indicators & condition based alerts than you would in other platforms.



My premise is that every trader starts off as an idiot. I look back at what I was doing even a couple of years ago and feel like an idiot- Even though I made money. I'm sure you can agree that a lot of the stuff support has to deal with is already explained in the documentation/ or in another previous post, or it's broker/ data feed related, or it's about help creating x custom study( which you can't really expect support to deal with), or creating x indicator because some user has seen it promoted in another platform. My experience has been if you're asking unique questions, can produce a good enough argument/ support into why something should be implemented, highlight a genuine flaw, or prove SC wrong- Then they won't treat you like an idiot and will resolve the issue or look into your request in a timely manner.




In line with the topic of this thread, I don't think it should be a simple matter of budget. I use Sierra chart because of the built in functionality and rich features that come with it. Particularly the numbers bar/ footprint study + the bid/ask stats( I had previously used MD). I also like their volume based study's + their implementation of VWAP/ Vol Profile, and the ability to have fairly complex alerts configured via a spreadsheet study. It's by no means a complete solution for me, however, it offers more in one single platform than any other single platform I've used.

If you make a living as a "Trader" and can't programme exactly what you want in SC, then pay someone who makes a living as a "developer" to do it for you- Study and System Programmers - Sierra Chart

If what you want can't be implemented in some way inside the platform, then look elsewhere. It sounds like Investor RT/ Tradestation might suit you better.

@Neo1

As a trader you should realize we don't live in a binary world. SC is not perfect. I stated a valid opinion based on extensive personal experience (and that of fellow traders I share extensively on a daily basis I may add) and made a recommendation to new potential users. Your "if you don't like go elsewhere" like of thinking is flawed and unproductive. It leads to divisiveness and stagnation. I do not question nor judge what you like or like not. Let an opinion be and move on.

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  #57 (permalink)
 
puma's Avatar
 puma 
zurich
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra ahRrrr CQG ...
Trading: Bund, ES, ...
Posts: 964 since Aug 2010
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I have not kissed Sierra chart's ass in a while,
so here it is:

I love this platform.
It is the gift, that keeps giving.

my updates:

I finally transitioned to the Sierra DOM -
it has top functionality - (some hidden as usually )
They keep adding features. great.

By now Sierra seems to connect to any services/brokers.

It is lightning fast.

It is very stable - I have very complex work-spaces.

...

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  #58 (permalink)
 Japhro 
Canada
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra
Broker: AMP/Rithmic
Trading: NQ, ES, YM, UB
Posts: 213 since Aug 2013
Thanks Given: 33
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puma View Post
I have not kissed Sierra chart's ass in a while,
so here it is:

I love this platform.
It is the gift, that keeps giving.

my updates:

I finally transitioned to the Sierra DOM -
it has top functionality - (some hidden as usually )
They keep adding features. great.

By now Sierra seems to connect to any services/brokers.

It is lightning fast.

It is very stable - I have very complex work-spaces.

...

There was one major issue that bugged me about their DOM, so I asked for a fix, it took a while but they did it. Now the DOM can auto recenter based on a user definable # of ticks away from center. It makes having a bunch of DOMs up all day much easier since you dont have to click and scroll them all day. It's a great feature, many thanks to them for implementing my suggestion

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  #59 (permalink)
 steve2222 
Auckland, New Zealand
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: AMP/CQG
Trading: Whatever moves in my timezone
Posts: 1,896 since Sep 2009
Thanks Given: 3,379
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puma View Post
I have not kissed Sierra chart's ass in a while,
so here it is:

I love this platform.
It is the gift, that keeps giving.


...


Japhro View Post
There was one major issue that bugged me about their DOM, so I asked for a fix, it took a while but they did it. ...................... many thanks to them for implementing my suggestion

I too have found them receptive to adding small enhancements and amending documentation, oh and of course fixing bugs.

@SierraChart

Now if they could just add:

1/ An economic news study to overlay on a chart advising of upcoming releases
2/ Produce their own divergence study that can be applied to any other study (user contributed ones either do not work well enough or are hard coded to plot price divergence with a particular study).
3/ Allow more order types to be set on the ChartDOM
4/ Turn the Chart Trading right click menu into a context sensitive ones so it only shows the order types that are valid for where the pointer is relative to current price so as not to drop you straight into an 'at market' order unintentionally.
5/ Provide for off line documentation so I can swot up on the train or plane (they have said they will look at this).

Then all will be well in the world

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  #60 (permalink)
 Japhro 
Canada
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra
Broker: AMP/Rithmic
Trading: NQ, ES, YM, UB
Posts: 213 since Aug 2013
Thanks Given: 33
Thanks Received: 195


#6 - Allow background colouring on the Last Trade Size DOM column to be coloured based on trades at Bid or at Ask
simple improvement would mimic the best feature of the TT DOM to see when they blitz the bid or ask in size

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